Wikipedia talk:Categorizing articles about people

Literary scholars

Are "Swedish literary scholars" a group by nationality, or by subject? Are "English literature academics" studying the literature of England, or literature written in English?John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:15, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

So it turns out "English literature" the article insists it is literature written in English. This ignores that our standard usage elsewhere says "English" us gor things/people connected to England and "English-language" is for things/people connected to the Enfmglish language.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:24, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

• Per usage "Swedish literary scholars" should be scholars who are Swedisgmh by nationslity who study literature. Which begs the question, why do we not have Category:American literary scholars? It looks like we only have 4 such categories. I am thinking we should rename them Literary scholars from Sweden, and purge any people who are not in some way nationals of Sweden. We already have a similar set up for Linguists, because Swedish Linguists is also ambiguous.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:28, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
• So it turns out my view of literary criticism was too narrow. What I am totally lost on is if anyone knows how to distinguish a literary critic, a literary scholar and a literary historian. We do not have an article on literary historian, a search for the term redirects to history of literature. I am beginning to wonder of all the Fooian literary historian categories, or at least the ones using names of languages should be renamed to Literary historians from Foo. In some cases we almost have to. Since English literature says the term meansliteratilure in the English language and says that if you think it means Literature written in England or by nationals if England you are confused, than per that Englush literary historians are those who study the history of English literature, not people who are English who study the history of literature.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:42, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
• With the literature academics, the English, Spanish, French and German are by language, but do not say language, the Chinese, Korean and Japanese are sub-cats of those academics categories, so they are posing as by nationality. There is also an Arabic and a few others where there is no nationality.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:03, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
• However "Arabic" could be confused with "Arab" which is an ethnic designation. There can be Arabs writing not in Arabic. Then there is the African literature, which is neither a language nor a nationality. Does African literary scholars include people who are experts on the writings of Tunisian nationalists? "Africa" is a huge continent where most of the countries have dozens if not hundreds of languages. Much of the literature produced on the African continent has been written in colonial languages, primarily French and English, or in Arabic, but there is literate in other languages. Amheric liturature. Maybe Ethiopian liturature. John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:09, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

  I am sure there is Swahili literature. There is also KiKongo liturature.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:11, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

• Why the Swahili literature article has a bias against the work of Swahili writers in Lubumbashi or other parts of DR Congo is a good question we should ask of it. We might as well start the English liturature article with "Englishituature is literature written in the English language, particularly by those who live in England". Although there are other biases in the attempts to exclude those of Lubumbashi. The Swahili language was brought to Lubumbashi and other parts of DR Comgo by slavers from the coast. There are huge POV pushing issues with the way the article is currently worded.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:15, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
• As I suspected our assumption that X literature means Literature in X language is wrong. Here https://brill.com/view/journals/jwl/6/2/article-p123_1.xml?language=en is a detailed article on "Congolese" literature. It treats the term as grouping nationals. Most mentioned write in French, but it does mention a work in Lingala. The grouping us eorks by people who are nationals of X country. Much is written by expatriates and published in other countries. I did not get all the way though.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:27, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

People from the Kingdom of Prussia

Despite the parent Category being People from the Kingdom of Prussia, and the next layer down being People from the Kingdom of Prussia by occupation, the next level down uses a mix of things like Scientists from the Kingdom of Prussia and Writers from the Kingdom of Prussia, but Prussian physicians and Prussian musicians. I think we should use from the Kingdom of Prussia for all. We want to be clear we are referring to the Kingdom of Prussia, not to the Province of Prussia. The Free State of Prussia was not functional enough that it only existed in law and not in fact from about 1934 to 1936. We do not hold to a strong this category ends in 1871, but it has more meaning before that date. Pre-1701 the issue is messier. The political unit is called is historiography Brandenberg-Prussia, but it is multiple geographically distinct units. We do have People from the Duchy of Prussia to cover pre-1701 articles. The Kingdom that existed 1701-1918, although from 1871-1918 it was the controlling power within the German Empire, is one of the Great Power of Europe. The fact that some of that time it is the Kingdom of Prussia containing the Province of Prussia is also confusing.

John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:12, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Categorisation dispute at Max Mallowan (and other biographical articles added at Category:Agatha Christie)

Please see the RFC at Talk:Max Mallowan#RFC about categorisation --woodensuperman 14:34, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Proposed update to CATLGBT

I propose changing the first sentence of the last paragraph of WP:CATLGBT to:

"Categories that would apply to living people who do not self-identify as the orientation in question—such as "closeted gay men"—are not acceptable under any circumstances."

This wording removes pejorative language around sexual orientation ("allegations", "suspected"), aligns more clearly with the guidance in the first paragraph, and clarifies that the concern flows from BLP. Given that we have had Category:Historical figures with ambiguous or disputed gender identity for several years now, it does not seem plausible that there is an ongoing clear community consensus against a sibling category for sexual orientation (and one was just created). The guideline should be updated to reflect that.--Trystan (talk) 15:06, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Your solution is neat and straightforward. I'd have thrown that whole paragraph out and started again, but this seems like a better option. Lewisguile (talk) 16:00, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Would that forbid a "People with unlabeled sexuality" category? Because many people self-identify as without a label. GustaPapp (talk) 22:07, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

So the mainspace equivalent of Category:Wikipedians who reject a sexual orientation label? I think that would probably be allowed under either the current or proposed wording, since it doesn't attempt to associate anyone with an identity they haven't adopted.--Trystan (talk) 22:43, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

Pinging participants at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2024 October 19#Category:Historical figures with ambiguous or disputed sexuality (regardless of if they already participated above): @Bruce leverett, Dimadick, Golikom, Marcocapelle, Remsense, Rylee Amelia, Smasongarrison, Traumnovelle, Trystan, and Web-julio. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 22:46, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I hope it is not WP:CANVASSING for me to ping @Bearcat:, who originally added this passage in 2009. Bruce leverett (talk) 01:56, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Is this a guideline against doxing? Dimadick (talk) 07:57, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Doxing, outing people involuntarily, claiming that people are LGBTQ when they really aren't as a form of attack editing (e.g. there was a recurring spate sometime back of repeatedly having to remove Justin Bieber from LGBT categories)... Bearcat (talk) 14:47, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

• For the record, the "sample" categories that were named to illustrate the issue are the exact word-for-word names of closet-gay categories that had actually been attempted in the past. They weren't introduced to be pejorative or negative on my part, they were introduced as actual examples of categories that had actually been attempted. We absolutely do, however, have a clear community consensus against using Wikipedia as the venue for "outing" living people who haven't already outed themselves, under the auspices of WP:BLP rules. Bearcat (talk) 14:47, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

  That makes sense. The current wording has been interpreted as saying we can't ever have a category for, e.g., Edward II's sexuality, when it seems his sexuality is a notable subject. Obviously, I think that's different to doxxing or outing. I think Trystan's intent is to clarify that the relevant text is primarily about BLPs, and not to prevent us categorising subjects such as Edward II. Do you think the suggested wording covers your original intent still, or would you modify it?

  There was a second issue with the wording which, in hindsight, seems outdated, but I appreciate you were using terms used by others. Another option would be to go back to your original wording, change the language a tad, and clarify that it's about BLP/not outing people? Lewisguile (talk) 15:33, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

I was involved in the deletion discussion after creating the sibling category. I don't have much to add other than that I agree with differentiating between categories involving living and recently deceased people and categories involving historical figures. It might be important to specify what defines a historical figure (e.g. died during or before the 20th century), but other than that, I have no issue with your current wording of this update. However, some people did originally bring up the issue of fringe theories and how much consensus or discussion should exist surrounding a historical figures potential orientation. Categories like this should probably only be used for pages with well cited categories/subcategories and/or pages dedicated to the sexuality of a historical figure. I'm not sure how the rules could specify between fringe theories and commonly proposed and accepted theories, but it may be worth adding some distinction about this. Rylee Amelia (talk) 03:32, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Thankfully, we have WP:NONDEF and WP:CATV to allow us to deal with that issue when it arises. Though, I agree it may require keeping a watchful eye on—I've seen other problematic categories where they have been used as a stick to attack people with/push a point. But it's simple enough to remove these categories when they're not constructive.

l Lewisguile (talk) 07:18, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the guidance in the category description ("the article should contain significant reliable sourcing indicating the presence of ambiguity or dispute regarding the individual's sexuality") establishes a good metric. If there is a significant subsection or subarticle that is reliably sourced and WP:DUE, that should avoid inclusion of fringe theories, and it will primarily be a matter of monitoring the category to confirm the articles added to it meet that standard.--Trystan (talk) 15:48, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I've implemented the proposed change.--Trystan (talk) 15:48, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Great. Lewisguile (talk) 18:16, 7 November 2024 (UTC)