Avoding misunderstanding about WP:Notability in CfD nominations[edit]
Categories get nominated to CfD and need to be WP:DEFINING
Articles get nominated to AfD and need to be WP:NOTABLE
Thank you for the recent contributions to the Categories for Discussion (CfD). Even if we disagree on specific nominations or the WP:OCAWARD guideline, it still helps the encyclopedia to have more perspectives.
In the World Golf Hall of Fame discusion, you mistakenly indicated that I claimed WP:NOTABILITY in my rationale for deleting a category, I raised and withdrew concern, and you confirmed it was an honest error. No big deal, we all make mistakes and I thought we could go back to respectfully disagreeing on the category discussions.
But since then, with several other of the CfD nominations I initiated, your lenghthy replies involve notability of the the articles rather then WP:DEFINING of the categories. To me at least, this seems to imply that I'm either attempting to delete articles or that I am using WP:NOTABILITY as a rationale for deleting categories when neither one is my intent. I don't expect us to agree on categorizing awards but I'd love to interact more clearly and succintly.
Can I structure my nominations to be less confusing? Do you have some questions about my nomininations in general that would clear things up? Is there something I'm not thinking of to avoid confusion in CfD?
RevelationDirect Just a note, I'm working through a few issues first before replying. I'm not ignoring you. I do want to work things out the best we can.dawnleelynn(talk) 21:06, 3 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
RevelationDirect Ok, let's get started. We'll start with the notability basics:
In the golf discussion, the mistake I was admitting to was thinking that your paragraph laying out your reasoning for deleting the category was part of your rationale. I realized it was not after your message and let you know.
I never intended to imply that you were intending to delete articles at any time, so let's get that one out of the way.
Notability is about more than just creating or deleting articles.
Notability applies to all articles (not just the ones justified by GNG). WP:WHYN
For instance, did you know that the notability guidelines also apply to the creation of stand-alone lists and tables? WP:NOTESALWP:LISTN
Notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article. WP:ARTN
Regarding the subject of a hall of fame category:
In WP:DEFINING it mentions that "a defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having"
What are the reliable sources in your view for a hall of fame category?
What does the external hall of fame have to do with the category's definingness? I can't find anything in the category policies to support this except reliable sources...however...it just says that the reliable sources define the subject. It doesn't say anything about going through the sources and describing them and making judgments about the hall, such as the hall only echos fame, for example. And this is where I say you are making a case on something the policy never intended. The hall has been made into an article, so the subject is notable, and its sources are already reliable. (So this is where notability could play a part if this makes sense...probably the only place left that it could.)
For another example, what does the induction method of a hall of fame have to do with the definingness of the hall of fame category?
This question is on a different track, but I wonder. "if the characteristic would not be appropriate to mention in the lead portion of an article, it is probably not defining;" - I see mentions of whether an induction is mentioned in the lead or not. However, this quote only mentions if it is appropriate or not, not if is there or not, is it in some other policy I missed?
General Thoughts:
The category system is a convoluted one, and many others beside me have voiced this opinion. I am doing my best to learn it. If I make a mistake, I will correct it. I will be fixing my lengthy messages in the CfD discussions soon. Yes, I went way overboard with the length. Sorry you thought I was indicating a different notability argument than I meant.
I have figured out some of the notability guidelines don't fit in there the way I thought they did. I already gave an example of this in the marine discussion. I now know that the induction is supposed to be mentioned in the inductee articles to be defining per the "Article" section under WP:CAT and that the notability guideline WP:NEXIST that says this same thing does not need to be done does not apply.
Yes, you mentioned that we don't agree about WP:OCAWARD. It is because it doesn't actually mention halls of fame. I did a search throughout that page's archives and only found one hall of fame mentioned ever.
My mentor montanabw and I had become concerned with the amount of halls that could be deleted, your talk page mentions a 90 percent figure. But I also want you know that I am not against any being deleted either. And I don't want spend all my time on CfD discussions, so I hope we can come to better understandings. Again, I'm sorry for the frustration my earlier messages caused, and I will strive to be more clear and concise in the future.
I hope all of this is clear. But if something is not clear, please ask first. It is all said with good intentions. And you don't have to reply to it all at once either. Take your time. Thanks, dawnleelynn(talk) 04:44, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I'll give some additional thoughts later when I have more time but I did want to mention one thing about CFD etiquette now since you mentioned you were reviewing your earlier posts in CFD. Generally, when you change what you wrote--especially when others have already replied to it--the prefered method is to strikethru your comments (example) so that later readers can understand the flow without looking through the edit history. RevelationDirect (talk) 12:25, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Good thought about strikeout. I was actually having trouble finding it in source view yesterday which was weird. I did think of one more thing I forgot to mention. I do think that a hall of fame that is in a subject-specific notacbility guideline, which makes it able to give its inductees notability for an article might be more defining. However, there are awards that also give their subjects notability, which I would never consider making into a category, for instance, all of the world champions from the National Finals Rodeo and there are seven of those every year going back to 1929, one for each rodeo event...If you saw this list, I would probably not categorize anything in it: List of Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association Champions. dawnleelynn(talk) 16:14, 5 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I meant to write a couple sentences but I got carried away:
Notability of Articles vs. Definingness of Categories: Sometimes it's easier to understand a concept if you look at extreme examples: We have notable, well sourced articles on Tourism in Paris and Car accidents because those topics are well sourced and likely to be of interest to readers. It would be preposterous though to have Category:People who have visited Paris or Category:People who survived car accidents. This misunderstanding comes up a lot: the editor who saw List of people who have been pied and created this deleted category was acting in good faith, but getting hit in the face with a pie isn't defining and it puts a bunch of people in the same category as Phyllis Schlafly and they all deserve better. (-; The vast majority of articles and list articles will not be WP:DEFINING enough to the other articles in a potential category.
Award Categories: In general awards are especially prone to this "I have a list and that automatically means it's time for a category" misunderstanding. The category clutter this creates is breathtaking: take a look at the train wreck at the bottom of this article and keep in mind CFD already cut that list about in half. We routinely look at why the award was issued to determine definingness, even those from countries. I consider awards to be clearly defining when they are a career capstone in that industry: Academy Award, Pullitzer, Olympic medal and, yes, Grammy Hall of Fame and Baseball Hall of Fame. Now I understand you think of halls of fame more a joining a museum organization than an award, but that just moves the issue from WP:OCAWARD to WP:OCASSOC which has traditionally been a much tougher subtype of WP:NONDEFINING.
Halls of Fame: The 90% figure was from another editor and I nominate halls of fame individually or in small categories because I go into each with an open mind and take a careful look at each one. That being said, I find that lifetime achievement awards (or lifetime achievement "associations") tend to be much less defining because they just reflect the earlier accomplishment for which the biography article is already categorized. For instance when an Canadian wins a medal at the Olympics, within minutes a proud Canadian will categorize them under Category:Olympic medalists for Canada. Inevitably adding them to the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame a few years later (and it is inevitable) is redundant. I could do a better job in my nomination of calling out the WP:OVERLAPCAT guideline at play here though.
List Articles: Another thing I could better is how I talk about lists because I think this misunderstanding was my fault. Whenever I nominate a category under WP:OCAWARD, the first question those who *agree* with me is usually along the lines of "Pulling together all these names is a lot of work so how can we make sure we don't lose this information if there's not already a list article." So I pre-emptively say "the list is already here" or "I created the list" here. I never intended to imply that the presence of the list was a reason to delete or to keep a category per WP:CFL. I can see how it could read it that way.
I'll work on making my nominations clearer going forward on the last two points. Thanks so much for striking some of your CFD comments that may have misunderstood parts of my nomination! RevelationDirect (talk) 00:47, 6 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]
