Category talk:Industrial Workers of the World leaders

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Perhaps we should move this to Category:Industrial Workers of the World members? A number of notable people have been wobblies that were arguably "leaders" (e.g. Helen Keller), but the term is a bit vague to know whether they should included. Sarge Baldy 21:36, 28 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

For me, this category is very problematic. How can we call all these historic folks leaders, yet ignore the GST's of the organization since their time?

The problem is particularly notable considering the IWW philosophy-- "we are all leaders..."

Some of these (such as Lucy Parsons) played a role in the founding, but i'm not aware that she led the organization in any way thereafter. Ettor was a prominent organizer until he was kicked out. But i would argue he wasn't any more prominent than A.S. Embree. Joe Hill was prominent, but didn't "lead."

I'm going to move all of these to where i believe they belong, and fit without any controversy-- to the IWW category.

I will explore whether this particular group (leaders) can be renamed. Richard Myers 03:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In case anyone is wondering, I checked whether these people are all Americans, in which case this category would only belong in the U.S. category, but one of them was an Australian. CalJW 01:31, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The IWW is a world-wide organization, although focus is often mainly on the U.S.

Also please note, according to categorization guidelines, "Articles should not usually be in both a category and its subcategory... However there are occasions when this guideline can and should be ignored." (emphasis added)

The given example is comparable to when someone is both a member of an organization, and one of that organization's leaders (as a sub-category.) In such an example, they belong in both categories. So please discontinue removing leaders from the general IWW category, where all members and leaders have been placed.

Note that an IWW "members" sub-category does not currently exist. Therefore, per Wikipedia guidelines, "There are often occasions when articles might ideally be moved from a category to two or more of its subcategories, but not all of the subcategories exist. In such cases consider creating the additional subcategories, but if you decide not to do so, leave the articles in the parent category for the time being." (emphasis added)

There's also a serious problem with adminstering a "members" sub-category for the IWW category. All IWW membership records were destroyed in the period from 1918 to 1920. Therefore, except in the case of someone like Carlo Tresca, where we know he helped with organizing but never joined the organization, it would be problematic determining where to put leaders such as Mother Jones or Lucy Parsons. If someone can find a workaround for this, fine. For now it is much easier and appropriate to have all such individuals in the IWW general category, in my view.

Guidelines are at: Wikipedia:Categorization — Richard Myers 16:58, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Unaware of this discussion, I've gone ahead and changed articles in Category:Industrial Workers of the World to Category:Industrial Workers of the World members, which was created sometime since the last comment, where appropriate. I'm not totally sure of the usefulness of this "leaders" subcategory, except for emphasis that the people were leaders as opposed to some others (whom I left) in the IWW category who were associated with the union's history but neither members nor leaders. Aside from this, and aside from the possibility of a new IWW-x subcategory that might help sort the 180 some articles currently directly categorized under IWW between people, events, or however, it seems appropriate at least to put those who had a leadership role directly under the general IWW category due to their historical impact on the union.

So to summarize:

Categorize known members with Category:Industrial Workers of the World members. For members who were considered leaders, simply explain their involvement and impact in their articles. I'm going to go ahead and make sure all "leaders" who were known members are categorized as such now, but in the future perhaps we can:
Categorize leaders who were not members (or, basically, anyone who had a strong, relatively direct impact on the IWW) simply with Category:Industrial Workers of the World.
In the future, it might be useful to come up with some scheme to associate people (members and nonmembers) with the specific IWW subtopics they impacted. Since this is a wiki, that is already done to some degree with article text and wikilinks. Would a category tree as well be useful for this?

How does this sound? – Djr13 (talk) 18:40, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]