Category talk:Scientific societies

Category confusion

Is there any reason that all the Category:disciplineName organizations categories go here instead of under Category:Scientific organizations? Seems like in half the scientific disciplines the organization category goes under Category:Scientific organizations and half under Category:Scientific societies.

If no one objects, I'm going to change the category for the discipline organizations categories to Category:Scientific organizations. --Jackhorkheimer 23:24, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree it's a bit confusing and may not work as a practical matter. However, there's a technical difference b/w the various "societies" and other types of organizations; societies are a subcat of organizations. Other orgs would include labs, research institutes, advocacy/lobbying organizations, scientific regulatory bodies, scientific standard-setting bodies, and so on. The scientific societies would be the groups of scientists for purposes of furthering scientific discourse, by hosting meetings, sponsoring a journal, and otherwise facilitating scientific society. ... I guess, I would say, it might be worth it to clean up the categories, and then watch them for a while and see if they maintain themselves in a reasonable way. If not, then that suggests that people don't really use that technical distinction and maybe we shouldn't bother keeping it. I don't feel strongly either way, though. What do you think? --lquilter 22:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Continuing and further confusion; a proposal

I think there is a practical difference between academies in particular and societies in general. It is true that in many countries a society simply may decide to call itself an academy; but mostly there is a clearly visible distinction. I would like to make some more specific categories, like National academies of science(s) or National academies of humanities; in those cases the same national academy covers e.g. both sciences and literature, it should be placed in both categories. As it is now, if you go through the list included in Academy of Sciences, you'll see that the items are categorised in varying manners, buth that most of them are contained both in Category:National academies and in Category:Scientific societies. This would be replaced by both belonging to the new common subcategory National academies of science.

I propose that this new category also be placed in a new category Academies of science. The new category also could contain various international common science academy organs; and a subcategory for the (now 11) items corresponding to the various IAP official statements. The latter often are clear-cut stands on controversial questions, but considered of high concern and collecting the closest you can get to an "official consensus" from the scientific world; whence they IMHO are of a clear encyclopædic interest, and should be easy to find by searching for academies of sciences by means of our categories. JoergenB (talk) 21:39, 12 November 2008 (UTC)