:The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.
The result of the debate was listify --Kbdank71 14:52, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
- {{cl|Mountains by Elevation (km)}}
- {{cl|British Hills by Height}}
- {{cl|NZ Mountains by Elevation}}
- {{cl|Io Mountains by Elevation}}
- {{cl|Mars Mountains by Elevation}}
- {{cl|Venus Mountains by Elevation}}
- {{cl|Lunar Mountains by Elevation}}
- Trenches CfD items mysteriously moved to: Just go [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AGrutness&diff=22700059&oldid=22697755#CFD_2 here].
Maybe it's just me, but this looks completely mad. Surely this is what list articles are for. Not to mention: (1) some fairly dodgy capitalisation; (2) the use of "NZ" rather than New Zealand; and (3) inconsistency between nouns and adjectives in the astronomical categories. Listify them all and create {{cl|Lists of mountains by height}} to house them. Grutness...wha? 05:46, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
:::I note also that one of the categories (the Io one) currently contains no mountains sorted by height. Nopt surprising, since I don't think the heights of any have been measured yet, and Io's surface is in permanent flux. Grutness...wha? 07:04, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
:::::Here is the source for the mountain info on Io. (None Match 27km Olympus Mons of Mars):
:::::*http://www.planetary.org/html/news/articlearchive/headlines/2001/iomountains.html
:::::Only one mountain height mentioned of the 23 mountains gazetted at USGS:
:::::*http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/jsp/FeatureTypesData2.jsp?systemID=5&bodyID=7&typeID=27&system=Jupiter&body=Io&type=Mons,%20montes&sort=AName&show=All
::::: ¢ NevilleDNZ 17:46, 2 September 2005 (UTC) ¢
- Strong listify, this is well-meaning but entirely illegible in this format. Radiantmeta:mergist 07:16, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
I helped create these sorted categories, here are my thoughts:
- "Q": "Surely this is what list articles are for.", A: Only for the one above 8000m. (Too much hard work listifying)
- Fix listifying: Basically list are generally out of date in anything but "well known" lists and small lists. I speculate that this is because lists are manually created, and as information become availiable via new Templates and Infoboxes must be added manually.
- re: "(2), the use of "NZ" rather than New Zealand", This comment on NZ is a matter partly of taste, but easily fix by changing the country name in the template.
- Similarly these Auto-Categories are Automatically generated
- These Categories are infact the only ordered source of mountain/hill heights anywhere in wiki, esp British Hills, 7000m+ mountains and NZ mountains. (eg, what is the 4th highest peak in the Southern Alps?)
- And all of the above can be achieved (consistently) with only very minor house keeping.
- re: "(3) inconsistency between nouns." By taking advantage of template lists this can be cleaned up. This is not a criteria for deleting wiki articles, only for improving them.
- These categories have only existed for 4 days. I am sure a bit of refinement over time with remove some of the above quirks mentioned, and leave wiki with a useful resource of mountain elevation, and hill heights.
- Finally, there has been a small amount to between the contributors of Hill/Mountain articles, and basically there was a consensious. (eg under Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains/General); Although I could agree things were evolving.
- It is unfortunate that this "vote for deletion" was called without paricitation by the person who nominated the deletions.
BTW: when can I take these Sorted Categories off the Cat Delete list?
:Not until the debate is over, 7 days from when it started. Generally, it will be done for you. -Splash 01:37, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
¢ NevilleDNZ 12:47, 1 September 2005 (UTC) ¢
:You're making life many, many times harder for yourself by using categories in this way - ordering items by a scale is just the sort of thing that a list is perfect for and a category isn't. To answer your individual points:
:*Too much hard work listifying - far less work than to open a list and edit it once to add 100 hills than to open 100 different articles to add one category to each of them. A list is by far the easier method.
::*99%+ of the pages use a template/infobox , for these only one line in currently 4 templates needs to be changed. ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:::*On each article that needs changing. So you need to open each and every article, rather than opening one list. Far more work. Grutness...wha?
:*list are generally out of date.... I speculate that this is because lists are manually created - whereas adding a category to articles is done how? Manually. Therefore this is just as likely to get "out of date" In fact, since a list can have red-links, which a category can't, it's far less likely to miss any new articles created.
::* via 4 templates template/infobox. ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:::*and the figures are put into the templates by a machine? Or does someone type them in - manually? Grutness...wha?
:*the use of "NZ" rather than New Zealand"... easily fix by changing the country name in the template. You clearly don't understand templates - a change to the category in the template will require a null-edit of every article in it.
::* I spotted that already. But once the template/infobox is settled/static this is not required anymore. ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:*these Auto-Categories are Automatically generated - no, you have to add the category manually to each article. A bot could be used, but only if the category was all you were adding - you're also having to add a sort code based on the height for each one - that can't be done by a bot.
::*I hope that this new idea proves useful. ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:::*No new idea visible anywhere. Grutness...wha?
:*These Categories are infact the only ordered source of mountain/hill heights anywhere in wiki, esp British Hills, 7000m+ mountains and NZ mountains. - so, make lists.
::*I cannot see Sorted-Categorys replacing handmade or imported lists, but they are useful. ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:::*Yet that is exactly what you are trying to do here. Unfortunately, as is quite clear from the categories, you haven';t succeeded. Grutness...wha?
:*all of the above can be achieved (consistently) with only very minor house keeping. - But more housekeeping than would be needed with a list - and with less likelihood of error. According to {{cl|British Hills by Height}} the highest peak in the UK is Walbury Hill, at somewhere over 9000 metres (i.e., slightly higher than Mt. Everest).
::*"Off scale" peaks need to be added manually, and prefix with a zero or > . Maybe it is higher the Everest, just nobody noticed until I did the sorted category. :-) Do I get naming rights? ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:::*so not only do you have to type in the heights, you have to remember extra codings for "off-scale" peaks. And you say it's less work?
:*re: "(3) inconsistency between nouns." By taking advantage of template lists this can be cleaned up. This is not a criteria for deleting wiki articles, only for improving them. - I did say it was a minor thing compared to the other glaring problems with these categories.
::*Fixable, automatable. ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:*These categories have only existed for 4 days. All the better reason to listify them now, while it's still not too much work.
::*Ouch! ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:::*Ouch or not, it's true. Better to fix them now and save yourself all this unnecessary work. Took me half an hour to create a list of 350 British peaks - whereas you had two dozen in four days. Grutness...wha?
:*Finally, there has been a small amount to between the contributors of Hill/Mountain articles, and basically there was a consensious. (eg under Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains/General); Although I could agree things were evolving. Not quite sure what this means, but if you mean that there was consensus between differen editors working on hill and mountain articles, that doesn't necessarily mean that the consensus reached chose a particularly useful or sensible method of listing heights. let's face it - that's what you're trying to do, isn't it? List peaks by height? You can't categorise them by height, because heights aren't categories, by definition - they'e a continuum.
::*Categorising them by 1000ft bands seems to work nicely. ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:::*whereas listing them by with subheadings at those heights works just as well, with the added advantages that the heights can be clearly seen by anyone looking at the list - rather than having one digit and having to try to guess the rest. Grutness...wha?
:*It is unfortunate that this "vote for deletion" was called without paricitation by the person who nominated the deletions. - You're right that I am not a member of that particular wikiproject - I'm just someone who can spot someone making loads of extra work for themselves and failing to use the best wiki tools for the job. Grutness...wha? 13:42, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
::*Not true, carefully add adding one category line to one infobox to do the work automatically seems kinda natural and can get a lot of mileage. On the other hand I can see that the wrong "one category line" would be very visable. ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:::*Adding one l9ne to one infobox on every individual article, compared to simply writing one article.
:::By the way - you might want to see List of New Zealand mountains by height, which took me about twenty minutes to make and contains five times as many mountains as in your category. List of mountains on the Moon by height took even less time. Lists are easy. Grutness...wha? 14:13, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
:::* ThanX for that. NZ has need one of these for some time, I discovered some mountains that I didn't even know existed. ¢ NevilleDNZ ¢
:Categories and lists perform fundamentally different tasks. A list is fine as a list, but for someone to create a list of all British hills and mountains would be an enormous and highly subjective endeavour. The category British Hills by Height is potentially useful as a different way of combining the various categories Hills of Snowdonia, Hills of South-east England and so on into one and sorting them by height (it might also be interesting to have a category sorted by relative height). To tackle some of the criticisms levelled above:
:*The category notice does not have to be added to each individual page, at least for British Hills, because it's done automatically as part of the British Hills infoboxes. Articles won't of course appear in the category listing until they've been edited, but we can live with that to start with, and it'll soon go away.
::*The British hills infobox has to be added to each page, so yes, every article nees to be edited. Especally since changes in templates that sort to categories require null-edits if the template is already on an article when the change is made to the template. Grutness...wha?
:*Walbury Hill no longer appears as the highest mountain in the world. That was a teething problem that has now been sorted out; the listings are now more or less in order. (There's also a problem with commas in heights such as "3,560 ft", but that can also be fixed by making the articles more uniform, something that should be done anyway.)
:*We are not here categorising by height, as Grutness suggested above, but categorising as hills/mountains, and then sorting by height. That's very different.
::*If you're not categorising by height, why are you putting things in categories named "X by elevation"? Or do elevation and height refer to different things? Grutness...wha?
:::*Something titled "X by height" is clearly indicating both the criteria for inclusion and the manner of sorting. There is no such thing as a "hill by elevation", so I can't see that your comment makes much sense. A list of "mountains over 8000m" or "hills below 2000 feet" (sorted in any manner) would be categorisation by height. This, however, is not. --Stemonitis 08:01, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
:*I see a category such as this as being more useful than another incomplete list. "List of New Zealand mountains by height"? By what criteria? What is a mountain and what is just a secondary summit or a small rock? Do not fall under the illusion that a list like that is objective. At least the category system is honest about only containing pages with Wikipedia articles, without trying to justify them with some other criterion. Furthermore, "Other prominent mountains" is useless. I might just as well list "Some mountains I've just thought of". If they're so important, then they'll have articles, and they'll appear in a category somewhere. That's exactly what a category is for. Please don't try to replace an elegant and usefully sorted category with a meaningless and subjective list.
:**"Other prominent mountains" just sounded better than "other mountains that Wikipedia either has articles for or are red-linked or prominently mentioned in other Wikipedia articles". Grutness...wha? 01:58, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
:Admittedly, I would not have created these categories myself, but now they're here, I can see that they have some use, and do not deserve the vitriol that they've received. --Stemonitis 10:41, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- Strong Delete. - Precedence in cases such as this was set by deleting :Category:Books by title (see archive). - Darwinek 14:03, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
- Delete. Vsmith 17:14, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
- Listificate. No argumentatification. siafu 22:20, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
- Listify and delete clearly. -Splash 01:37, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- Keep. A category of mountains sorted by height is just as relevant as a category sorted alphabetically. --Stemonitis 10:41, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- Strong Keep but change the E to an e, and H to an h In most cases (ideally), only one entry is required in one template/infobox (not every page). Remember (for example) British Hills is an evolving/growing group and as such let the sorted-category evolve with it. I like hand crafted lists, but they need to be collected and maintained manually and new pages may not make the hand crafted list immediately as they do in an sorted-category. ¢ NevilleDNZ 12:27, 2 September 2005 (UTC) ¢
- Keep. Mostly for the reasons outlined by Stemonitis. A list is purely subjective, and we should not pretend otherwise. The category is useful - it's criteria is simple: "peaks with articles on thw wiki". Grinner 12:43, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- Delete them and turn them into lists. The lists can have mountains not in wikipedia as well. And arent lists normally used for this sort of thing? I had a look at the catagories and they made no sense. Some of the hights were given as "{ kilometers". Others of them were in the wrong order. The lists look good and anyone can understand them. Why have a catagory pretending to be a list when you can have a list being a list? BL Lacertae 14:55, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
::I'm sorry, but that doesn't make any sense. If you're going to make a list, then you need to have some criteria for inclusion on the list. There is never going to be a list of British hills that includes all the hills with articles, unless it's a list of all names appearing on OS maps (and what a dull and pointless list that would be). Yes, create a list of Marilyns or of Munros, where there are a limited and fixed number; yes, create a list of Britain's highest mountains if you like; but no, do not delete the category. Wainwrights? List 'em. Eight-thousanders? List 'em. But don't delete this perfectly useful category. --Stemonitis 15:15, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
:As a secondary issue, I think this is going to get confusing if we keep discussing all these categories together. I'd be perfectly happy to see :Category:Io Mountains by Elevation destroyed, but :Category:British Hills by Height must be kept. I think most of the delete votes were speaking about these categories in general, whereas the keep votes were considering one category specifically. Shall we discuss :Category:British Hills by Height separately from the others? --Stemonitis 15:15, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
::Agree here, I am only advocating the retention of :Category:British Hills by Height. Grinner 15:24, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- Delete. I don't think categories are meant to sort by content, at least not in the present implementation. Lists are more appropriate for this sort of thing; adding an "incomplete list" tag to it would guard against anyone thinking it is comprehensive, and it would be easy to add "This is a list of such and such with articles on Wikipedia" to the introduction of a list page. --Fastfission 16:38, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
- Strong Keep, especially for British Hills. For goodness' sake, this is useful (now the teething problems have been sorted). Agreed, the creator of the categories has put a lot more hard work in than he had to, but he's come up with something good. It's an original and clever way of using the database, even if this isn't how the database is supposed to be used. It's really good to have a list of British hills that includes every hill in Britain that has an article on the Wiki - useful for people trying to improve them. And in the right order too, as a bonus! Someone's obviously put a lot of work into this and if people are prepared to keep putting work into it, good. Who cares if it's not how we're supposed to use it? It's useful! --Mark J 10:57, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
- Make a list. Having said this, a list would be equally good, just slightly harder to maintain. Plus you could actually put the heights in. --Mark J 10:57, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
- Listify and delete. This is a tough decision but I don't think using categories is the best approach to listing peaks by elevation. When I want to see a list of 7,000 metre peaks, having the exact elevation and their location at the same time on one page is very useful for comparison. Using categories means I must go to each individual page for this information. Unlike lists of books where it will always grow (until the end of humans), the list of mountains on Earth is finite (although a new mountain could spring up in the next 100 years but it would be easily added at that point). As well, notwithstanding the capitalization issues, metres is the standard convention used when referring to mountains (at least on Earth) not km. While I can probably see why km was used (for the non-Earth mountains), it just is not aesthetically pleasing. Mountaineers say 7,000 metre peaks, not 7 km peaks. While the use of categories can make it easier to initially get this type of information setup, I think a list makes better sense in the long run. Perhaps, 7,000 metre peaks could get their own category like the 8,000 metre peaks but anything lower than that would eventually become unwieldy and somewhat useless IMHO. A final comment on the reference to it being similar to the debate held on the categories to alphabetize books. The distinct difference between sorting alphabetically and categorizing by elevation is that mountaineers and other like minded individuals are quite curious to see a collection of the 7,000 metre (I certainly am) or perhaps even 6,000 metre peaks. However, still a list would work better than categories. RedWolf 20:43, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
- Listify and delete. Agree with Grutness.-gadfium 04:30, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
- Think about it once again I personally think that the whole discussion is pointing out a lack of structuring capability within the wikimedia engine. There is no way to assign properties to lemmata and categories are the first step to structure the content of this huge database. There has been much talk about lists and categories, however the conclusion is that lists are only structuring locally and have to be duplicated far too often, thereby consistency is lost (i.e. want to build a table of highest mountains in the solar system? - one has to copy and paste). The suggested use of a category, in my eyes, is an abuse as well, because "Mt. something" is an element of the category (=group) "Mountain". "Height in metres" is a property and should be treated as such. To underline the differences: one can sort a category by a property, but not by its elements (alphabetic order is also an implicit property). My impression is that the supporters of the category approach is just that what they want. Having a way to automatically sort and select elements by their property/ies. But this involves a change of the engine. If this is performed properly (see [http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1911 bugzilla-for-wikipedia] - you might vote for it if you're interested) multiple issues like this one could be settled without a quarrel about deletion of an obsolete category or list. In the end the list would become a template that can be sortet and limited to build it into an article by a short statement looking somehow like: {table category:Mountains country="NewZealand" sortby="elevation in metres" start=1000 columns="Name|elevation|longitude|latitude" title="Mountains in New Zealand above 1000 metres"}. Clicking the tables column header could allow to sort it dynamically by any displayed property. Clicking the contents would allow to alter the properties, stored in the category "mountain" - everybody would be happy this way I guess and hope! (no ugly table codes, lean code, fast and centralized information access, sorting, no weird "property" categories, a faster development of wikipedia) --BoP 08:56:43, 2005-09-04 (UTC)
- Delete and listify, as arguments above for doing so make sense. —Lowellian (reply) 18:23, September 6, 2005 (UTC)
===Post(?) vote close / pre vote count discussion===
Image:Hollerith_card.jpg in manually tabulating and manually sorting data that was already [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AGrutness&diff=22394447&oldid=22393566 wikified], I award you this Hollerith punch card - ¢ NevilleDNZ 03:56, 7 September 2005 (UTC) ¢ ]]Image:Wheel Iran.jpg in creating a system already handled more effectively in other, simpler ways, I award you the Reinvention of the wheel award - Grutness...wha?]]
- Is it over yet?: In honor of this occasion I have created a new award. To be honest now I feel a bit guilty unilaterly awarding this to 2 deserving recipients. But, then again... what the hell. ¢ NevilleDNZ 03:56, 7 September 2005 (UTC) ¢
Please, don't feel disobliged, if you feel that this award is appropriate and deserved then you can put this on your user page.
I was posthumosly awarded the Reinvention of the wheel award.
¢ NevilleDNZ 03:56, 7 September 2005 (UTC) ¢
: This is quite some fun to read, especially since this page was lacking images until now! P-) - but it might be the right time to sort yourself into "Category:Comedians" if you do not want to end in "Category:War" ... or to calm down. This dispute will not be resolved this way. - Still wondering if there might be a solution that suits both of you --BoP 07:27:27, 2005-09-07 (UTC)
- I'm not changing my original vote, but if some are hard pressed to use categories, I would much rather prefer seeing :Category:7000 metre peaks, :Category:6000 metre peaks, etc. than one massive category which will eventually become unwieldy and somewhat useless IMHO. Of course though, this will probably lead to :Category:27,000 foot peaks, :Category:26,000 foot peaks, etc. Even if the current category survives, it still needs to be renamed due to capitalization at least. Besides, I find the current wording very awkward. I really cannot stand the "km" notation at all. There are currently over 700 pages on mountains/peaks already with thousands more to go. Do you really want a single category containing thousands of articles? RedWolf 02:56, September 8, 2005 (UTC)
:I think the vote has closed, so this discussion is somewhat academic, but for what it is worth...
:*I am prepared to scale/weight my keep vote based on how many actual hill/mountain pages I have contributed (rather then just categorised). In other words make mine a null vote. After all you are the guys who did all the hard work. I am still coming to terms with a wiki admin calling the idea a [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AGrutness&diff=22394447&oldid=22393566 pig's ear].
:*But on the technical topic of 700 mountains in one category, that make 75 mountains to a page, about 10-15 page, this sounds feasible. However unfortunately the highest would appear on the last page... It is questionable if this is desirable. (BTW: Using existing wiki technology a 6100+|6200+|6300+|6400+|6500+|6600+|6700+|6800+|6900+ tool bar can be crafted for the top of the actual category and this tool bar would help vastly!)
:*Breaking these into country categories can be automated via the template, even adding the full/prefered country name. (And so the "inconsistency between nouns and adjectives" problem could be fixed here also by inserting standard nouns and/or adjectives from a lookup template)
:*I see (km) is unnatural for mountain height, this (km) can be dropped from the cat name, just as was done with the original :Cat: British Hills by Height (1000 ft) now it was called just :Category: British Hills by Height.
:*The capitalisation of "Elevation" to "elevation" wont receive any objections from my null vote, I see this is the norm elsewhere.
:*wrt to your idea of :Category:7000 metre peaks, :Category:6000 metre peaks etc. I see that some templates do actually employ a trick where they split the century from the year. In the case of elevation of the highest 1000 mountains globally you could have a custom infobox which these mountains use. eg {{infobox_mnts_6000m+ |elevation_m=6123 |elevation_6000m+=123 |region=NP}}. This could easily be used to autogenerate the sorted category you want. But the page would need to be named something like Category:6000 metre peaks, and the index on the category page would still be only one digit, 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 being hundreds of meters above the 6000m mark. (I am suspecting that there are a lot (100s) of "uncharted" 6000m peaks in Asia yet to be marked on a map.)
:BTW: I was impressed with 27,000m Olympus Mons on Mars. It has virtually (almost) no atmosphere at the top. If at the end of this we must use lists, I will manually create a manual list of the 10 highest known mountains and manually include both Everest and Olympus Mons and some other vital stats (manually), hopefully this list wont grow so fast :-).
:The whole infobox/category/sort strategy would be based on having a few standard info boxes, when contributors can add basic raw data. All the associated sorted categorys would happen automatically, (except for off scale exceptions, such as mountains on mars etc)
:Cheers - ¢ NevilleDNZ 08:19, 8 September 2005 (UTC) ¢ (ps. it is very hard to brain storm new ideas when the CfD gun is being held to your head :-( )
Given that I am going to have the entire book thrown at me anyhow, here is another workaround for sorting height higher then 10,000ft, (or 1,000m in Britian). The issue is the first character is the only one listed in the sorted index,... so
⒑ for 1000+ m,
⒒ for 1100+ m,
⒓ for 1200+ m,
⒔ for 1300+ m,
⒕ for 1400+ m,
⒖ for 1500+ m,
⒗ for 1600+ m,
⒘ for 1700+ m,
⒙ for 1800+ m,
⒚ for 1900+ m,
⒛ for 2000+ m
These will sort perfectly, and the index will only ever show the first character. (Which happens to be 2 digits that we need). Ironically some cultures actually have a special word for these numbers. eg Ethopian. But I think using Ethopian script would be a tad confusing, even though their numbers do sort perfectly well.
This is more effective then using a ">" for heights that go off scale.
¢ NevilleDNZ 14:02, 8 September 2005 (UTC) ¢
:The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this page.
