Category talk:Surnames/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Question

Why is there no "Portugal surnames" in any of this? Surely there should be Portuguese names over Swiss names, considering Swiss names are from Italy, France, and Germany; there are no "Swiss" names. I'm not sure why there is not any Portuguese names but can you take that into consideration? Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bort08 (talk • contribs) 22:18, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Recent CfD of all the Surnames by country cats

This decision is not acceptable for many surnames which are from a specific country or language. Having to search/browse through well over 12,000 surnames is not an acceptable way to handle this, and I think this upmerging is making things even more difficult. Instead of having "Surnames by country", I propose having "Surnames by language" as it is generally (not always, but generally) much easier to determine a language origin for names (especially Asian names, which is what I generally deal with). ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 04:52, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• That conforms with many of the !votes on the discussion. Let's propose a reasonable structure, and a reasonable means of achieving it.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:41, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
• I agree with Nihonjoe - it's not acceptable to just delete the whole scheme. This is a poorly thought out decision that has led to a mess. If a better structure was needed then one should have been worked out before everything was deleted. Haukur (talk) 20:33, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• As noted, that was tagged on June 6th and 7th (taking over 12 hours of my time), and not closed until June 24th – 11 more days than the normal 7 days. There was plenty of time for discussion, and lots of discussion. There were several ideas on how to proceed. It was a well-thought-out decision, with an extensive closing rationale. It reached the same conclusion as a previous nomination. Two for two!
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 05:04, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but none of the WikiProjects it affected were notified and notification wasn't made on the various topical deletion sorting lists. The people whose work it affects the most didn't get any input at all into the discussion. ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:25, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

• Certainly every category was properly tagged. Are you saying that folks in some projects weren't watching their categories? (Many folks participated.) Or are you saying that after devoting my weekend to hunting down and tagging the categories, often hiding in the wrong part of the tree, I'm also supposed to find (or guess) every WikiProject and Wikipedian that happened to be interested, and notify their Talk, too? (Not on your life!)
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:02, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• Do you have any idea how many Japan-related categories there are? I have over 10,000 pages on my watch list, so it's completely possible that your tagging was not noticed. All I'm saying is that it should have at least been sorted into the appropriate list of topical discussions (see WP:DELSORT) so the widest possible group of affected people could be aware of the issue. ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:23, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• I'm not a member of that project. Members have undertaken that task voluntarily. You are welcome to participate in that project. Add it to your number of other projects, already so large that you don't notice notices....
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:00, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

• Your comments make no sense. Could you repost them in English please? ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I should also note that in many/most cases, Cydebot's removal of Category:Japanese surnames has removed the only Japan-related category on the article, which is also not acceptable. There should be some Japan-related category on all of them, so if not Category:Japanese surnames, what do people propose? This poorly-thought-out decision is causing a huge mess. ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:06, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• You don't link to "the article". It's certainly acceptable for articles that aren't Japanese-language. It's actually a well-thought-out decision, the second in a series (fooian names was deleted some weeks ago).
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:41, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

But all of the ones where the Japanese surnames category were removed were Japanese surnames, and now there are no Japan-related categories on them, making them that much harder to locate. Having appropriate categories on articles is perfectly acceptable, and the aftermath of this decision is that there are no longer all the appropriate categories on the articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nihonjoe (talk • contribs) 2009-06-24 17:46:18

Another concern: this discussion from a little over two years ago eliminated the "List of X surnames" articles, and now this discussion has eliminated the categories into which they were sorted. We need to figure out some way of indicating the origin of these names and make it easy to find all of the names with the same origin, but if we can't use lists and we can't use categories, what other ways are there? ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 05:20, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• Those lists were moved cross-wiki to en.wiktionary. There's no reason to keep the same lists in two projects. So, you should use the lists there. Should all the surname articles be moved to en.wiktionary, too?
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 16:41, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

You're missing the point. The only two methods of organizing the articles have been removed (categorization and making a list of them). There's plenty of reason to have the same lists on two projects, the main one being that people who come here aren't very likely to go to Wiktionary to search for what they want. And no, the surname articles should not be moved to Wiktionary as they aren't definitions generally (which is all that should be on Wiktionary). ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

User:Good Olfactory has kindly pointed out that the recently deleted information about national surname categories is still available in the contribution history of Cydebot. This is welcome news, but still not very easy to use. I just searched it for the Hungarian surnames, as an example. There were 59 entries. Nearly all of these were unambiguously Hungarian-language names, with perhaps 5 exceptions. So would it be possible for a bot-writer to use an existing or new bot to reinstate these as some "category:Hungarian-language surnames" or the like? (I would then willingly deal with the exceptions). If this could be done, it would allay my misgivings about recent changes, and we could attempt similar processes, where necessary, for the other languages affected. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 13:08, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

One concern I have in implementing an automated process (and one reason I didn't go forward with a straight rename) is precisely because of the exceptions. These articles really do need to be gone through one by one and the ones that are not applicable to "by language" do need to be removed from the applicable categories. Users should also be checking for reliable, verifiable sources, etc. in each article, which are lacking in a large number. I agree that it's a large task, but it's one that needs to be done to resolve the pre-existing problems. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:57, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Let's continue to consider the specific case of the Hungarian names. I'm not clear exactly what you are suggesting I should do. I can't deal with the exceptional cases at the moment, because the categories have all been flattened to "surname". As for references, I don't know how to add them to categories, so I'd be grateful if you could advise me on that. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 22:17, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

• I agree with Good. No bots. Before adding to the category, every article must be examined by an editor for verifiable, reliable sources in it. No references, no category!
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 12:02, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

• Yes. To respond to SamuelTheGhost (sorry for the delay; I'm not watching this page)—references are added to articles, not categories. The category shouldn't be applied unless there are references in the article that would support the inclusion of the article in the category. The ones that were in Category:Hungarian surnames should all be together in the user contributions of User:Cydebot. If you need help finding them, let me know on my talk page. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:44, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Since when do we have such a rule on Wikipedia? Wikipedia:Categorisation#Categorizing_pages says:

An article should be placed in all the categories to which it logically belongs, subject to the duplicate categorization rule stated below. It should be clear from the verifiable information in the article why it was placed in each of its categories. Use the {{Category unsourced}} template if you find an article in a category that is not shown by sources to be appropriate, or the {{Category relevant?}} template if the article gives no clear indication for inclusion in a category.

Ideally, all information should be referenced, but so far we are far from that goal, and nowhere does it say that "no reference - nocategory" (nor should it say so). Debresser (talk) 14:31, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I would only note that it does not say it's OK to place an article in a category if there is no reference for it. It says if you find one that is not referenced in a category, then add the template. But it doesn't say add it to the category and then add the template b/c you haven't bothered to properly reference it. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:41, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Of course. But thank you for pointing that out. It sometimes happens that you know a category to be relevant, and you have written about it in the article, but you just can't find the source to say precisely what you need. Debresser (talk) 19:12, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:OR and WP:RS cover this. any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source Any material. That includes categories. Those are your policies that say "no reference, no category" --Kbdank71 13:04, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

• I'm flabbergasted, but the categorization rule disappeared – because it was removed by Debresser, without discussion. He also added the {{Category relevant?}} template, a template that should never be used, as there should never even be irrelevant categories that are unsupported by the text and verifiable reliable sources.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 10:55, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Register me as another objector. This is dang ridiculous. Yes, I agree that division by "nation state" is less than optimal, and that "Iranian names" would more properly be separate "Azeri names", "Baloch names", "Persian names", etc. However, the people who really pushed for the deletions and subsequent dumping of 14,000 names into Category:Surnames are the same whiny gits who are always moaning about how "nations" are "artificial creations", etc. So we just destroyed thousands of hours of labour to satisfy those twits instead of simply making a sincere effort to go through and refine already existing categories which were maybe 75% accurate. Yeah, it's not the Rwandan Genocide, but it's one of WP's more blatant wastes of time to satisfy a noisy minority who just happened to turn up to vote at the right time. Deleting a cat with 23 articles over a week's time is nothing compared to deleting cats containing 14,000 articles after two weeks' debate. More time should've been given for such a massive deletion. Plus anyone arguing from such clearly ideological grounds needs to be treated with more suspicion before so many thousands of man-hours of labour are destroyed. MatthewVanitas (talk) 06:18, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Agree; it's absolutely unacceptable, even worse in that no substitute for the new "Surnames" category including 14,000 surnames was developed nor implemented, and Category:Korean-language surnames now contains two surnames, with the editors clamoring for the category deletion having apparently moved on to more interesting pursuits rather than doing the actual work it would have taken to substitute the new cat for the old. Extremely shameful, undermines the credibility of our encyclopedia, and hampers our users' research. Very sloppy and damaging to our project, and should be undone immediately, with those doing the damage putting in the effort to restore our encyclopedia's navigation. Badagnani (talk) 06:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the two previous editors above. I'd also like to pick up on Good Olfactory's remark above "references are added to articles, not categories" and ask on what grounds he exempts categories themselves from the need for references. The trouble with this whole debate is that it has contained vast amounts of WP:OR, much of it ill-informed, and although there have been repeated, indeed exaggerated, demands for references for the inclusion of articles in categories, almost no references have been used to support the debate itself. If we follow wikipedia's stated policies, we should require that the names and descriptions of categories themselves should be based on reliable sources, not developed as a result of amateur original research in the talk pages, which is what has happened. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 09:47, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Just seems to be a misunderstanding about how category space works. "References" aren't added to a category. But what you can do is ensure that articles included in a category are referenced in a way that supports the article's inclusion in the category. If you are aware of "referencing" in other category space, let me know—I'd like to see it. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:53, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

There may well be no other examples of references in other category spaces, since categories are not usually so contentious. The "misunderstanding" is yours, in that references are usually elided only because they are not seen to be necessary. If a category is not capable of being supported by references, there is certainly something wrong with it. And how is one supposed to establish that an article goes into a particular category if there are no references supporting the existence of the category itself? SamuelTheGhost (talk) 12:34, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Excellent sources verifying the national, cultural, or linguistic origins or affiliations of surnames of are abundant, easily available, and utilized by our excellent editors. Thousands of hours of hard labor have been eliminated by these recent deletions, most quite against the actual consensus. Badagnani (talk) 15:48, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Match wiktionary categories by language

Since the above discussion mentions that the lists of names were moved to Wiktionary, it seems that matching the category scheme there would be best for finding related information.

Wiktionary uses names by language, given names by language, and surnames by language. Is everybody agreed that we can/should use "by language" here, too?
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 17:59, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that will work, as long as someone doesn't get it into their head that we can only have one category with 13,000+ articles in it (the problem we currently have). ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:27, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• A single category is still needed, as that aggregates the population from the template.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 20:29, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

We can keep this category as the main category, but I think we need subcategories to diffuse this category into more manageable chunks. ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:19, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• No, the main category should have (and has always had) the whole set of surnames, and the others will be "distinguished subcategories" according to the guidelines. Folks shouldn't have to guess which subcategory has the names, and some names will be in more than one subcategory.
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:49, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I propose that we begin creating categories named "Barian-language surnames". That should be more clear, and avoid the utter chaos that ensued with combination "nationality", "ethnicity", "culture", and "regional" categories. Not to mention that there were some languages already mixed in, too.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 20:29, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we need to hyphenate it. ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:17, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

(Such categories are typically hyphenated b/c the phrase is an adjectival. See, e.g., Category:Japanese-language media, etc.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:42, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, I guess it's a stylistic thing. I subscribe to the "let's lose the hyphens whenever possible" theory. ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:45, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I see. I think it's actually more of an English thing, but whatever. If they are lost, they will likely just be added in again as speedy rename "spelling error" corrections. Carry on. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:19, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

• Any progress on Category:Japanese-language surnames?
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 04:49, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I wasn't aware the category had been created, so no. ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:27, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

"By language" head category

For all the reasons I'd previously expressed in that marathon CFD discussion, recently closed, the "by country" cat structure had to go, and be replaced with "by language" structure. I'd also agree with including explicit reference to 'language' in the subcat names, so there'd be much less chance of misuse/misinterpretation. So "Barian-language surnames" seems sensible and succinct enough.

Since the Category:Surnames by culture structure is still retained, there should probably also be in parallel a "by language" head category, which would contain all the Barian-language surnames subcats. Question is, what would be the best name for that head category: Category:Surnames by language, Category:Surnames by language origin, Category:Surnames by linguistic origin, or some other..?--cjllw ʘ TALK 04:52, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

The Category:Surnames by culture structure has not been maintained as a large number of the categories which were in it have been deleted by Cydebot now. ···日本穣^? · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:36, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

• I'd prefer the simpler Category:Surnames by language. We should specify "linguistic origin" in the category headers, rather than the title. I'd like to parallel wiktionary:Category:Surnames and wiktionary:Category:Surnames by language, so the interwiki sister templates (and searches) work better. (Category:Surnames by culture is messy and ill-defined. Wiktionary has nothing "by culture".)
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 05:31, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
• I made Category:Surnames by language, with a cross-wiki link to the parallel wiktionary category. Linguistic is a disambiguation page, so I've changed to "language origin", but that seems stilted. Could somebody clarify the text wording there?
  --William Allen Simpson (talk) 06:16, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I noticed the cats at Wiktionary are divided even further. wiktionary:Category:English surnames is subdivided into cats named liked wiktionary:Category:English surnames from Arabic and so-on. This looks good to me and easy for editors to understand. So a surname like Gregory, which i assume can be classified as an 'English surname', would be categorised as wiktionary:Category:English surnames from Greek. And all the variations from different languages listed, would follow along the same lines (example: Grégoire would be categorised wiktionary:Category:French surnames from Latin. So we just follow what our sources tell us of the linguistic origin of the name. If we don't have a good source for the linguistic origin then i suppose we just use a cat like wiktionary:Category:English surnames. This way of doing it looks good to me. I think that some 'culure' cats could be quite useful, but over time i suspect they could just devolve back into 'country' cats. So they should be watched. It is already happening, see how today someone just created Category:Vietnamese surnames and Category:Japanese surnames. Those ought to be deleted re-named per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 June 25#Surnames by language.--Celtus (talk) 08:28, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

DRV on categories

• See Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2009 June 25#Category:Surnames by country. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:22, 25 June 2009 (UTC)