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All navigational/organizational methods have advantages and disadvantages. And I've seen the exact same arguments made against lists of this very kind with the claim that a category makes the list unnecessary. That's exactly why we have NOTDUP; to avoid wasting time on undermining one navigational method just because you happen to prefer another form. postdlf (talk) 13:31, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Comment: I'm not taking any sides, but I'd like to clarify that it's not just about the language. From the article Swedish-speaking population of Finland: "They maintain a strong identity and are seen either as a separate ethnic group, while still being Finns, or as a distinct nationality." --Kliituu (talk) 18:15, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Merge or delete - IMO we should be categorizing people (just) by what they are notable for (actor, politician etc); not for the characteristics of their (grand)parents (which in many cases aren't mentioned in articles hence these categories are likely to be incomplate). DexDor(talk)18:45, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose -- Finland was a Swedish province until conquered by Russia in 1809. The result is that there is a substantial Swedish-speaking minority. This is thus a significant quasi-ethnicity and as entitled to have descent categories as other ethnicities. I would compare this with descent categories for Armenians, Assyrians and other religious minorities of the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps it should be "Finland-Swedish" descent. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:57, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This is not an ethnicity as strong as Armenians and Assyrians for whom religion also plays a very important role. In contrast Finnish people are Lutherans regardless whether or not the belong they belong to the Swedish-speaking minority. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:11, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nom. & DexDor. ancestry is usually trivial and unverifiable and unless someone can point out that Finnish Swedish people do something notably differently to others, useless too. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:09, 8 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Centuries of waves of European history have seen boundaries change and regimes changes. There are many town and cities in Europe where the same family could have lived in in the same house through the generations for the last four of five centuries and been at various times in multiple different countries, with several different official languages.
Whole countries and huge empires have come and gone; some countries have moved so radically that there is little territorial continuity. ethnic and cultural groupings are very complex. Boundaries have shifted, some languages and cultures have been suppressed, and there have been mass migrations. Some minority groups have largely assimilated, others much less so.
Some individuals and some families remain closely immersed in one part of that heritage, others much less so. This can happen even within one generation.
So the question is how much of this vast kaleidescope of complexity Wikipedia tries to capture in its category system.
Ten years ago, I would have been inclined to be answer "as much a possible". But I no longer think that approach is sustainable. Too few of our articles capture enough of the complexity of ethnicity and identity to allow meaningful categorisation. The binary nature of categorisation doesn't capture the vast difference between someone whose ancestors assimilated three centuries ago and someone whose family maintained the old ways until a generation ago — in categorisation policy terms, we are looking at an attribute whose WP:DEFININGness can be anywhere from 0% to 100%, and often unclear.
So I conclude that the category system is just to crude to do a decent enough job on on this to make such categories any more than a poorly-sourced, woefully incomplete, ill-defined and disastrously un-nuanced mishmash.
Delete. While the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland is a notable minority and ethnicity, this precision is irrelevant for a descent category. Individual people for which the Swedish, or Finn-Swedish background, is important according to reliable sources specific to them may deserve a double inclusion in an ethnic-based category and a Finnish-descent category, but carving out the entire group in a specific subtree is trivial. Place Clichy (talk) 09:46, 22 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:WP:CATDEF A central concept used in categorising articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define[1] the subject as having—such as nationality or notable profession (in the case of people), type of location or region (in the case of places), etc. For example, here: "Caravaggio, an Italian artist of the Baroque movement ...", Italian, artist, and Baroque may all be considered to be defining characteristics of the subject Caravaggio.
(ec) Comment. This is one of many such categories (e.g. over 90 in Category:Alumni by high school in New Jersey alone) so I guess this is a test case. It would be better to listify rather than straight delete. Has anyone investigated whether this data (person X was at high school Y) has/can be stored in Wikidata in a way that en wp users could easily access it? DexDor(talk)17:53, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - per previous consensus. In reference to queries above, one’s school can be quite defining and highly notable. For example, when individuals become highly successful despite having attended a very poor school then that is often considered to make their success all the more remarkable. On the other hand, there are often many politicians who campaign against private or selective education, despite having benefited from said systems themselves and even sending their own children to the same types of schools. Such controversies alone have began defining elements of the careers of some such individuals.Shakehandsman (talk) 19:06, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Those are good arguments for mentioning information about education in the text of a biographical article (assuming the info can be sourced), but is it really defining? For example, most bio articles won't mention the person's high school in the lede. An article may contain hundreds (possibly thousands) of facts, but we don't categorize for most of those facts. DexDor(talk)20:34, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely, and that's just one aspect of how their schooling defines them, there's all the other more standard reasons too in terms of the impact of location of the school, its culture and that of the surrounding area. When you take everything combined. one's schooling its often far more defining than other things we categorise. We happily put people's university in there, even though they often spend less than half the time at such an institution than they spend at school.Shakehandsman (talk) 00:12, 6 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
While we cannot single out one particular school category, I would vote delete in a broader nomination. People of the same high school (but of different years) have nothing in common with each other. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:41, 7 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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.
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The Pride of Britain Awards is an annual award ceremony started in 2000. I have no conceptual problem with the category but it consists only of the main article and three redirects for individual years that all point back to that same article so it doesn't aid navigation. If we don't have individual articles about each ceremony after 20 years, I don't think growth is likely but--if I'm wrong--no objection to recreating this category later. (Alternativley we could convert this to a hidden redirect category if any editors find that useful.) - RevelationDirect (talk) 00:14, 5 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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.
