Project:Requests for deletion/Requests/2012/Category:Women writers
- The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not change it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No more changes should be made to this discussion.
The outcome of this request for deletion was to File:Symbol delete vote.svg Delete. There is sufficient consensus to close this as deleted. Most users appear to agree that the category is unsuitable for this Wikipedia (whether enwiki has it or not is a different issue) because it makes the categorization more complex and that classifying by gender in this case is too weak a criterion to keep the category. Pmlineditor (t · c · l) 16:56, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
Category:Women writers[change]
Auntof6 has nominated this page for deletion for the reason: Separating categories by gender doesn't seem to add any real value, and it makes things more complex. This request includes the following two categories:
Please discuss this request below, but keep in mind that you shouldn't vote on everything and that there may be options other than "keep" or "delete", such as merging.
Discussion[change]
Keep. All these three categories existed on English Wikipedia before being created here, and still do. The Women writers cat has existed on here for over a year and has been populated by, amongst others, the nominator of this deletion request. Hence I am puzzled at the existence of this deletion discussion. I know that the nominator is not anti-category, because she has created many categories herself.
This is the first time I have participated in a deletion discussion on Simple, so I hope I am doing it correctly. If categorising by gender is inappropriate, then I do not understand why such categories have existed on English Wikipedia continuously for years. If there is a rule / guideline / consensus against categorisation by gender on Simple (but not on en) please direct me to it. Women writers is certainly a topic of significant relevance. Some female authors, such as George Eliot, wrote under male false names due to the (perceived) glass ceiling preventing women becoming successful authors. Much more recently, J. K. Rowling said she uses initials and her surname (rather than Joanne) - because she thought when she began writing the Harry Potter novels that not many boys would want to read books that they knew were written by a woman. I do not see that these cats are too complex for Simple - the large majority of our readers are familiar with the words American, British, women and writers and if they are not, links can be easily provided on the category descriptions, should they be kept. I believe the American and British subcats are justified because the parent cat is populated enough to make it worthwhile. Jim Michael (talk) 22:38, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
- First, let me say that what is done on English Wikipedia doesn't necessarily have bearing on what we do here. Second, I think all your points are very good reasons for having lists of female writers, or articles about women writers and the issues they face. I just don't think we need the categories. Also, if we're going to separate writers by gender, we should have the male category as well. I could point out other areas where the genders were combined, but I don't want to give anyone ideas of more categories to split by gender. --Auntof6 (talk) 00:02, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- I would say the interesting part here is that in the two examples listed, both women took action to hide/disguise the fact that they were women. The cat does exactly the opposite of what they have tried to do with their lives and careers by shining an extra spotlight on them based solely on their sex. A male writer would not be pointed out for being male, but a female needs to be pointed out because she isn't male. As if being male is normal and she isn't. I doubt anyone would support keeping Category:Heterosexual white men but when it comes to people who are not in that category, it seems acceptable to classify someone based on race, religion, sex or sexuality when there is no basis that this categorization is a notable part of who they are. With sexuality, we normally at least require a reference (normally to the official "coming out/ openly gay" instance on BLP's) but the other three we are free to label people with at will it seems. Following Auntof6's comment, not only should we also use Male writers, but also Writers of unknown sex for those we can not prove were one or the other.
- There are issues with sexual discrimination in many (all) fields. Some more so than others and some more notable and worth an article showing the discrimination and history of it. But is JK Rowlings a different kind of writer from Stephen King just because of gender? He writes horror, she writes fantasy - that makes them different. He's American, she is British so their writing is affected by different cultures. Is there a cultural difference because of their sex? How would that have affected them if they were from a matriarchal society? (China's culture has shown to be much less split on sex when it comes to writers - more class based than sex based.. should we also classify for Class which would be appropriate for much of eastern Asia and pre-industrial EurAsia? What other aspects of a person's life have we not even begun to look at will people want to segregate categories by? "Complicated".. yeah, I can see how that word could be valid here. --Creol(talk) 01:51, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- There are two separate issues that are being asserted here: a) A well-established, valid category on a topic that is widely studied and which has well over a hundred entries here should be deleted; b) The rules regarding categorisation here are different to en. I do not see that either of those are the case. I do not see any policy / guideline / consensus that categorisation should be different here than on en. The description on this cat on en explains why it exists. If you disagree with its existence, a deletion discussion should be conducted there. If it is deleted from en, then it should be deleted from here also. I am not aware of anyone proposing that people should be categorised by socioeconomic class on any version of Wikipedia, so that is irrelevant to this discussion. Jim Michael (talk) 11:42, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- What is irrelevant in this discussion is any decision the English Wikipedia makes or does not make in the matter. We are not the English Wikipedia. They are used as (at best) a guideline on policy where we haven't made a policy/guideline/suggestion mainly as we haven't either had a need to create one or haven't simplified one for local use. We do not need to follow their decisions. All matters are up to the local editors to chose for ourselves if we want to do things in a certain way. Note that as this RfD is being conducted, another category which the English Wikipedia keeps (and all articles in it) are up for deletion here (Japanese football club seasons). Local policy and content is decided locally (though obviously, under Foundation rules.. they still supersede all). We may chose to follow En:, but that is a choice we make on each subject, not a requirement.
- There are two separate issues that are being asserted here: a) A well-established, valid category on a topic that is widely studied and which has well over a hundred entries here should be deleted; b) The rules regarding categorisation here are different to en. I do not see that either of those are the case. I do not see any policy / guideline / consensus that categorisation should be different here than on en. The description on this cat on en explains why it exists. If you disagree with its existence, a deletion discussion should be conducted there. If it is deleted from en, then it should be deleted from here also. I am not aware of anyone proposing that people should be categorised by socioeconomic class on any version of Wikipedia, so that is irrelevant to this discussion. Jim Michael (talk) 11:42, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- Oddly that point distracts from the issue of this RfD as it brings up new questions (actually, old ones that have been dealt with over and over again) without answering the ones already asked (and on-topic) here. Many of those questions may be answered "yes". I am not certain what the answers are (hence why I asked) but if they are Yes, this may be one of the rare cases where sex based categorization is valid. --Creol(talk) 18:54, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
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Hello all. I think valid points are raised above. Let us assume for an instant, that we are not talking about women writers, but say "presidents of a country", or "monarchs" of a country. Such people are usually defined through their function, and not through their gender. Yes, some countries say that a woman is able to fill the role given, others say she isn't. In some countries, a girl may succeed her father on the throne, in others this is not the case. The big question now is: Is sex a sufficient criterion for a writer? - Will these people write fundamentally different things, based on whether they are male or female? - Leaving out people like Mary Wollstonecraft, do you think that Madeleine L'Engle's or Astrid Lindgren's writing would have been fundamentally different, if they had been male? - Does John Grisham need to be male to produce the writing he does? - If this is really the case, we need to categorize writers by gender, if not, then we do not really need the category. At the moment, I think that other factors such as oigin influence writing more than gender does. Btw: There are people writing books that get read by lesbians or homosexuals, so there is definitely an aspect "natural" gender, and "perceived" gender, if we allow for gender-specific classification of writers, should we take care of such aspects? --Eptalon (talk) 20:06, 9 April 2012 (UTC)
- Delete No need to have these separate categories for females or males, they should just be under "Category:<nationalily here> writers". CRRaysHead90 | Get Some! 00:41, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
- Delete: No need for gender category. Otherwise we will need two cats for everything - Male writers/female writers, male artists/female artists, male politicians/female politicians etcPeterdownunder (talk) 23:49, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
- There is no real possibility that everyone will be categorised by gender. The category description on English Wikipedia explains why the category exists - women and writing is a sociological, historical and scholarly topic; men and writing is not. No-one is claiming that there is a call for a Male writers category. The claim by a few people in this discussion that the rules on categories are different to how they are on English Wikipedia has not been backed by any evidence of policy / guideline or consensus. If it has been ruled that we never categorise by gender on Simple, please leave a link to that. Rules are necessary, but they need to be able to be clearly seen in order for everyone concerned to know what they are. Jim Michael (talk) 04:38, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- As for the cat description on enwiki, that is an enwiki matter. We do not have to match enwiki. Maybe a category called something like "Issues of female writers" would address the concern you have. (Putting all female writers in a category doesn't address the topic, it just puts people in a list.) Of course, we'd need articles with relevant information to put in the category. Some, but probably not all, of our articles about female writers might have such information.
There is no rule that we never categorize by gender, but there should be good reason for the categories we have. --Auntof6 (talk) 05:28, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- As for the cat description on enwiki, that is an enwiki matter. We do not have to match enwiki. Maybe a category called something like "Issues of female writers" would address the concern you have. (Putting all female writers in a category doesn't address the topic, it just puts people in a list.) Of course, we'd need articles with relevant information to put in the category. Some, but probably not all, of our articles about female writers might have such information.
- If the rules specifically stated that we do not categorize by gender, you would have been warned and this category would have been quick deleted as a violation of our rules. As it is not a policy, it is up to a consensus, such as an RFD on the category to decide how we, the local editors feel on the matter. That is what is happening right now.
- If the rules specifically stated that we do not categorize by gender, you would have been warned and this category would have been quick deleted as a violation of our rules. As it is not a policy, it is up to a consensus, such as an RFD on the category to decide how we, the local editors feel on the matter. That is what is happening right now.
This is not the English Wikipedia
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- The general consensus here (at least since 2006) has been that, as the title graphic at the top of the page says, we are not the English Wikipedia. We don't always do things the way they do any more than every other languages does. Just because we are closer to them than most languages, we are no more likely to blindly follow their decisions than the German, Italian or Japanese Wikipedias are. They do not make our decisions for us. We make them here. Our only true connection to them is that we are both under the banner of the Wikimedia Foundation.
- To be honest, you are actually pushing people further away from supporting your position by the defense that "this is how the English Wikipedia does it so it must be correct". A good number of our editors are here because of issues with some aspect of the way the English Wikipedia does things. It is better to push the facts than to claim status quo from a totally different place. --Creol(talk) 05:32, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- Keep I would actually go keep on this. There are a number of instances where it is preferable to split by gender. There is a strong argument that this is one of them. -DJSasso (talk) 15:17, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- Delete After some more thinking, I think we should delete these categories; first of all, being a woman and a writer is not a sufficient condition to get a workable / useful classification; it is too weak to be of value. As to those people who wrote about the issues women face in society, they can be handled by other categories; which are not based on (perceived or actual) gender. Let me also stress again that we are not English Wikipedia. Our classification system needs to fit our needs, much as their classification system fits theirs. And perhaps as a last point: we currently have a few women only in British / American female writers. Imagine this for categories where we struggle to have any entries at all. --Eptalon (talk) 20:25, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
- Regarding the last point raised here: the parent cat existed continuously without an RfD for well over a year before the two subcats were created, which is why the parent cat has well over a hundred articles in it. The reason that the two subcats are underpopulated is that they were nominated for deletion on the day after they were created. As a consequence, populating the subcats was halted on that day. If not for this RfD, they would both have many more articles in them. In the unlikely event that these cats are kept, they will not be subcatted for every nationality, so we would not have any cats in which we would struggle to have any entries. Jim Michael (talk) 01:54, 12 April 2012 (UTC)
This request is due to close on 21:54, 15 April 2012 (UTC), seven days after it was filed, although it may be closed earlier due to WP:SNOW.
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not change it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No more changes should be made to this discussion.