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create lists?

Hi, i came to this page to ask a question / make a suggestion. I am not familiar with all the history leading up to the CFD (closed) and to the ANI (still open). I tend to think that of course it is likely to be reasonable to list and categorize rivers by the mountain ranges they drain, instead of or in addition to listing and categorizing them by political region. The former especially in less populated areas like northern BC. My question or suggestion is: why not create a list-article for each topic, e.g. Rivers of the Boundary Ranges or List of rivers of the Boundary Ranges, corresponding to each category, e.g. Category:Rivers of the Boundary Ranges? And start List of rivers of the Alps and List of rivers of the Himalayas, too, to move the focus away from BC. I imagine there would be more direct support by editors interested in the Alps and Himalayas; few know or care about the rivers in BC (though certainly they merit good coverage and good indexing in Wikipedia). By the reasoning expressed in wp:CLT, there is a lot of benefit of having corresponding lists and categories and navigation templates. A list has advantage that it can include sources and pictures, and red-links. If there is a list there can be a category and vice versa. Maybe creating the lists and including coverage there would eliminate grounds for contention about the categories. Somewhere in the discussion I saw mention of a list of BC rivers with many red-links. Should that be re-organized into sections by drainage / mountain range area (so each section is one list)? Or should there be separate list-articles on each mountain range area? Sincerely, --doncram 03:15, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi doncram, I assume you are referring to the wiki-drama at: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Skookum1_again started 19 April 2014 on the ani board?
First I would like to provide some more background for those less familiar with the issues:
To answer your question "why not create a list-article for each topic" I will counter with a question: why not use categories for this purpose?
XOttawahitech (talk) 13:21, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
It's common to have both, no? Gjs238 (talk) 13:30, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for comments, both of you. Yes, i meant for there to be both. Having a list article, which can include sources and whose existence establishes Wikipedia-notability of the topic, would make it clear to all that the category is reasonable too. I am not meaning to impose a burden, i am not saying there must be a list-article in order to have a corresponding category. But if the point is to develop Wikipedia, maybe the list-articles are of interest to create. And would have side benefit of ending the category contention. --doncram 13:38, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
In the case of the Boundary Ranges, the CfD was filed so quickly there was not time to add a section to the range article for a list of rivers; of course I agree with the notion that geographic items should be grouped by geographic region, not by political geography; the Himalayan rivers are often mentioned that way, particularly the Indus, Brahmaputra/Tsangpo and the Ganges; that they are not entirely in the Himalayas is a non sequitur but that kind of argument has been made re e.g. should a river be categorized by its origin, its mouth, or its course? The answer in the case of large region-spanning rivers like the Fraser seems obvious; it is the dominant river of the Interior Plateau, its upper course follows the Rocky Mountain Trench, and its source, like others in Category:Rivers of the Canadian Rockies, is very much a river associated with the Rocky Mountains. Arguing with those who don't understand ranges-as-regions or who dispute the existence of the regions entirely has proven pointless, and somewhat hazardous; with those who don't know the topography or the rivers concerned, and who seem unprepared or unwilling to learn and are instead positing alternatives (political geography, by whichever of seven or eight possible systems) that would inherently be OR and not all that citable and require a lot of work to create, even more pointless. Other comments I'll save in reply to those above who continue to pretend that the regions are OR and who seem intent on re-filing this CfD a month down the line, as also encouraged to by the closer. If any of them actually educate themselves on the rivers and regions and BC political geographic subdivisions/jurisdictions in the meantime, I'll be surprised; more likely the discussion will be about cherrypicked guidelines taken out of context than about the actual geography; rivers as part of the natural and social/historical/cultural landscape are, like mountain ranges, important - dominant - parts of British Columbia's reality; that mountain ranges generate these rivers and that the ranges themselves are defined by those rivers' courses seems lost on those who oppose this as IDONTLIKEIT without knowing anything about the subject matter.Skookum1 (talk) 01:02, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks, Skookum1, for replying. So what you suggest is needed, if there is to be explicit list-type development, is a section at, say, Boundary Ranges#Rivers? I'll try creating that. I hope you may add sources and other develpment. And maybe we could go through the other mountain ranges too. I do happen to agree the CFD was too quick, but I would hope at this point we could just work to develop explicit treatment and hope that will head off any future questions. Please do watch the Boundary Ranges article. Thanks. --doncram 03:35, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
I will reserve further comment on the AGF and COI nature of the CfD's origin, and also on its very biased close re "behaviour problem" and its exhortation that it should be re-opened in a month time, due to disputes from those who do not know anything about the subject matter that the closer says should be deleted or renamed; another voice from the darkness, less concerned with the issues and facts than any respect for the subject matter or for the in-WPCanada standing consensus about these region-names. I have hesitated due to the quasi-official hostility towards these needed categories and title from creating other rivers-by-range categories such as Category:Rivers of the Cassiar Mountains, Category:Rivers of the Skeena Mountains etc; south of those northern, mostly uninhabited regions, other than re the Pacific and Kitimat Ranges and the Rockies, as those populated regions do have a very visible identity within normative English geographical usages in the province e.g. Category:Rivers of the Chilcotin and Category:Rivers of the Okanagan, Category:Rivers of the Cariboo, Category:Rivers of the Lower Mainland, Category:Rivers on Vancouver Island are all bona fide region names and COMMONNAMES; in the case of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii, they are also political units of one kind or another; (Vancouver Island as you may know was its own colony originally and still has a separate identity from the Mainland). See my comments/replies to Arthur Rubin in the section above.Skookum1 (talk) 04:42, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

suggestion

Hi Skookum - I find it hard to follow your logic when you post walls of text, interspersed with disparaging comments about other editors. I think your case would be better served by outlining in clear, simple, bullet-pointed logic why you think these categories need to be deleted, and then let others weigh in. We will always have the namespace collision issue we spoke about earlier, but consistency is also another desirable quality of categories. I'm sure a good solution can be found but you should also AGF. cheers, --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

when did *I* say that I thought these categories should be deleted? I created them, and with good reason, despite the OR/AGF speculations that they shouldn't exist.Skookum1 (talk) 06:53, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
your actions in re-populating the incorrectly created category fly in the face of the CfD result, which isn't even a year old yet. It mandated the use of Category:Squamish people as the main ethno category title and though I obviously don't like it, I've respected the process and not barged on and created Category:Skwxwu7mesh on my own as now it seems I should have, since Uysvidi has - by your complicity in her creating of a category name that was negated as workable by consensus, and also complicity in her hijacking of the CfD ethno-category title for use as the "people who are Skwxu7mesh" category. You are entrenching and supporting misconduct by your actions in this regard. And, like her, you are blissfully unaware of the important geographic context as to why Category:Squamish had to be changed once it was speedied there because of teh outcome of RM2 at Squamish people. So what's next? I go launch RM3 there at Squamish people, pick apart RM2 for its various bigotries and gaffes, invoke MOS' new mandate to respect the original author's intent (here meaning OldManRivers and not Uysvidi), hope for a sane outcome (unlikely given experience) and then a speedy? or just say "FUCK IT" and create Category:Skwxu7mesh - actually hijack it because she created a redirect category instead of listening to my suggestion that she speedy her WRONG choice of "Squamish" as if it were in harmony with the other contents of Category:First Nations in British Columbia. She's not "up on it" enough to know that the equivalent to "Squamish" re the Skwxwu7mesh, would be "Lillooet" for the St'at'imc, "Thompson" for the Nlaka'pamux, "Burrard" for the Tsleil-waututh, "Shuswap" for the Secwepemc etc etc
I repeat, the simple solution here is to either overturn the speedy of the category name from Category:Skwxwu7mesh to Category:Squamish people, irrespective of the usual "category title must match main article" mantra (which is not an ironclad rule, only a guideline that has lots of exceptions that can be pointed to), or to revisit the decision made on the main ethno article's RM2 and realize it was a faulty decision. I approached fayenatic london immediately after his decision on the CfD and pointed out why "Squamish people" was not workable anymore than "Squamish" was and he conceded that there were grounds to have decided on "Skwxwu7mesh" but wanted more google cites or whatever....and if people keep on repeating the same non sequiturs, ignoring what I say the first time, or saying "I have a different opinion" (=lack of knowledge of the subject matter), and then I get criticized for criticizing their errors/attitudes...that's not proper grounds to decide anything like a CfD, RM or AfD or TfD on, as it amounts to a personal attack, making an editor's personality and volubility an issue when the guidelines say no such thing. Speaking of TfDs, the RM at Squamish people also precipitated {{Squamish}} as a speedy, and which similarly completely doesn't get that the PRIMARY TOPIC of "Squamish" is Squamish, British Columbia. So one faulty decision, based in bigoted and ill-informed RM participants, decided by someone who doesn't know the area or the people in question, precipitated changes to categories and templates and also the language and titles used in many sub articles and categories..... the clear solution, to recognize that the use of authentic endonyms (de-diacriticalized) in Canadian FN ethno category titles exists as an unspoken convention (one that was come up with at exactly the time OMR created the original Skwxwu7mesh article/category/template structure) DOES exist and should be used here, not an anglicism that has a geographic ambiguity to it that is of the same kind as to why those other endonym-categories were not given in their "anglicized" forms i.e. Category:Lillooet, Category:Shuswap, Category:Kootenay/Category:Kutenai, Category:Chilcotin have very large geographical-name ambiguities and all this was reckoned into why we should use the native-authentic forms (cf. already about Category:Okanagan in the same light).
But you have chosen to support someone's violation of the CfD decision and have chimed in on faulty suggestions for make-do renamings that were dispensed with in the course of the CfD long ago, and also in old discussions on the endonym you'll find on older areas of Talk:Squamish people and other articles. Do you not get it that it was Usyvidi who "depopulated" a category in order to change its intent? Rather than engage a discussion to change the main ethno category title, she just went ahead and created one that had already been taken down as inviable....how many times do I have to point this out? Procedure on this would have been to do a CfD properly on Category:Squamish people rather than wade into BC's geopolitical landscape on her own.....and the AGF thing I find hard to take, considering her timing of this re other convos in IPNA and elsewhere, and her territorial WP:OWNership of Nevada tribe/reservation categories where she accused me of being a vandal for trying to make sense of that category structure to bring it in line with IPNA standards...something perhaps I should revisit, at expense of an edit war...I'd mentioned the Squamish/Skwxwu7mesh problem in a current IPNA thread, to me it seems like she jumped on top of it as a provocation or a "throw the skookum a bone" time-waster like Kwami likes to do....AGF? Hard to do, to accept good faith, when someone who has accused you in no slight terms in the past in very pointed NPA terms (impugning I'm a white racist or supermacist, calling me a vandal for trying to fix glaring miscategorization problems) is so aggressively WRONG in terms of the suggestions and reasons she brings forward, no matter how often I explain the facts to her, she reiterates her lack of correct information as if it were valid and mine was only "opinion", and wrong in her actions of ignoring the CfD and acting on her own without recourse to proper process. The proper process here would have been to put a CfD on Category:Squamish people instead of to go off half-cocked, creating a new category using a deleted-for-good-reason's category name and behaving as though it were all peachy keen and allegedly in line with other conventions in the same category tree; it's not, it's an anomaly and has huge geographic context/complications that other in the previous CfD were well aware of, as CambridgeBayWeather also is, but doesn't seem to register on the rest of you in the current CfD as meaningful or relevant, when in fact it's why Category:Squamish was previously deleted by CfD. That can be a disambig category, yes, though I don't see why anyone would put it on any page if Category:Skwxwu7mesh and its attendant subcategories were in place - including Category:Skwxwu7mesh people as opposed to Category:Squamish people which has the same geographic problem as it parent. And re Category:Squamish culture, if you knew anything about Squamish BC you'd only smirk at how silly that sounds. The reason my replies are rambling is because simplistic non-solutions cause so many complicated problems that need explaining - as to why simplistic solutions are non-starters. Wel, other than the simplest solution of all; respect the authentic ethnonym Skwxwu7mesh for what it is, and stop defending the use of a confusing and geographically-ambiguous anglicism, and to remember that part of the point of respecting native choices for their autonyms is to prevent others from deciding what they should be called. That last part resonates strongly across IPNA, yet from so many other areas of Wikipedia there's this parochial attitude that between google "reliable sources{ and old textbooks, a "common name" doesn't have to hinge on what the people themselves have coined for use to replace "white man's terms" and can whatever a group of people only half-aware of the subject matter at hand decide is best for them. The cultural condescension implied is rank and it's why the RM2 should be overturned, for that reason alone (review it please) and why all current proposals are wandering around in the fog of colonialist error. I'd asked Fayenatic London to overturn his CfD decision, and provided him the reasons he asked for; he still didn't do it. So why didn't I do then the equivalent of what Usyvidi has done? Ignore him, and just move everything to Category:Skwxwu7mesh and be done with it; but then "Skookum1 violated process, censure him" will be the refrain...... again, making me the issue, rather than addressing practical and obvious solutions available; dismissing them because I'm the one making them amounts to "making an editor the issue, not the subject matter". the difference between making me an issue and me makign Uysvidis' conduct/action an issue is that I'm criticizing her actions, the sentiment against me is against my personality. Which is someone who knows his shit, and doesn't mince words when explaining the ramifications of any issue. I'm tall; asking me to write in point form is like asking me to be short; fitting into someone else's shoebox, the proverbial procrustean bed. Making me an issue is too often a refrain in faulty RMs/AfDs/CfDs et al...... and too often, also, people making a point of ignoring facts presented that pop the balloon on the logics/facts that they are advancing.... pointing at me is just an excuse IMO..... shoot the messenger.Skookum1 (talk) 04:38, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
  • reply Skookum, I respect your passion, but I don't respect at all the way you're behaving right now. This is really important to you, but you need to accept the points of view of others, even if you think they are wrong. There are two matters: 1) whether the Squamish should have a cat for their culture, and another cat just for people and 2) what those cats should be called, by separating the cultural articles, Usv has done a Good service because this is in line with other such categories - we almost always have people separate. So please UNDO your reversions and repopulate the Squamish category, you are going against the practice in CFD and it makes it very hard to understand the target cat structure when you keep depopulating it. I don't want to but I will ask for admin intervention if you persist. Secondly, and totally orthogonal, is the question of what these cats should be named. But that is the point of this CFD - you're proposing a rename, or a reshuffling. That is fine, but if you wanted to rename to sx7 why not just propose that from the get go? By suggesting that you turn down the rant it is not shooting the messenger, it is a friendly suggestion that if you want to get the result you seem how you deliver the message matters. As it is now the CFD has turned into a mess and it wouldn't surprise me if people stopped voting and it was closed as no-consensus. People create cats all the time, and in doing so diffuse contents of other cats - but our practice is, if we want to delete that new cat, to keep it populated so we can see what the intent was. No-one is harmed if articles are at a slightly ambiguous name for a week or so.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 13:10, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
People don't create categories in violation of CfD decisions they know about and discount - and clearly don't understand the gist of the why and wherefore never mind the subject matter. Yes, it's obvious that the people should have their own article, and a category from people who are of their people. Yeah DUH. And rather than have people who really don't know much about them, or about where they're from, deciding what they should be called, others are doing it for them, pointedly ignoring the commentary on the previous CfD and the history of the RMs and more, and ignoring the consequences to templating and also, once people start bypassing redirects, articles where the two meanings of "Squamish" are side by side..... "keep it populated to see what the intent was" ...... the intent was to ignore the geographic confusion and the primary topic problem that was the rationale of the 2013 CfD outcome, and also lay behind the original choice of Skwxwu7mesh vs Squamish. Do you not get it that hijacking the "Squamish people" category for what it had been expressly not created for is a violation of process. I'm not the one who made the mess. As for "harming the article" I have yet to see any sign of work from any of you on the article itself, or any sign of acknowledge of the Squamish-the-town problem; just more "give this a chance to see if it's useful when it was already rigorously decided that it was not. Do I have to go pull individual comments from the 2013 CfD about these problems, from other Canadian and BC editors and those aware of the problem. As for being accused of harming the article have a look article histories re category fixes in Category:American Indian Reservations in Nevada and Category:Federally-recognized tribes in Nevada. For trying to make categories contain titles that suit what they[re about by the use of redirects, I was edit warred and called a few names and the disorder still there now prevails; and now she comes to BC to spread disorder. Because that's what this is doing; fielding a category name she knew had been rejected, hijacking a title she knows had been created by a CfD, which somehow she feels she has a right to ignore without even informing herself on the subjects on the Squamish dab page, or the history of the main article and its title; she just wades in, ignores what others have decided, sets up shop with a poison apple thrown in a complicated problem, and sits there making up excuses and gets everyone dumping on me for "how you're behaving". It's not MY behaviour that's the problem here. If Category:Squamish continues to exist as a title, its only workable function is as a disambiguation category, not as the ethnic group category. Even by doing so it upsets the reality that Squamish BC is the primary topic, which is affecting the real world, not acknowledging it; it's also embracing a term for the people that many of them feel is unsuitable and tainted by colonialization and which is any case a mispronunciation....including the article and category's principle author and creator. "Squamish" has also been used to refer to the Skokomish and the Suguamish. We had a good solution, which despite its diacriticals was at least clearly not confusable with the usual and very common meaning of Squamish (the place, the town). And yes, my noise is out of joint at how the 2013 CfD went down (making me the issue instead of the facts) and that even Fayenatic confessed to me that a bit more evidence and less invective and he'd have done the easy path and accepted Skwxu7mesh....which I did not go on to create unilaterally....but then this person who's crossed swords with me - on categories no less - comes along and creates unilaterally another incarnation of a problematic category with no knowledge of the material...not, apparently, any concern for it, being interested more in her "opinion" even though she refuses to understand the facts nor even look at the history of the title. And I'm the bad guy for pointing this out? Come again? This is making me consider doing an

ANI on myself, about how facts presented must prevail over any resentment of the person providing them, and that if something is logical, it's logical, not subject to personal biases against its bearer. I've restored teh contents of Category:Squamish people to what the CfD said it should be; changing that should have taken a CfD, not a CfD caused by someone who doesn't get the nomenclature problem in, wading in with a chainsaw, and setting up shop her own way. I'll ask you again; what would the reception have been to me ignoring the CfD, and unilaterally creating filling Category:Skxwu7mesh and its attendant subcategories...and depopulating in the process Category:Squamish people in the very same way, but to a different category, as Usvidi has done, without mandate, and which you want restored, even though it's in violation of the May 2013 CfD mandate and all the same issues that led to its abandonment and deletion are still present. Do you not understand how important this is? Do you not have a mirror to understand that it is you who in fault here, by supporting a rash, uninformed action by asking her violation of protocol be given a chance? Why ever should that be? Setting a ship afloat to see if it will sink? Because sure as hell it can't survive (as anything but a disambiguated category)...It's like saying Category:Ottawa is the main ethno category for the Odawa people. "Categories get created all the time" is not a reason to allow the survival of one that should not have been re-created by someone unconcerned about the consequences or the background or even the subject matter.....and whether or not innocuous in motive as you would try to have me believe, ultimately destructive and time-wasting, and stubborn about even acknowledging the geographic name problem or the context of ethnonyms of this kind in BC...... maybe I should go crew around in Nevada categories again and set them to rights by moving them onto pages where they belong and off of pages where they don't..........And then wait for the ANI about my misconduct. Idle title-moving based on guidelines without any knowledge of the subjects affected should be interdicted by wiki policy; for certain areas, unless you know something about the subject/context you should not be doing unilateral changes to established situations without discussion.....or defending your ignorance as "opinion" and insist that it should be heard, while insisting that the person who is telling you the facts of you error should not be listened to .....even though he's the one who knows the material; I have Skwxwu7mesh friends and acquaintances, and friends who live in Squamish who aren't Skwxwu7mesh, I've driven or ridden through Squamish hundreds of times....but I should be ignored because I have to repeat myself when people reiterate the same WRONG ideas and continue to ignore the reasons why their ideas - and their actions - are not viable....not acceptable.Skookum1 (talk) 19:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC) Making a person's alleged "behaviour" a reason to decide a CfD et al. against his valid informations/ideas is NOT in Wikipedia guidelines. The merits of the facts, the logics presented and their validity or not is what procedure should be decided by; not emotions brought on by personal insecurity about someone more voluble, or who is bearing truths and points that make your own ideas look bad? Making me an issue in cases like this is contrary to wikipedia guidelines.....my "behaviour" gets criticized, while someone can display flagrant and aggressive overturning of a CfD so blithely and get mollycoddled and defended........ can the uninformed be so easily trumped over those who know the material?? Because someone's style is seen to be a factor? How encyclopedia is that?? Not very at all huh??Skookum1 (talk) 19:14, 20 February 2014 (UTC)

Obi-Wan Kenobi is trying to help you, Skookum1 and I wish you wouldn't turn his giving you advice into license to write another "wall of text". Perhaps style shouldn't matter but it does...people's time editing Wikipedia is limited and it is unlikely that many editors will read your entire rant to see the valid points you might have. To put it bluntly, most editors do not care as much as you do about this difference of opinion so you'd be more effective at winning support if you were brief...you don't have to use bullet points but break up your paragraphs so that each focus on a point of your argument. For better or worse, the burden is on you to make your position understandable and when most people encounter text like that (above), they simply won't take the time to read it. I can see you're irritated that this matter is up for debate but it is so the best strategy is not to complain but think of how you can present your argument to persuade other editors that your position is justified. Obi-Wan Kenobi is just taking the time to give you advice on how you might succeed. Liz Read! Talk! 01:45, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
Obiwan is done giving advice, and is unwatching this page. I officially no longer care. Sorry and good luck.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 05:56, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Whatever; making me the issue in problems created by people ignoring procedure and also facts and getting on my case for not being short-phrased enough, while making excuses for people who have violated protocol by their actions and embracing their positions despite the obvious faults and lapses of logic and fact in them.....unwatch me all you want, you clearly weren't really paying attention in the first place.Skookum1 (talk) 06:36, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Stay clear of cats - there not used anyway's

Hello Skookum1 - - just stay clear of categories (cats) - They are the most convoluted and unsourced, OR area here - they are also the most unused format for navigation by our readers. Lets look at how cats are really a waste of anyone's time, as very few people even look at the cats. i.e Canada has been viewed 476524 times in the last 30 days. Portal:Canada has been viewed 3976 times in the last 30 days. Outline of Canada has been viewed 3065 times in the last 30 days. Category:Canada has been viewed 1515 times in the last 30 days. Is it worth all the drama as cats are barely used - even the outline and portal two type of pages that people have fought over as being useless (even tried to get them deleted) do better for traffic then cats do. -- Moxy (talk) 02:01, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I did stay away from cats; other than creating one in all innocence based in logic and reality; and was dragged into a resistant and hostile/AGF CfD.....it's not like I go looking for trouble....it hunts me down and wants to have its way with me. What system will replace the regions categories? It's not just the categories that are under fire, it's a whole series of very valid region articles, also.Skookum1 (talk) 02:18, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
Here's my attitude towards categories: I add obvious, self-evident and uncontroversial categories to articles I work on. I never, ever fight about categories, any more than I would fight with another human being about a penny laying on the ground. It simply isn't worth it.
By the way, "trouble" most certainly does not hunt Wikipedia editors down. Either consciously or unconsciously, editors seek out trouble, and unsurprisingly, they then find it. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:10, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
It was very clear in this case that I was stalked, and that the nom had clear personal bias/hostility. The CfD has been turfed anyway, with "behaviour problems" cited as the reason, as if the CfD itself weren't AGF/COI in origin; and citing IAR, which doesn't even apply. That none of the issues and citations I raised doesn't mean they'll go way; in the meantime I'll be citing all the supposedly-OR article titles......it's not just categories that were assailed here, but COMMONNAMEs of very well-known BC regions.....by people who have never been there, won't read citations, make suppositions and bad comparisons etc....logic is almost in short supply in Wikipedia as decency, while hypocrisy and ignorance have overtaken the self-serving bureacracy.Skookum1 (talk) 06:17, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
and I saw nothing in that category, or any other similar, when I created it; it was made controversial, by waving vaguely at guidelines that don't actually prohibit them......not the first time that same editor has misquoted guidelines, claiming they say things they don't. She's an admin and has the backing of other admins who share the same wikiquette-hypocrisy about their own actions.Skookum1 (talk) 06:18, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
I agree with Moxy for the most part. Cats "are the most convoluted and unsourced, OR area here" is a good way to put it. There's a few cats I depend on to find various things, but mostly they are a giant mess of little consequence. Cats for rivers I have almost no use for—turning instead to the various lists of rivers pages. This is part of why I didn't care much to follow that CfD thread until it seemed to expand into wider topics. My reaction was basically, eh, whatever. If there were similar proposals on things like actual articles I'd be much more concerned. Like, as you put it, if "a whole series of very valid region articles" came "under fire". It didn't seem like that was happening or even likely to happen though. If by chance it does though, well, it would be of much more concern.
I did wonder if BHG started that CfD thread because she was annoyed at you for other things. Then again, you are annoying, as I'm sure you know. Still, the whole thing seems like a case of "pick your battles". There's a lot to be done and limited time. Some things aren't worth it. Even if BHG started the CfD for some personal anti-Skookum1 reason, so what? Who cares?
it's a reason to toss out the CfD....and haul her into an RfC/U on her conduct; but as well all know admins generally don't eat their own, and will typically gang up on those who point out their own misconduct.Skookum1 (talk) 07:08, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
I just don't believe "It's not just the categories that are under fire, it's a whole series of very valid region articles, also". If region articles come under fire and I don't notice, let me know. That's something I care about. The cats....meh. Pfly (talk) 06:52, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
they haven't tagged any of the region articles yet, but I have them all watchlisted of course so will let you know once that starts, if they try; most are already cited; something they didn't even look at while ranting about OR, of course.
the CfD was started within minutes of the category's creation, and within an hour or two of the end of my block that she had imposed without consensus to do so. She has been one of my most strident (and hypocritical AGF/NPA-wielding) critics and didn't like me talking back to her about her close of the Squamish CfD, which was also on grounds of hostility and her being hostile to "walls of text" as a reason to not read rationales; her closures of RMs during the ANI, and during the block, were all questionable in the extreme, given that all the rest (other than David Leigh Ellis') went 98% the other way; all COI, POV, full of editorializing and one-sided personal attacks and mispresentations........ and yes, read what her and Arthur Rubin posted, it's the region articles themselves they claimed with ORs, with the categories they are the main articles for attacked for those (unsubstantiated and false) reasons. All this is being chatted up at the ANI, I'm sure; I've de-watchlisted it and was trying to get at constructive work creating various mountain and river and inlet articles when the current block was imposed. In an hour or so, I'll be swimming here and putting the hypocritical witch hunting of WikiLandia out of my mind.Skookum1 (talk) 07:08, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

That she challenged the Haida Gwaii category as if that were not a political region is beneath comment; I know you know the history of that name and what it represents, and who. Much the same could be said about the Chilcotin, the Lillooet Country, and other areas where the regions coincide with native territories whose claims/ownership are now affirmed by Canadian courts. Try explaining that to someone who doesn't want to listen and never intended to, though.....another example would be the West Coast of Vancouver Island (no particular article for that yet) which could be and is summed up largely the Nuu-chah-nulth territory and rights, likewise re the Cape Scott region and Queen Charlotte Strait being dominantly Kwakwaka'wakw; in both cases and similar I can foresee name changes coming similar to Haida Gwaii; technically now, also, the Nass Valley is pretty much effectively the Nisga'a Lisims, though they didn't gain complete ownership of the Nass Country per the treaty. But to people who are colonialist in attitude about English-language usages and region-named, expecting them to understand Aboriginal law/reality in BC isn't on the menu.Skookum1 (talk) 07:27, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Why are problems with categories so hush-hush?

There are five editors on this user talk page all in agreement that categories are a mess - so why is this not discussed in a more appropriate forum on Wikipedia?

User:Moxy just stay clear of categories (cats) - They are the most convoluted…Moxy (talk) 02:01, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Pfly I agree with Moxy for the most part. Cats "are the most convoluted and unsourced, OR area here" is a good way to put it. There's a few cats I depend on to find various things, but mostly they are a giant mess of little consequence…Pfly (talk) 06:52, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Cullen328 Here’s my attitude towards categories…It simply isn't worth it….Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:10, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Skookum1 I did stay away from cats; other than creating one in all innocence based in logic and reality; and was dragged into a resistant and hostile/AGF CfD..Skookum1 (talk) 02:18, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

XOttawahitech (talk) 14:13, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Respectfully, I disagree with the editors above. I think categories are for some, but not for others. In other words, some editors naturally gravitate towards work on categories and enjoy it, while others don't. This isn't a problem - I would never spend my time editing template syntax, but I'm quite glad there are wikipedians who enjoy template work. As to @Pfly:'s assertion that categories are unsourced and OR, this is one of the reasons CFD exists - if you visit the CFD page, you'll see every day discussions about deleting or merging or renaming categories that are problematic - because unsourced, or because OR - e.g. Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_April_17#Category:Anti-intellectualists or Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_January_16#Category:Anti-Muslim_organizations. Now, MEMBERSHIP in categories is more problematic - as you can't easily monitor additions/deletions to a category in a centralized place, the way one might watch a list - as such, membership in categories tends to be debated on a per-article level. In any case, if CFD didn't exist, we would have many thousands of _really_ bad categories. There are hundreds of categories created every day (most of them likely harmless or decent) and CFD can only process a small subset, so it's really a struggle to manage against the onslaught of new and sometimes policy-violating categories, and is the reason why some of the really bad ones escape notice for so long. In any case, Ottawa, if you want to have a broader discussion with the community about categories, there are of course many venues to do so, including the categories wikiproject, the categories guideline talk page, or you could just open up a broader RFC, but we need to first have a question in mind that we want to ask - e.g. if many people think categories are broken, fine, but how should the problems be addressed? I for one would welcome MORE participation at CFD, there are a number of regulars but that number is pretty small, most people don't bother to go there. More diversity of opinion and insight is always welcome at CFD.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 14:45, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
LOL, that's a good one Obiwan; I just got up will answer you in more detail after my lesson today (I teach ESL online).Skookum1 (talk) 00:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
For the most part, those who "gravitate" toward work on categories usually have a specific categorization scheme (or categorization scheme schema) in mind, which may or may not be at all usable. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:33, 22 April 2014 (UTC)
Well, the ones "I" (and others) built ARE' usable because I know the place and the history and geography and terminology of the region in great detail; that applies also to the First Nations categories and others; they and the article titles behind them are not based in some kind of speculative fiction, as was the gist of the OR challenges and "OWN" confabulation. Wikipedia should be grounded in reality, not extrapolations of its own hosts of guidelines and instruction creepery run amuck, all too often with what those guidelines ACTUALLY say vs the ways they were used and get used to field non sequiturs and irrelevances from people who haven't read the articles, looked at the maps, understand BC's topography and systems of governance. It's like having the planning department nix a building permit on a long-stable building and demand it be torn down, without anything ready to replace it.Skookum1 (talk) 00:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
I'm not talking about the tribal categories; I have not expressed an opinion as to whether the correct usage is the tribes' suggested (non-English) orthography, as you suggest; or the standard English orthography, as was there previously. Just referring to the rivers, you speak with forked tongue (sorry, that's a (US) Native American stereotypical expression, not a First People expression). As I said, you need to provide a single (reliable) source which uses that regionalization to categorize rivers (even with a little variation of name), or to use an existing (in Wikipedia) categorization of British Columbia into regions. Otherwise, a few "Rivers of mountain range" categories might be appropriate, but Category:Rivers of British Columbia could not be diffused by region. You have provided different sources for each of your regions. If you had described the regions on the category pages, that might be adequate to indicate you have an appropriate category structure for diffusing "Rivers of British Columbia". If the categories are deleted/merged as expected, I would support their re-creation if you have a reliable source which uses the categorization. (Sorry, the CfD is suspended.) If you provide a reliable source, as I requested above and at the CfD, at Category talk:Rivers of British Columbia by region (I would have suggested the category page, but some may disagree), I would support the diffusion unless someone provides other reliable sources with a different regionalization, and probably even then.
To use your analogy, it's like your moving a "building" (categorization structure) from your personal property (far away from a city) to a city with a building code. You can't do it without a permit. As for your direct analogy, we've had some long-standing buildings red-tagged after the recent La Habra arthquake. Those which can be repaired, must be repaired to meet the current building code. In this case, a delete at CfD would serve as a reasonable analogy to a red-tag.
As far as I can tell, neither you nor Ottawahitech has ever' created a new category with a description; he has created some with a {{catmain}} (many of those being clearly incorrect). — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:46, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Well, you can't tell very much then, and don't have a clear handle on exactly how many BC categories of all kinds I've created. When there is a main article, also, there is little need for further description; category pages are not articles, though some start to read like that with excess description/commentary. and where in which guideline does it say that a category creation has to include a description?Skookum1 (talk) 01:58, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Since you both seem intent on shepherding the region categories and these subcategories into CfD again in a month time, might I invited you to educate yourself in the meantime as to the geographic realities of BC and the nature of sources available, also of the overlapping political subdivision-systems? Regionalization systems for BC are complex as are the nature of citations available; talking about that without any familiarity with them or with BC's geography or history has been a bugbear of all discussions lately; and again re guidelines where does it say that a category system has to have an official basis/citation as a system to survive? That premise is false, as there are scads of categories with no "official" basis whatsoever, and also with no descriptions. I will be citing the disputed regions in the course of the next month, and also discussing with my contact at BC Names as to inclusion of other region names than the ones they have already (including Lower Mainland, Robson Valley and more, though nothing specific for common region names as such; e.g. Okanagan does not have a listing for the region itself, though it is very well-known and obvious to anyone who lives here. Whatever...here are some resources for you to read up on before wading into discussions of BC geographic categories and issues of political geography again:

Looks like you've got some reading to do if your planned re-CFD is going to have any basis in citations/reality.Skookum1 (talk) 01:58, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

  • Arthur Rubin: "I'm not talking about the tribal categories" - I only mentioned them in the context of knowing their names and appropriate terminologies by way of example of my applied knowledge of BC categories; as it happens many of their territories coincide rather exactly with regions or combinations thereof e.g. Lillooet Country matches the territory of the St'at'imc, Nicola Valley matches the territory of the Nicola people, the Lower Mainland matches Solh Temexw, which is the Sto:lo name for the same place/area, for the simple reason that landscape determines human activity and organization in BC quite overwhelmingly, as you'd find out from trying to navigate the place.
    • "whether the correct usage is the tribes' suggested (non-English) orthography" - the premise so often heard from non-Canadians that the indigenous people's modern names are not in English is a complete and total fallacy; please educate yourself; as sovereign nations (which in BC is legally arguable and constitutionally/treaty-wise a fact) they are also official sources for the names to be used for them as much as any other government.
  • Arthur Rubin "You have provided different sources for each of your regions" - yeah and so what? There is nothing anywhere saying all citations come from the same source, nor as observed already is there anything saying a category tree has to come from an official system.Skookum1 (talk) 02:05, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
      • Yes, a single source is required for the definitions of diffusing categories, if not grammatically obvious. If you intend to move all (or even most) of Category:Rivers of British Columbia into the subcategories, someone familiar with the area (not just you) must be able to determine which category(ies) are appropriate. If the definitions aren't from the same source, then there will be overlap or missing rivers, so the rivers would also have to remain in the main category. If you're in agreement that these are non-diffusing categories, then it wouldn't matter if the definitions are inconsistent. There still needs to be a definition for each, with a source (preferably in a Wikipedia article on landforms or regions of BC; there seems to be a custom that categories should not have references.) It probably should be discussed at WikiProject Rivers, but that would fall into WP:BEBOLD. I didn't check your dozen references for different aspects of landforms or rivers; a single reference should suffice, and you are in the best position to choose one, presumably having read all of them. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:48, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
        • "Yes, a single source is required for the definitions of diffusing categories, if not grammatically obvious" - "not grammatically obvious" is quite the way to put something so specific, no? I dispute that any such guideline specifically exists and it's coming across as "instruction creep" of a very picayune kind. A "single reference" is the corpus of BC history and geography, the Landforms book being the one for mountain ranges in unpopulated areas where no "social/cultural regions" like Okanagan and Chilcotin Country or Lower Mainland exist. The point of the dozen or so cites above, which will be expanded, is to demonstrate the existence of these names and also if you were to actually read them, you would learn that they are in COMMONUSE and are COMMONNAMES; there is a List of landforms of British Columbia, I believe, which is the article you are talking about; currently I think that is a redirect to Regions of Canada, where other Canadians have seen those titles for years without any dispute, as they are familiar to them; many overlap e.g. the town of Hope is both in the Lower Mainland and is considered also the southernmost town of the Fraser Canyon. Some are subsets of others; the region known as the Columbia Valley is a part of East Kootenay region, which is the southernmost part of the Rocky Mountain Trench landform. The disputatiousness of your speculations and your "not grammatically obvious" claim about a guideline you haven't actually cited is very, very, very AGF and flies in teh face of the linguistic and geographic realities of British Columbia and its toponomy; I will be discussing this month with my (very friendly) contact at BC Names about the "traditional" region names that underlie so many other kinds of regionalization titles in BC; she is overworked but may have time to add them; she certainly would not dispute them as you are doing without any awareness at all of the geography you want to recategorize under as yet unspecified regionalization system; you do not have the experience or background to know what is appropriate; you have just conceded that I do, but are engaging in wikilawyering-type specificity on technicalities that is against the spirit of Wikipedia and, also, as noted already, very AGF.Skookum1 (talk) 04:35, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
  • NOTE In the zeal to jump down my throat over these categories, the existence of Category:Rivers of the Alps was ignored; turns out there's also List of rivers of the Rocky Mountains, created in 2009 by User:Hike395; so the claim that rivers are not and should not be categorized by mountain range is baseless and also IMO not slightly POV; geographic objects classified by geographic categories are logical and natural.Skookum1 (talk) 06:25, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
    • Category:Rivers of the Alps is not intended to diffuse Category:Rivers of Europe; nor is it, apparently being used, in spite of being created 6 years ago. I'm not saying that your attempt to clean up Category:Rivers of British Columbia is bad, just that there needs to be a single source for the definitions of a categorization scheme intended to diffuse an existing (appropriate) category, to avoid ambiguity or the chance that a river might be lost as belonging to none of the categories. I suggest discussion at Category talk:Rivers of British Columbia by region, without creating walls of text or adding dozens of contradictory sources. In fact, I'll start the discussion, now. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:38, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
      • Look that "walls of text" thing is not a guideline and I'm tired of hearing it; what you have is walls of cites and resources to educate yourself BEFORE launching a discussion; it seems that people would rather have discussions about subjects they don't understand and haven't taken the time to learn about first.....and you still haven't pointed me to POLICY that says such cats need citations, if it's some guideline (which you also haven't said which), then your own BEBOLD admonition - which is what encouraged me to create these cats years ago - and also the Fifth Pillar "there are no rules" apply; aaaaaargh another discussion fielded to take up still more time. I trust you have posted your new discussion to CANTALK and WPBritishColumbia/WPVancouver and WPRivers etc, so I don't get yelled at for CANVASS.....I was going to raise this at WPBritishColumbia/WPCANADA and WPRIVERs myself, to engage people familiar with Canadian geography, and with rivers/geography cats.....but noooo, someone who's more into deleting and challenging things than developing beat me to it and obviously isn't trying to learn about the subject while wanting to direct debate on it.....Skookum1 (talk) 00:02, 27 April 2014 (UTC)
    • As an aside, Regions of Canada#British Columbia has two subheadings "South Coast". Perhaps you can properly clean up that list, as you are so familiar with the regions. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:52, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
      • I'd have been doing stuff like that the last few months if not being harassed for standing up to people trying to shut down discussion by attacking me instead of addressing the issues (and that was before the ANIs and what led to them); I hadn't noticed that duplication, it's been a long time since I worked on that list and I'm not the only one who edits it. I'll see what needs rearranging.Skookum1 (talk) 00:02, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Boundary Peaks articles needed

@Doncram: Thanks for you interest and willingness to work on Boundary Ranges topics; last night I went by the List of Boundary Peaks of the Alaska–British Columbia/Yukon border and, having been "distracted" elsewhere in Wikipedia by "various things", including having to rescue that page from the effects of an unasked-for/imposed rewrite of one of the cite templates which made that page too long ( ;-| so that it would not properly display...), realized I hadn't gotten around to making many of the peak articles still redlinked on that page; some of them very high. So as a "when you've got some spare time" thing to do, creating those mountain articles, using one of the existing ones, e.g. last night I made Mount Gallatin, Boundary Peak 67, which is immediately to the north of the Stikine River's crossing of the boundary..... why the elevation sort in those tables isn't working right I don't know; it may have something to do with.....unnecessary codes......sigh. The Boundary Peaks area whole category in their own right; eventually there will be so many in the US-Canada border category a subcategory will be needed; at least in that case we've got the treaty to refer to as an "official set" (not that any guideline actually spells that out, but it's a loud demand coming from people who are category-warriors, despite any real leg to stand on about it). If more people were populating categories and creating articles and doing less game-playing with titles and categories, there's be a lot more Wikipedia content than there currently is.....and a whole lot less stress huh? Don't know if mountain articles are your thing, but if they are, that list article is a great place to start.Skookum1 (talk) 05:28, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Skookum1 and thank you for the invitation. I believe i will be able to contribute new photos and maybe some text into some British Columbia and nearby-parts-of-Alaska articles in the next few weeks. Watch Destruction Bay, Yukon, and Lake Kluane, Yukon, and there will be some others. I am more interested in doing so because I have become more aware of your good efforts in the geography and other aspects of these general areas. I don't happen to have any info or expertise related to these peaks though. I dunno if maybe a pic or two will have one of these peaks in the background, really not sure. Thanks, cheers --doncram 02:17, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

re: Waterhen Lake First Nation infobox removal

Waterhen Lake First Nation is both a band government and a community. In this case it has only one reserve with one community in it so it needs a settlement infobox. Both the band government and the community are called Waterhen Lake First Nation.-- Kayoty (talk) 02:46, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Nope, the community article is Waterhen Indian Reserve No. 130, the use of "First Nation" to mean the land/community is common enough, but this problem was addressed long ago within Wikipedia as the official name of the place is not the same as the official name as the band government. Because many bands have multiple reserves, this confusion does not serve categorization well. There is no "infobox government" other than one for {{Infobox government agency}}, which will not suffice. A government is not a community; it governs a community, but it is not the community as such.

More pertinent to problems with this article is the spammy/soap/promotional content promoting the band government; I've fixed some of it, and there's more on many other pages.

In looking into this, I also found Waterhen, Manitoba, which appears to be Waterhen Indian Reserve No. 45, which is the home of the Skownan First Nation, formerly the Waterhen First Nation, and there we have the curious terminology "Northern Affairs community", as if the community were part of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs; that article needs major cleanup, as do many of these; and can have coordinates on it because it is about a PLACE. Band governments are not places, and while they can have maps showing where there reserves are, location maps showing the location of "the First Nation" identified as such are totally misleading and actually original research.Skookum1 (talk) 04:43, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

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