Category talk:Awards by year of establishment

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Years

This category is within the scope of WikiProject Years, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Years on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.YearsWikipedia:WikiProject YearsTemplate:WikiProject YearsYears articles

"Established"

posted also as Category talk:Awards by year of disestablishment#"Disestablished"

Do this set of categories and its companion cats Category:Awards by year of disestablishment genuinely date institutional history? --presumably the years/dates some formal process is first approved and finally disbanded?
Or do they cover the earliest and latest officially award dates? The earliest award year is likely to be later than the year approved, but it might be earlier.
Another alternative is the years an award was first and last conferred --including announcement that there is no winner for this cycle, if applicable.

In prose description, not categorization, I (would try to) use dis/establish/ment in the first sense. For example, the Kate Greenaway Medal was established in 1955 [institution], but no book published in 1955 [official award date] was deemed suitable in 1956, so it was inaugurated in 1957 by its first award to the best children's book illustration of 1956 [official award date]. If I learned more about "no 1955 Medal", I might say that the award was inaugurated in 1956 by the announcement that no 1955 work was considered suitable.

This isn't a good illustration of the three alternatives. It's purpose is to illustrate the distinction between prose account and categorization. --P64 (talk) 16:42, 30 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for this thoughtful comment / suggestion. I believe I was the one to establish these categories. To be honest, we often don't have enough information on the award to establish true organizational history; just first award-date. And of course there's something a little funky there too, since sometimes awards are "dated" in advance or after the date they were actually "awarded". Rather than deal with the various complexities, I elected to just use an existing "... by year of establishments" structure, and put them all together; when I added categories I usually based categorization on the "chronological date on the first award", which usually was the most or only ascertainable date.
I would still argue that they should be organized by year, and just have one chronological structure. More than one chronological structure seems like extreme overkill. But I can certainly see either of two possible changes as being reasonable:

(1) establishing a list of priority of selection of dates, so if we do for instance know all these facts -- (a) chronological date of first award; (b) actual year first award given, (b) year organization established to make awards, and (d) year awards process began consideration ... -- maybe we prioritize them in terms of dating the "award". And then

(2) It might then be appropriate to rename the category from "... established ..." to "... inaugurated ..." or some other appropriate term to accurately express what most of the entries are, or the most desirable classification. Counter-argument of course that we accept a certain amount of slop given the various kinds of dates available and the already existing structure of "... established...".

Additional thoughts? --Lquilter (talk) 19:49, 1 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]