Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 May 12#

These were the main oppose arguments of the previous discussion:

• We should make an exception for journalists.

:* Reply: Fair enough, then I'll withdraw journalists for now and we can discuss them separately later. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Race and ethnicity are important.

:* Reply: While I do not quite agree about that anyway, it is important to realize that the nomination is not about race and ethnicity as such, but about the intersection of descent and occupation. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• We should make an exception for people in Asia of Chinese descent.

:* Reply: Fair enough, then I'll withdraw them for now and we can discuss them separately later. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• The subcats of :Category:American people by ethnic or national origin and occupation have not been nominated.

:* Reply: The reason is that :Category:American people by ethnic or national origin and occupation is not part of the tree of :Category:People by country of descent and occupation which is the tree that has been nominated. I'll be happy to nominate :Category:American people by ethnic or national origin and occupation too if this discussion leads somewhere. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• This proposal will lead to more category clutter.

:* Reply: It will lead to at most one category more in an article, and often (in case of a single merge) it does not lead to an increase at all. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

:**Comment @Marcocapelle: The only situation in which any of these can lead to an increase in the number of categories is where the category has been implemented to ghettoise people, contrary to WP:EGRS. If the category has been applied correctly, then there will be no increase in the number of categories, because an article will not have been removed from "Cat:Fooian politicians" just because it is also in "Cat:Fooian politicians of Something descent"--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:58, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

• In addition it is important to realize that there is strong bias here: :Category:People by country of descent and occupation mainly deals with East and South Asian descent, while :Category:American people by ethnic or national origin and occupation mainly splits between African American ethnicity and, again, East and South Asian descent. There is, for example, no :Category:German people of French descent by occupation or vice versa. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose, no stop, full stop, no. :Category:American people of Asian descent by occupation is an important categorization, which is useful to those who want to see the prevalence of occupations done by notable Asian Americans. If that is the case within this area of study, surely it is relevant in other ethnic study fields. Also why only single out Chinese descent and not the many other Asian nationalities and ethnicities? Why only single out journalist, and not other as notable occupations?--RightCowLeftCoast (Moo) 16:35, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

::{{edit conflict}}The sub-topics of Asian Americans in certain occupations have become relevant to have their own sub-articles to the parent article, such as Asian Americans in arts and entertainment, Asian Americans in government and politics, Military history of Asian Americans, Asian Americans in science and technology, etc. Also nice to see no recognition of Southeast Asian Americans in the listing above. Just because there is not a category of German people of Turkish descent by occupation (there is one kinda :Category:German politicians of Turkish descent‎, and also :Category:German Jews by occupation), doesn't mean that there cannot be or should not be per WP:WIP and WP:NOTPAPER.--RightCowLeftCoast (Moo) 16:52, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

::There are also other countries which have the categories about certain minority populations and those who are notable within that community and the occupation they worked in, such as for Australia, United Kingdom, and Canada (who could use a category :Canadian people by ethnicity and occupation). If this is the case, for these nations, there could be the need in other nations.--RightCowLeftCoast (Moo) 17:05, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: Shouldn't :Category:American politicians of Chinese descent, etc. be upmerged to :Category:American politicians of Asian descent and renamed to :Category:Asian-American politicians? --Paul_012 (talk) 16:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

::No, because while categorized in the same racial category by the Office of Budget Management, which is utilized by the United States Census Bureau, each Asian American ethnicity has its own immigration and cultural history as it relates to the United States, create unique and different backgrounds, which have impacted the prevalence of certain Asian American ethnicities to enter certain fields of occupation.--RightCowLeftCoast (Moo) 16:55, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

::Also generally when spelling Asian American, it is more common not to hyphenate.--RightCowLeftCoast (Moo) 16:56, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Delete, including journalists. Perhaps someone else wants to study German-Americans in certain occupations, or other white Americans in certain occupations, or Turks with certain occupations in Germany. What difference is there? There's no fundamental connexion between race and occupation, so these should be treated the same. Note that certain white American ethnicities are far more likely to enter certain fields (e.g. farming on the Great Plains) than non-whites, but it would be rather silly to have a category for "American farmers of Norwegian descent" even if we had several biographies of them. Nyttend (talk) 16:59, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose I agree with RightCowLeftCoast. Let's keep a valuable aid to users. Rjensen (talk) 17:33, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong support. For some individuals, it is arguable that the intersection of occupation and descent is relevant. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, it is a classic irrelevant intersection, and in many cases the scent is far enough back that it is not a defining characteristic of the person. Any attempt to constrain the use of these categories to cases where the intersection is of genuine relevance are doomed to fail, because a) most editors will note existence of category and add without checking any restrictions, and b) assessments of relevance are fuzzy and subjective, leading to instability and even edit-wars.

:So overall, these categories do way more harm than good. They complicate the category structure, and divide categories by an attribute which in most cases is of little relevance.

:Bearing in mind the comments above about the social history of discriminatory exclusion in some occupations, and clustering for other reasons, I think we should support the efforts of editors who want to document this ... but do so by listifying each of these categories to the talk page before deletion. That will facilitate the creation of lists and/or substantive articles the intersections between ethnicity and occupation, where there is evidence that the intersection is actually a notable encyclopedic topic and not just original research by en.wp editors. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:48, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose agree with RightCowLeftCoast. For people belonging to majority ethnic groups in their countries, ethnicity is usually not that important, but for people who belong to ethnic minorities, ethnicity is absolutely a defining category. That's why we don't need categories like American politicians of European descent, or Chinese politicians of Han descent, but we do need American politicians of Asian descent and African-American politicians. -Zanhe (talk) 00:48, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

:*@Zanhe, this discussion is not about whether to categorise people by descent. It is about whether to categorise them by the intersection of descent and occupation.

::We have a long-established and stable guideline about this: WP:EGRS, which says"Dedicated group-subject subcategories, such as Category:LGBT writers or Category:African-American musicians, should be created only where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right. If a substantial and encyclopedic head article (not just a list) cannot be written for such a category, then the category should not be created. Please note that this does not mean that the head article must already exist before a category can be created, but that it must at least be possible to create one."

::Do you have evidence of categories in this set which meet those criteria? Take for example :Category:British politicians of Japanese descent, :Category:American sportspeople of Thai descent and :Category:French politicians of Iranian descent. Where's the evidence that a substantial and encyclopedic head article can be created? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:54, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

::: {{re|BrownHairedGirl}} Your interpretation of the guideline is overly narrow, IMO. The same guideline also says: "an "(ethnicity) politicians" category should only be created if politicians of that ethnic background constitute a distinct and identifiable group with a specific cultural and political context. There is no significant or notable difference in context between being a German American politician and a Swedish American politician. But an American politician of Native American descent is a different context from an American politician of European background. Thus, Category:Native American politicians is valid, but Category:German American politicians and Category:Swedish American politicians should not exist. The basis for creating such a category is not the number of individuals who could potentially be filed in the group, but whether there's a specific cultural context for the grouping beyond the mere fact that politicians of that ethnic background happen to exist." Which is exactly my point. -Zanhe (talk) 02:18, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

::::@Zanhe That does not in any way contradict my point. The guideline is very clear at the head of that section that you need to provide evidence of this, rather than simply assert it as a blanket get-out clause.

::::Look for example at one of the categs I selected, :Category:British politicians of Japanese descent: it contains former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith. Are you seriously suggesting that the birth nationality of IDS's maternal great-grandmothers has placed him a {{tq|different context}} from other Tory politicians? Really? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:31, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

::::: Iain Duncan Smith is not a representative case as he's hardly Japanese. Remove him from the category if you want, but it's no reason to delete the cat itself. Consider Alan Mak (politician), for example. His election in 2015 caused quite a stir in Chinese-language media worldwide, which normally couldn't care less about British local politics. Most media coverage of him emphasizes his identity as a British politician of Chinese descent, making it undoubtedly a defining category. -Zanhe (talk) 04:16, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

::::::The fact that IDSis {{tq|hardly Japanese}} is irrelevant. He is of Japanese descent, which is what this category captures. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:57, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

::::::: True, but what you're trying to do is to cherrypick a marginal example to argue against the entire category. -Zanhe (talk) 20:03, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

• Keep selectively and upmerge the rest -- If there are enough articles to make a useful category (typically at least 5) we should keep it. Cases where ethnic descent is a minor factor (e.g. several generations back) should be removed by purging. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:46, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support. Get rid of the lot. I see no reason why any of the categories have been withdrawn. People's descent is important, but an intersection with their occupation is not. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:23, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. I'm here because I'm researching scientists of different ethnicities to highlight on social media for an American regional science museum. These categories have been extremely helpful for finding interesting people who are not already mainstream but deserve attention, especially on particular heritage days. Without these categories the task would be incredibly time consuming. In fact, it probably wouldn't get done at all. For our visitors, seeing diverse representations in science, especially those working today, is a powerful inspiring thing and these categories help. H0n0r (talk) 21:16, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
• :@H0n0r. The category system is designed for navigation, and cannot directly accommodate every type of specialist research. However, it can always be examined for such specialist needs by tools such as [https://petscan.wmflabs.org/ Petscan].
  For example, here is a search for [https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?language=en&project=wikipedia&depth=9&categories=People%20from%20Texas%0D%0AAmerican%20novelists%0D%0AAmerican%20people%20of%20German%20descent&ns%5B0%5D=1&search_max_results=500&interface_language=en&active_tab=&doit= Novelist from Texas of German descent], and here is [https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?language=en&project=wikipedia&depth=9&categories=Wisconsin%20politicians%0D%0AAmerican%20people%20of%20Swedish%20descent&ns%5B0%5D=1&search_max_results=500&interface_language=en&active_tab=&doit= Wisconsin politicians of Swedish descent].
  And, closer to your line of work, here's [https://petscan.wmflabs.org/?language=en&project=wikipedia&depth=9&categories=People%20from%20New%20Jersey%0D%0AAmerican%20scientists%0D%0AAmerican%20people%20of%20Irish%20descent&ns%5B0%5D=1&search_max_results=500&interface_language=en&active_tab=&doit= Scientists from New Jersey of Irish descent]. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:18, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
• ::Use of such tools is too obscure to serve as an argument against these categories. Sure, these tools exist, but most people that use wikipedia are not aware of them—Myasuda (talk) 13:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• ::Thanks for this. I just wanted to give a real-world example of how these cats are currently used. H0n0r (talk) 14:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• : With all due respect, if you are "researching" scientists in connection with their ethnicity, perceived or real, them Wikipedia categories are a very bad place to do such "research". You'll get false attributions of ethnicity and obvious omissions aplenty. Place Clichy (talk) 17:15, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
• ::Obviously, the poster was just using categories as a starting point for such research. Any researcher would follow-up and validate his / her datapoints.—Myasuda (talk) 13:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• ::Wow Place Clichy. That was unnecessary.H0n0r (talk) 14:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong support. While in some cases the intersection of ethnicity and occupation is a meaningful topic, this is rarely the case with mere descent. The start of this discussion shows that 1°) descent categories have been used as a proxy for ethnicity, which is wrong and should be deleted, and 2°) that their mere presence serves as an invitation to add non-defining or trivial categories to biographical articles irrelevant of the importance of these characteristics in this biography. The above example of Iain Duncan Smith both being a British politician and having a Japanese great-grandmother tells a lot (if ever we find a reliable source defining IDS as a "British politician of Japanese descent" with a connection established between the two, I'll offer you a digital ale). About the proxy for ethnicity issue, see for instance how "Asian descent" is used as proxy in :Category:Members of the United States Congress by ethnic or national origin, which only has four subcategories: African-American members, Hispanic and Latino American members, Native American members and... Members of the United States Congress of Asian descent. The WP:GHETTO guideline is also a good read on the issue: {{tq|For instance, if you cannot create ":Category:Gay politicians from Germany" without ghettoizing people from :Category:German politicians, then it may be more appropriate to eliminate the more specific category and simply retain :Category:Gay politicians and :Category:German politicians as two distinct categories...}} (the example says gay, but the logic is the same for ethnic/descent categories). Place Clichy (talk) 17:15, 19 March 2019 (UTC)
• Upmerge This has gone to crazy. The descent categories are just not applied in a reasonable way that these intersections make sense.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:59, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• There is no easy answer to this, so I suggest a pragmatic approach where we set a higher than usual numerical bar - say 10 articles to justify a category. Or we consider evidence that a particular intersection of occupation and ethnicity is defining. In the areas I am familiar with I would say that Asian doctor is a significant category. There are organisations for British doctors of Asian origin. But I am not aware of any similar organisations for British doctors of African or Chinese origin, although there are plenty of such doctors.Rathfelder (talk) 22:41, 20 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose (for politicians) Delete for some others. It has been widely written about and discussed that (especially for former European colonial) countries that individuals of European descent make up a disproportional amount of the political body. See here: [https://clas.berkeley.edu/research/democracy-puzzling-whiteness-brazilian-politicans 1] and  [http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/politica/noticia/2018-10/em-crescimento-bancada-evangelica-tera-91-parlamentares-no-congresso 2], for sources that describe the disproportional large amount of politicians of European descent there are in Brazil. This is a good reason why categories such as :Category:Brazilian politicians of Japanese descent and :Category:Brazilian politicians of indigenous peoples descent should be kept. In addition in Europe and elsewhere there are beginning to be a rise in ethnic immigrant political parties such as Denk (political party) in the Netherlands. However, I cannot extend this logic to other categories, for example I think such categories such as :Category:American theatre directors of Japanese descent or :Category:American autobiographers of Chinese descent seem a bit overly trivial for me. In short I agree with Rathfelder's above sentiment that there probably is no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. Inter&anthro (talk) 00:38, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support This is over sub-categorization and has to be stopped somewhere. After all, they all are Americans now, so what's the point of this over-classification based on nationalities. Some basic categories should be kept like: Asian American politicians, African-American politicians, Indian American politicians because they are visible communities in the USA, otherwise, all should be up-merged. Descent cats are enough and serve the purpose well. Störm (talk) 12:56, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose These categories provide utility to general users, as pointed out by RightCowLeftCoast and H0n0r. Arguments about pointless intersections can be adequately addressed by selective purging and deletion as suggested by Peterkingiron and Rathfelder. —Myasuda (talk) 18:23, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support being of Fooish descent is not defining and presumably has little to no effect on how one does one's occupation. If WP takes the position that some small distant amount of bloodline (assuming one's parentage is exactly as is told to them) effects how people do their job I'd like to see reliable sources showing that and such a theory probably undermines all anti-discrimination legislation worldwide. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 22:23, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose I oppose the mass deletion effort, en masse. Categories are here as a tool as an aid to navigation for people's searches. The criteria is clear. These are things people will search for, which is how I landed here. Just because ethnicity is involved, we don't need to stick our head in the sand. And randomly accepting some and not others is even stupider, if such a concept is possible. Trackinfo (talk) 04:29, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose on pragmatic grounds. There are too many categories in this proposal and not enough standards that we could use to adjudicate any one deletion. More than a few of the supporters acknowledge there are at least a few cases of "[Trait1]-ish persons of [Trait2]" that are legitimate topics. Why don't we first articulate standards, and then test these standards by reviewing examples from this list and applying the proposed standards? If we can't derive standards, then isn't a vote to remove an arbitrary deletion? For example, I saw some say "ok, Chinese _____ is a thing so that can stay." Do we all agree? Next, should we also include -ish people of ?" --Ishu (talk) 05:35, 29 March 2019 (UTC)
• Support Why do we need any such intersection categories. For example, if we want to find "Scientists of Chinese descent", we should be able to just search using incategory:"People of Chinese descent" incategory:"Scientists" Aoziwe (talk) 12:32, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
• :Did you try that Aoziwe? Because I get "Deep category query returned too many categories" H0n0r (talk) 13:33, 4 April 2019 (UTC)

:::You should actually currently get a nil result because the way the current category tree is set up there is no intersection. When I ran the query I do get a nil result. To be fair, what would be necessary is a massive flattening of categories across the whole of the wiki, removal of the vast majority of intersection categories across the whole wiki, etc. But it would make category maintenance massively simpler and stop most of the endless arguments about diffusion too. The use of incategory does work well, for example try incategory:"All orphaned articles" incategory:"Scientists" - two results or incategory:"All orphaned articles" incategory:"Pseudonymous writers" - sixteen results Aoziwe (talk) 09:37, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

• Support we have seen absurd growth in these categories of the overlap of descent and occupation, with less and less applying controlling of any kind of their absurd spread, so it is time to scrap the whole system. Our REGS rules are so severly ignored by many of these categories the only hope is to be rid of all of them.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:38, 21 April 2019 (UTC)

*Strong Oppose no need to change the categories. They are fine as they are. Sleighey88 (talk) 11:51, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

• Delete/merge. Pretty much any reduction in the number of descent categories would improve wp categorization. What nationality someone's great-grandparents had is not normally a defining characteristic and often isn't mentioned prominently in the article text, if at all - e.g. Dave Halili is in multiple descent etc categories (Anerican, Japanese, Filipino, German, Chinese), but how many of those are in the article text? DexDor ^(talk) 18:25, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

• The problem is how we monitor the question of whether the combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right. I think one marker would be the existence of relevant organisations. And my friends in British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin would probably say the issue is not that their heritage affects the way they do the job. It's more that it affects how the indigenous people treat them. And as far as individual articles go I think we should be removing ethnic categories if there is nothing in the article to support them. Rathfelder (talk) 18:30, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

::Note: any decision should also take into account the comments made during the prior listing at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 November 11#Intersection of descent and occupation.—Myasuda (talk) 01:35, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

• Comment -- I believe such categories are legitimate if they can be adequately populated. This applies particularly to Actors/resses who may well be cast according to their ethnicity. For historians and biographers, ethnic background may enable them to study sources in that language. However such categories should be discouraged in cases where there are multiple ethnic backgrounds ("melting pot"). Peterkingiron (talk) 16:38, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
• Delete/Merge. Down this path lies madness. It's not maintainable and it's not generally useful; we should have all academics and the like together. The extreme number of people with multiple ethnicities makes this form of classification especially problematic - it's fine to have a Norwegian / Scottish / Russian / Canadian descent categories, but replicating those 4 categories for professions? Asking for trouble. SnowFire (talk) 03:48, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per reasons above; I believe they serve a useful utility and arguments for selective deletions could apply better here.--Ronnnaldo7 (talk) 01:20, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose per the reasons above. Moreover it is very commons for many of the categories, of writers by descent, to be used in discussing the profession (i.e. Asian American literature). I would highly recommend keeping the categories, at least until something suitable can be developed in Wikidata. Sadads (talk) 03:30, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose this matter has already been decided once. It is not for that same editor, who created the original deletion, to reopen it because he didn't like the previous outcome. XieXie97 (talk) 18:20, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

::Firstly, no, it hasn't been "decided" once; the first discussion was closed "no consensus", not "keep" — and consensus can change, so even a keep conclusion wouldn't ban anybody from ever being allowed to propose it for reconsideration anyway. Secondly, you don't get to forestall the discussion by creating brand new similar categories. Bearcat (talk) 18:37, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose these categories, especially for politicians, are vital. So I oppose the attempt to remove them. Hollahopping (talk) 18:21, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support - complete waste of time. Editors seem to delight in intersecting categories for the sake of it. Oculi (talk) 14:53, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
• Support per the nom and BrownHairedGirl. The merges and deletions will eliminate unnecessary and arbitrary over-categorization. Newshunter12 (talk) 03:37, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

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:The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.