User talk:Rick Block/Archive2004

Original welcome

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Happy editing, Isomorphic 22:10, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Baronets and Baronetcies

Technically, Booth Baronets and Baron Delamer should be categorized as Baronetcies, as [[Category:Baronets]] is being used for actual individual holders of a baronetcy, not the baronetcy itself (the distinction is similar to peers vs. a peerage). I simply hadn't gotten around to creating said category, which I think caused the confusion. Thanks for keeping me on my toes. Mackensen 05:40, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Existence of categories

When does a wikipedia category "not exist"? Mr. Jones 16:22, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Kagyu

Rick, see my query on the talk page of Kagyu. Billlion 16:51, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I-264

Hi, I did this for you. I also fixed the redirects to avoid double redirs, and edited the (new) I-264 page header to reflect the fact that there is (at least) one other I-264 highway. Noel 16:39, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Template:Canton Aargau

Thanks, I'm surprised that your suggestions worked, but they did. I was first confused by Wikipedia telling me the category didn't exist though, as you can see by my attempts at "fixing" the problem, and then by the template marker { appearing in the category. Could you tell me whether I've put [[category:Districts of Switzerland|{{{1}}}]] in the template correctly, as although it did put the transcluding article in the category, the category itself still appears as a redlink? -Wikibob | Talk 18:44, 2004 Oct 17 (UTC)

Canadian districts

Rick: Just to let you know, I've created a "Provincial electoral districts of Manitoba} category page and deleted the Regional Manitoba districts page (although I could easily undelete it if you or someone else wants to do municipal politics for the area). I doubt this will cause any difficulties; if it does, please let me know. CJCurrie 22:05, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Rick: The BC page actually *does* cover regional districts -- which is to say, municipal districts and general political-geographical regions. The Manitoba page that I've been working on is specifically focused on provincial electoral ridings, and doesn't fit into quite the same category (though I can see how some confusion could result). CJCurrie 23:31, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Re: category:educationists

Hello Rick Block. Honestly, even I am not sure whether educators and educationists are same. Probably an educationist is an educator who is specialist in theory of education; an educator may include teachers and professors also. I think this requires a wider discussion. For now, I personally suggest that Category:Educationists should be categorized as a sub-category of Category:educators - a thing that I have already done. utcursch 05:56, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

Re: categories for Oasis album covers

Hi Rick Block. Go ahead. I don't have any problem with it. It was actually a mistake I had intended to correct, but simply forgotten about. Thanks! User:cbing01 01:47, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Re: category:football

There is no written policy that says that disambiguation categories are not allowed, but you are right that this is the precedent set by WP:CFD several times. I have started a discussion Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion on whether or not we should codify this.

I would list Category:Football on WP:CFD. It's a bit of a borderline case, but that's why we have the public comment period. I would temporarily parent it in Category:Team sports and of course add a {{cfd}} tag.

Thanks for all your help dealing with orphaned categories, BTW. -- Beland 23:02, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Re: category:radio stations in the United States

Ah, excellent observation. I will definitely add template-expansion code to Pearle at some point. It's not that much coding work to do, but it might slow down program execution considerably. But that's OK, because she does offline analysis unattended.

Thanks again,

Beland 23:06, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Whitespace in category names

You raise an interesting issue...I'll investigate it some before filing an enhancement request. It might make sense for me to just include this on Pearle's internal list of normalizations. There are a lot of things that *could* be fixed in the database content itself, which get normalized out, but it's unclear if it's worth it to do so. -- Beland 07:16, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Category:American people by national origin

I've noticed you added Category:Asian Americans to Category:American people by national origin. I'm not sure if that's the best categorization for this group because it IMHO suggests that members of that group are "straddling two nationalities". I'd like to understand your rationale for including Asian Americans, but not Category:African Americans. Please reply to my talk page. — J3ff 00:18, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The reason I feel that Asian Americans does not belong under "American people by national origin" is that I use the term as only a racial category like the term African American is used. Personally, as an Asian American born in the United States, I am not comfortable with the listing the way it is because I consider my nationality to be solely American. I consider my race to be Asian, and more specifically my ethnicity to be Chinese. I think the Asian Americans category should be moved back underneath "American people", unless you have a better solution. — J3ff 03:05, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The feelings about nationality may be different for other Asian Americans; I'm just telling you my point of view. — J3ff 03:16, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I replied to Category talk:Asian Americans — J3ff 03:41, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Category redirects

Well, there's a bug pending on this issue:

http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100

I commented there. Unless it's been discussed on the mailing list (which I don't read), I don't think there's consensus on which solution should be implemented. Maybe if someone started asking questions either in the wiki or on the mailing list, some decisions could get made and in the process a developer could be gotten interested in doing the deed. -- Beland 07:19, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Orphaned Categories

Sure I will be glad to help. Right now I am mostly working on autocategorization of states.. but will spend some time in orphan categories to help. On a related note I noticed you are doing a general categorization of categories by state... something that I have been doing by default in autocat.. I noticed that you use Government of State..whereas I have been using Government in State.. I do that so that municipal and other government (non state) could go into the category, and also cause most of the stuff is Thing in State, not Thing of State... should we work on making it consistent? Sortior 05:35, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)

Well they seem to be all cleaned up now...I've asked for more... let me know if I can help any other way. Sortior 04:21, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Category:Olympic softball players of the U.S.A.

You wrote at my talk

Hi - you recently replaced the contents of this category article with [[Category:Orphaned categories]]. If you want to delete a category, please add {{cfd}} to the category article and create an entry on Categories for deletion. Thanks. -- Rick Block 05:54, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

For the time being, i no longer list anything at CfD, believing those discussions fruitless when Cats are so little understood, and so little evolved that many of the decisions will be reversed in time.
On the other hand (believing it facilitates the evolution), i do a lot of moving Cat-tagged items to more specific cats, and, in the course of that, some merging or renaming of Cats, which of course requires redirects or deletion. (And i've seen only one redirected category, whose performance seemed to me to be far worse than the evils of deleting where redirection would (if well implemented) be desirable.)
When i last tried to RTFM in this area, speedy provided for deletion of orphaned categories (of course without listing) after they remained empty for 24 hours. IMO deletion w/o listing, after moving all the children to better Cats (or rather, better Cats that would make it redundant for them to stay tagged with the old Cat), is appropriate in much the same spirit in which article moves and merges are done without fanfare. IMO (and unless that speedy-del provision has been reversed), it is quite inefficient for each admin to remember to check in 24 hrs and delete. Instead, one should routinely watch the whole of Category:Orphaned categories (or, far better, move Cats so tagged down to Category:Empty orphaned categories when they are empty, and, each time one fails to stay empty, back up to Category:Orphaned categories (at least momentarily, so its history documents that failure even if the new members are moved out)). The same admin can efficiently do the deletions (or conversions to redirects, once those cease being so disfunctional). This also makes the justified speedy deletion route available to non-admins via a Cat assignment instead of via the CFD procedure, which is pointlessly clumsy for Cat renames. (I would be glad to take on that watching & deleting if i am wrong in supposing someone else is already willingly doing it.)
If i am mistaken about this 24-hour provision continuing, i'd be glad to RTFM at Wikipedia:How to rename a category or at whatever that should redirect to.
Feel free to reply here, & i'll watch yr tk's history for a reasonable period.
--Jerzy(t) 19:12, 2004 Dec 6 (UTC)

I don't disagree that CFD is clumsy for simple renames, but AFAIK there isn't any method other than listing on WP:CFD to delete a category (speedy or not). Listings on CFD are eligible for speedy delete if conditions described at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion policies are met (misspelled, malformed name, or originator's request). Empty cats found on Category:Orphaned categories (usually found by user:Beland's scans, NOT by being listed as a subcat of Category:Orphaned categories) generally get deleted because folks (like me) end up adding them to CFD. I think the closest we have to Wikipedia:How to rename a category is Wikipedia:Categorisation FAQ which says cats can't be moved or renamed. As you know, cat redirects basically don't work at all - some folks are using Template:Categoryredirect in the interim, and user:Docu created and has used Template:Seecat for the same purpose. I don't know if any admins other than user:Aranel actually pay much attention to WP:CFD. -- Rick Block 02:31, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ah, the joys of anarchy!

• Actually, the obvious authority IMO is Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion, where none of "misspelled, malformed name, or originator's request" are mentioned, and where IMO it is explicit that there are no criteria that apply generally across multiple namespaces. Note in particular that the latter sentence of point 4 of Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion#Redirects urges some mispellings as reasons for retention.
• Points 5 & 6 at Wikipedia:Candidates for speedy deletion#Other pages were, IIRC, added by User:Anthony DiPierro when i complained that speedy-ing of some Cats was being urged (on CfD) in place of CfD action, w/o any policy basis; i recall saying i wasn't going to use speedy w/o giving objections a chance to emerge, and i doubt i ever have used it.
• As to redirects:
  1. Click on Category:U.S. politicians, from any link to it.
  2. Category:American politicians is a sub-cat, so it appears there as a link labeled "American politicians"; click on that.
  3. Hey, it's a redirect to where you just were: On the new copy, click, just below the page title, on the link

     (Redirected from Category:American politicians)

  4. Hey, there's a couple poor bastards that no one but you and i are ever going to find. Funny looking redirect, tho.
  5. Click on Edit this page. There's why it looks funny, and there's how it got to be a sub-cat.

I first saw one like this in, i think, the case of Category:Olympic athletes of the U.S.A, which i think had a similar redirect relationship with the surviving Category:American Olympians, tho in this case i can't see the real old revisions that might verify that. (You'll note that i "moved" Category:Olympic softball players of the U.S.A., which you raised your point about, to Category:American Olympic softball players, but left alone, for instance, Category:Olympic swimmers of the U.S.A. which has more children! No "foolish consistencies" here.)

In case that's not enuf new factors to throw into the mix, i've lobbed a little bomb, without knowing where it'll land. None of this discussion, BTW, implies determined opposition to the procedure you endorsed to me, but i would like to see whether any of this changes any views.

--Jerzy(t) 07:51, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

I'm aware of the behavior exhibited by Category:American politicians - I ran into it a while ago with Category:Pediatrics which was "redirected" to Category:Paediatrics. IMO this behavior is broken enough to be unusable (specifically the "hidden" articles attached to the redirected cat). There's a bugzilla entry on this. I've suggested what I think would be reasonable behavior on Beland's talk, and in the interim added a paragraph about not using redirects to WP:CG#Redirected categories.

Regarding deletes - I think CfD is ludicrously burdensome for simple renames (changing the Japanese <x prefecture> to <x Prefecture> categories took a Beland bot run and I don't know how much of Aranel's time). Seems clear to me that "move this page" should be supported for cats (curiously, it's there - I've never tried it, but I wonder what it does). I wasn't aware of the category mention on speedy. This seems to conflict with Wikipedia:Categories for deletion policies. Maybe we should move the relevant parts of this discussion to the talk page of one of the policy pages. I like the idea of using {{delete}} for categories, but it should clearly be mentioned in WP:CG and the category deletion policy page. -- Rick Block 15:29, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

We are in agreement about the Cat so-called redirs, and i'm pleased enough at seeing you escalate from "clumsy" to "ludicrously burdensome" that i am sure it's time for me to stop lobbing bombs.

I consider myself a better gadfly than policy formulator, so i'll say no more than that your carrying the ball toward more discussion of some kind of discussion of some kind of quicker administrative mechanism for Cat pseudo-moves is importantly valuable.

No doubt you've already inspected the tasteful out-to-lunch sign that the real Cat-move tool has hung out. I don't want the developers nagged, and even less to do the nagging, so i think administrative measures to fill the gap are the right thing. IMO, the creation of workarounds is the sincerest form of demonstrating the likely value of new software.

More of this ere long. Tnx.

--Jerzy(t) 20:02, 2004 Dec 7 (UTC)

Episcopal Diocese of Washington

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm pretty new and an eager beaver. Go ahead and take those "categories" off. I have added an article Dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America and so far Washington seems the only one with its own article. If you know of any others, please let me know. I've added wikis from that site for both Massachusetts and Texas to motivate myself to write those two (my "native" and "adopted" dioceses), which I hope to start within the week. Thank you so much! rockhopper10r 05:37, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)