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To the editors who insisted on the deletion of the category Category:Polish surnames, kindly use your bot powers to repopulate this category. Leaving this category with only five or six surnames weeks after the substitution of this cat for Category:Polish surnames undermines the credibility of our encyclopedia and ruins navigation for our users using our encyclopedia to search for Polish surnames. Badagnani (talk) 22:24, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't undoing all the edits be a complete end-run around this close? If this is truly a new category, then it should be populated in the regular fashion. If this is an attempt to recreate the prior category with a new name, then DRV with a suggestion for a rename is appropriate. A decision to upmerge is akin to deletion for me. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:22, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd also like to ask all those concerned to investigate which of the phrases "Polish-language surnames" and "Polish surnames" occurs in reliable sources, so that the correct name can be used. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 08:57, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This is a descriptive phrase, rather than a term, so other criteria may kick in. In particular, the main reason of current naming is that "Polish-language surnames" is less ambiguous: the category "Polish surnames" may mean "surnames used by Poles" or "in Poland". We don't want this. We want category for surnames of truly polish origin; Poles can use surnames of German, Russian, what's not origin. And I am not speaking about Polish Jews: since they were/are citizens of Poland, i.e., Poles, their surnames may also be thought as "Polish surnames". - Altenmann >t 17:13, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That answer is a mass of WP:OR and therefore irrelevant to my point. Stop trying to reinvent what better scholars than you have already developed. Use reliable sources. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 19:37, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to have a trouble in communicating with other people. Unless you give some respect to other wikipedians, you will never understand what they are saying. An additional clarification from a not so good scholar, but who can read what good scholars write: in literature the term "<Some nationality adjective> surnames" is often used to refer to surnames used by people of this nationality. The format "<Some nationality adjective>-language surnames" was deliberately selected in wikipedia after some discussion of wikipedians (probably by both "better scholars" and "worse scholars") to avoid ambiguity and confusion. It clearly existed because the supercategory (now deleted) was category:Surnames by country, which is clearly nonsense: Polish surnames exist not only in Poland. I am a free man and can assume a Polish surname without any traces of Polse in my ancestry, but it will not make it an "American surname"; it will remain "Polish surname". - Altenmann >t 21:20, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. Yes, the phrase "Polish-language surname" is seen infrequently. But the same is true, say, for the phrase "University of California, Davis alumni" (used for category:University of California, Davis alumni). - Altenmann >t 21:20, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
P.P.S. The corresponding wikipedia articles are titled Polish name/Polish surname, in accordance with the article naming rule of common usage. - Altenmann >t 21:34, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I respect other wikipedia editors as colleagues in this venture, according to WP:AGF. I do not respect any of them as scholars, because I have no evidence that they are, nor any reason to require it. The reason it is not required is that they are not permitted to advance their own scholarship, only to quote that of others. That is what WP:NOR and WP:RS mean. If the aim of the recent restructuring was "to avoid ambiguity and confusion" it has already been a spectacular failure. To change all the category names merely to help find a name for the supercategory was a ridiculous case of the tail wagging the dog; most people are unaware that the supercategory exists, and still fewer care. You have made lots of statements above as if contradicting something I said, whereas all I have said is that you should be using reliable sources. What sources do you intend to use when allocating particular articles to this category? Are you willing to accept the criteria they use? If so, what reasonable grounds can you have for not using the terminology they use? Thank you for pointing out the form of the article names, which I had indeed missed. I trust nobody is going to try and change them. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 22:04, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. I've just been looking at the articles which have already been allocated to this category. There are only four. Three of them have no references at all, while the fourth, Zbaraski family, has a reference but is not unambiguously Polish. I think your need for sources is pretty urgent. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 22:23, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Add a fact tag and remove them from this category. I have to agree with Samuel. WP:V is a core principle and isn't a joke. I've already gone to my local library and pulled a copy of the 1969 Surnames of the United Kingdom and am starting on that. If people would spend 1/10000th of the time doing actual real research instead of just fighting to make up whatever they want, this would be a lot more accurate and people wouldn't dispute it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:47, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Samuel: "the harm" has already been done; you either accept it, or find a place for centralized discussion, about all surname categories: in this talk page you achieve nothing. The move was initiated and performed by a couple of strong-willed and energetic wikipedians, persistent in imposing their point of view. If you want to oppose them, you have to find a couple of smart, willing, and persistent "same-thinkers" (I vorgot the correct English word). You may start from voters in Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_June_6#Category:Surnames_by_country. - Altenmann >t 01:03, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. On a grumbling note: with sorrow I see that destructive attitude in this undermanned area persists: Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_July_22#Template:LithuanianSurname. People just love to delete something without replacing with something equally useful. I think I will abandon working with surnames. Whatever will be, no worth wasting the nerve energy. - Altenmann >t 01:28, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Subst all the uses and you're set. What's destructive about that? You don't need to keep the template going. It's just unnecessary confusion. Heck, I'm an admin here and I couldn't immediately figure out what was going on with Adomaitis. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:19, 22 July 2009 (UTC) Not appropriate here, discussion at TfD is fine. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:45, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The book by Hanks, Patrick; Hodges, Flavia. A Dictionary of Surnames. Oxford University Press., which I've several times mentioned in talk pages recently, is pretty good on all European names. For example, looking at names which have recently gone into or out of this category, it includes Kalinowski, Lipinski and Wójcik, though not Kaczynski. Searching the net it didn't take very long to find a book by Hoffman, William F. Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings. Chicago: Polish Genealogical Society. which looks useful. There are of course absolutely no books called "Polish-language Surnames", and I shall continue to point out the stupidity of that category name. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 11:00, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I've just discovered this debate - what exactly is going on? It seems there was a discussion on whether to delete a whole load of "surnames by country" category, which most people opposed, but happened anyway because an admin knew better, now we've got categories like this one, which are not by country but by language, but can't be given their natural name because that would clash with one of the "by country" ones that were deleted, so they get a weird-sounding name instead... All very bizarre. Is this being discussed anywhere centrally? --Kotniski (talk) 12:17, 24 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, there was a large problem of whether certain surnames belongs in the categories "Polish surnames", "Chinese surnames" and the like (and what does that mean), the admin decided to have all the articles upmerged until people actually found reliable sources. They were then recreated under the "Polish-language surnames", "Chinese-language surnames", which as Samuel points out, is meaningless. Some fall under the "let's put them into categories now and find sources later"; others the opposite. I for one went to my local library and picked up a book on the subject of UK surnames. I don't think there's a central discussion location although I would put Category talk:Surnames as the most logical spot. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:11, 26 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
