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Kept

Deleted

Go, Mississippi

This was deleted at Wikisource:Possible copyright violations/Archives/2006/11#Author:Houston Davis

The copyright details of this song have been documented by yours truly at w:Go, Mississippi and w:Wikipedia_talk:Copyrights#Subsection.2C_lyrics. I have uploaded a poor quality set of pagescans 1 and 2.

John Vandenberg (chat) 13:30, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, our page Go, Mississippi and Author:Houston Davis attribute it to a different person (similar name, different date of birth and death).
John Vandenberg (chat) 13:38, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
John, I am not sure what you are indicating. It should not have been deleted? -- billinghurst (talk) 23:47, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
I believe he's requesting the restoration of this page, but I could be mistaken...? Jude (talk) 23:54, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Yes. Sorry I didnt make that more clear. John Vandenberg (chat) 14:03, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Category:US bills concerning NASA

The following discussion is closed:

Deleted billinghurst (talk) 05:20, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Only one article in it which is better suited for other categories.—Markles 12:54, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Author:Lise Bacon et al.

The following discussion is closed:

Summation: in the general case, author pages should not exist unless there are free works that correspond. In lieu of such works, delete.

This and several other author pages were listed by Prosfilaes for speedy deletion on copyright grounds. There really is no copyright issue if there is no material there. If we had the material it would be easier to evaluate, and parliamentary speeches of Canadian politicians may very well be usable.

Nevertheless, I support the deletion of these pages on entirely different grounds. The person who started this page has also started a large number of articles for Canadian and other politicians without any indication that the person ever wrote anything. A pre-condition for an author page should be that the person wrote something, or otherwise produced something that qualifies for inclusion in Wikisource. It is incumbent on the person who starts an article to give some indication of that fact, most often by listing at least one item in "Works".

Deleting these articles need not be permanent. If someone brings it into compliance with that one simple condition, it can easily be recreated. In the absence of such a condition, the risk is that the author pages become nothing but an empty collection of names. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 18:18, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

  • Delete. They all qualify under G6 in WS:CSD, and I would have felt justified procedurally to have just speedy them. Parliamentary speeches of Canadian politicians probably fall under Crown Copyright, unless they truly were extemporaneous. The other possibility is that they wrote something that qualified under GovEdict that was attributed to them personally, but that's rare for parliamentarians. I don't know what the current policy on G6 deletions is--Author:Isaac Asimov is one example that jumps out as having set there for a while with no possible works, though one was found quite recently (and is now buried under a complete bibliography.) Do we need to change the previous policy here?--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:55, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
    • There are two possible changes. One would be to remove the reference to author pages from G6. How much do we want to be a bibliographical resource? Even if everything by an author is protected, listing those works is still perfectly legal. If there are copyright issues with a parliamentarian, we can deal with that when someone offers such material. Lise Bacon is likely to fare better than some of the others because of her having been a provincial cabinet minister. My other point is that we should avoid looking at some of these pages through copyright-coloured glasses. If there is an easy and objective criterion for deleting a page that should be the preferred way to go. Requiring a small bit of evidence that someone at least wrote something could be our far more objective counterpart to Wikipedia's assertion of notability. This should still not be a criterion for speedy deletion; we can give a person a week to come up with the title of one work by the "author". Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 16:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
      • I enjoy reading bibliographies, but I haven't seen anything on Wikisource worthy of the name. A good bibliography has far more information than we have on each work, and what information depends on what type of bibliography it is. Going back to Author:Isaac Asimov, what audience does [1] really serve? When I did add a possibly relevant entry, all the rest of the text hide the one work we might possibly have in the next 25 years. An author page should serve our goal of adding work pages; any author pages that don't and won't link to work pages are clutter and no use to anyone.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
        • The Asimov page is an excellent example, and I agree that our approach to bibliography has been sorely deficient. I am just less quick to call them clutter as long as they can reasonably be improved. Maybe the question we should be asking is what information do we want to include in a bibliography. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 06:53, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Neutral with deletionist tendencies. I would like to encourage Author: namespace pages if there is the potential that they have published, and to encourage the use of {{Copyright until}} to cater for copyright works. I do not want to see random generation of author pages where there is no intent or likelihood to populate. Works may be copyright violations and they get dealt with, however, Author pages are not in the same category, especially if they are an author. [John Vandenberg made a notable reflection in this respect recently (cannot find it)]. If we were to work within that criteria to determine better guidance on Author namespace, then I am up for the discussion. -- billinghurst (talk) 04:15, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
    • I'm up for that. In its most basic form: require the naming of at least one findable item under "Works" in the author page. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 16:00, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
      • I think we should find one item under works that that we can reasonable have, and I think we should avoid having pages that are just Copyright until repeated over and over again.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
        • So explore what we want and prioritise with relation to published works
Basic principles - Author pages to contain
  • links to works on Wikisource (primary goal)
  • links to works publicly available on external sites, where unable to be hosted at WS (secondary goal)
  • use of {{copyright until}} to works where one of the above exists (complementary goal)
- Author pages not to be
  • Bibliographical listing of copyright work, ie. not all templated copyright until
reference: Wikisource:Style guide#Author pages -- billinghurst (talk) 04:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Repeatedly using {{copyright until}} doesn't look very good on a page. Where the copyright status can be determined on the basis of the author's death date it should be enough to put something like "This author's works are all copyright until Dec. 31, yyyy, unless otherwise noted." (Should the Asimov listings not read "until 2063" instead of "2062"; there's some ambiguity in what we mean by "until"). Avoiding pages that are lists of copyright works only is fine, but experience tells me that there are some people who will read "avoid" as "forbid", and willing to make an issue of it. We already include works about an author, and it may very well be for some authors whose entire works are copyright there could still be PD or free commentary. I also note that some of the articles in the Asimov page have links to Wikipedia articles about that work. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 06:53, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
  • The only cases where copyright status can be determined solely on the basis of the author's death date is if the first work was published no earlier than 1978 and they died no earlier than 1978. Works published prior to 1978 get 95 years of copyright from first publication; works published after 1977 by an author who died before 1978 get 70 years of copyright from 1978. That doesn't leave us very many cases where the copyright status can be determined simply on the basis of the author's death.
  • If we're going to have author pages for works about an author, why not people pages for works about a non-author? I think Wikipedia should have the job of making lists of links to Wikipedia's pages about Asimov's works.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:15, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
  • On the simple basis of what you say the information on the Asimov page is misleading. The page even uses 2062 for the anthologies that he edited, ignoring the fact that copyrights there will depend on the authors anthologized.
  • I've already had arguments about publisher pages, so I can't see much traction in general people pages at this time. I would hate to see contributors start a lot of people pages in highly questionable circumstances. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 18:04, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
We have asked nicely, so now tell the editor that unless they come and talk to us, the only option that remains is to block their efforts, which will reserve the right to do. I have speedy deleted a couple that were definite goodbye material. -- billinghurst (talk) 15:49, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
If that's what it takes to get his attention ... Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 18:04, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

ISMAEL ISSAC

The following discussion is closed:

Speedy delete billinghurst (talk) 04:46, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Vanity page? --Eliyak T·C 04:36, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Category:Britannica articles needing translations

The following discussion is closed:

Deleted all. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 13:13, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

A couple weeks ago, I left a question at Category talk:Britannica articles needing translations of Greek, asking why these weren't Category:Texts needing translations. There was no answer. Hence I moved all the articles in categories under Category:Britannica articles needing translations to categories under Category:Texts needing translations. One of these category trees should be deleted; needless to say, I'm all for deleting the one I just depopulated, but I'll revert all my changes if that's the prevailing opinion. The reason for the change, basically, is that there's no reason not to do this for all pages, and there's not enough articles so categorized at this point to need subdivision by more than just language.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:01, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

That is, this deletion covers Category:Britannica articles needing translations, Category:Britannica articles needing translations of French, Category:Britannica articles needing translations of German, Category:Britannica articles needing translations of Greek, and Category:Britannica articles needing translations of Latin.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:07, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

The Shepherd's Journal

The following discussion is closed:

Deleted Sherurcij

The work has no specific reference to its source or version, I have concerns about whether this is a truly reproduced version, and whether it meets our requirements for English -- billinghurst (talk) 02:23, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I would say speedy delete, copyvio or nonsense that appears to be derived from a 2001 film [2] — Cygnis insignis (talk) 05:27, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Other

Category:Acts of the Parliament of the Province of Canada

The following discussion is closed:

Merge Category:Province of Canada:Acts of Parliament to Category:Acts of the Parliament of the Province of Canada
Category:Canada:Acts of Parliament to Category:Acts of the Parliament of Canada

Category:Acts of the Parliament of the Province of Canada was nominated for speedy deletion on the grounds that "Orphan category has been replaced". Upon checking that this category really is redundant to another, I found that its parent category contains the following categories:

  1. Category:Acts of the Parliament of the Province of Canada
  2. Category:Province of Canada:Acts of Parliament
  3. Category:Acts of the Parliament of Canada
  4. Category:Canada:Acts of Parliament

It seems that the first two of these are redundant to each other, and so are the last two. Clearly there should be two deletions here. But I take issue with the implication that the Country: Acts of Parliament form is preferable. Personally I much much prefer the Acts of Parliament of Country form. Therefore I am bringing this here as a contested speedy request. Which form should be deleted? Hesperian 05:26, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Can people explain what they see as the benefits and weakenesses of the two means. Categories are not my strength. -- billinghurst (talk) 07:44, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
What made the first one an easy nominee for speedy deletion is that it was both an orphan and wihtout content; it's also needlessly verbose. There is no doubt that the two should at least be merged in some way. The same goes for #3 and #4. #3 is the smaller category, but its contents seem to give more weight to regnal years than calendar years. As I've stated before in relation to the U.S. Code, this is not just a simple matter of a deletion discussion; if one or two categories happen to be wrongly deleted it's no big deal to reconstruct later. My preferred categories for these would be "Law - Canada - Acts" and "Law - Canada (Province) - Acts", though even I have reservations about the best punctuation scheme. Law may be one of the most difficult areas to categorize, and it comes as no surprise that the Library of Congress's "K" Class was the last to be organized — long after all the others had been settled. Thus, I maintain my support for serious consideration at Portal talk:Law. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 22:35, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
To be honest, I'd merge them all into #3. (Full disclosure, I'm Canadian, omg!) Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Carl Jung. 00:53, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
At the very least, delete 2 and 4. They look weird. Jude (talk) 06:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I think it may be worth treating this as two distinct proposals: the proposal to use a prose title rather than a colon-separated hierarchical one, which appears to have fairly strong support; and the proposal to merge Canada categories with Province of Canada categories, which, since I am inclined to agree with Eclecticology, appears to be split right down the middle. Hesperian 23:32, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I created all of these catagories, but I'm not attached to any of them. 2 and 4 were an attempt to make 1 and 3 less verbose (especially 1): #3 could be shortened to "Acts of the Canadian Parliament, but how do you shorten #2? To be honest, I prefer Eclecticology's suggestion of "Law - Canada - Acts" and "Law - Canada (Province) - Acts", though I prefer the ":" to the "-", and I don't necessarily see "Law" as being the base category. The same structure can be used for Proclamations, Orders-in-Council, etc. Not so with a prose title. Canada and the Province of Canada (and the original French colony of Canada) are distinct political entities and so should have seperate categories.--T. Mazzei (talk) 03:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
I have to agree with you about the ":", especially in the first occurrence in those categories. My first inclination was for an m-dash, but not having this available as a single keystroke was problematic. I experimented a little with the hyphen at Category:Law - Thailand, but soon realized how easy it is to forget the proper spacing; that would be unwelcome to newbies. Having "Law" as a base category, or deciding on any base categories requires a serious look at where the entire category structure is going. It is akin to the way we shelve books in a library in the most efficient fashion. In a library I think we would want all the law books together. The law books about one country are most useful when they are beside the law books of other countries, not when they are filed with unrelated books about the same country. I will save my general concerns for how we use the Wikisource: namespace for some other time, but we now have Wikisource:Canadian Proclamations beside Wikisource:Canadian poetry, and I don't think that that is the best way to put these things. For that matter, the term "proclamation" may not mean anything except to someone who has already visited that page. I think that category structures need to be predictable: a newcomer should be able to find his way with a minimum of effort; one familiar with the laws of one country should be able to easily find his way through the laws of another country. Categories should be expandable when that becomes necessary. If there is only a few articles in "Law:Niger" that is enough for the moment, but as the number of articles increases we should have predictable ways of expanding this. For a country like Canada, where we already have a substantial corpus, it should be quite OK for a newcomer to place an article in the branch Category:Law:Canada; someone can always move it to a smaller limb later. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 08:18, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Summary It would seem that there is a consensus for merging and coming out with two categories (Canada + Province of Category), however, there is a split on the style of categories, prose vs colon separated. REQUIREMENT to resolve style. -- billinghurst (talk) 11:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
    Quite so. Thus again, it comes down to a question that is better considered somewhere other than in a deletion discussion. Categories are tools; they are not the primary contents of Wikisource. The question of whether the broad topic (such as law) or the geographical entity should be the primary categoriser is a difficult one with profound effects. Guided by standard works such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings I find that for most areas of knowledge the topic takes precedence. History and geography are the most notable exceptions. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 19:58, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
    I reckon prose titles eliminate this issue of what is the "primary categoriser". The topic is primary in "Canada:LawLaw:Canada"; the country is primary in "Law:CanadaCanada:Law"; but the prose title admits no such discussion. Sure, you can still argue over whether "Law of Canada" is better than "Canadian law", but that is a discussion of grammar and style, not primacy. Hesperian 06:00, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
    As I see it you have exactly reversed which is primary; I envisioned the first mentioned to be primary. Prose titles tend to obscure rather than eliminate the issue of primacy; we can still argue that "Law of Canada" makes law primary, and that "Canadian law" puts the emphasis on Canada. A similar problem will arise when we try to distinguish between "Contract law" and "Law of contracts". In a hierarchical system we should be able to browse the category list in an orderly manner to get where we want. Thus "Law:Canada" will come before "Law:Chile" and "Law:Canada, contracts" (or "Law:Canada/contracts" or "Law:Canada:Contracts) should come between those two. A well hierarchised system will allow for further subdivision without the necessity of going back to alter higher category levels. A sort of collective wisdom has accumulated over the years in library systems; I think we should take full advantage of that. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 18:14, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
    The category system is hierarchical by its very nature. The colon convention does not impose a hierarchy; it creates a mapping between alphanumerical order and hierarchical order, so that putting things in alphanumerical order reveals the hierarchy. But the hierarchy is there regardless of whether you can see it in an alphanumerically sorted list. I put it to you that your "collective wisdom" of libraries evolved in a time before computers, when mapping the topic hierarchy onto alphanumerical order was crucial for effective indexing and access.

    I really think your "we can still argue that 'Law of Canada' makes law primary" argument is invalid; of course you can argue it, but is there any truth in it? Would I be taken seriously if I walked up to a Canadian law professor and said "I've been listening to you and I can tell that you put your profession before your country because you prefer the phrase law of Canada to the phrase Canadian law"? Hesperian 23:40, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

    A category system is indeed hierarchical, but only becomes hierarchical after some kind of order has been applied to a collection of ad hoc categories. A colon convention (or one using other symbols as well, or some other alphanumeric system, and I'm not even raising the matter of classification systems such as Dewey et al.) may indeed serve to reveal an existing hierarchy, but a lack thereof cannot logically be used to infer that a hierarchy exists. We cannot know that a hierarchy exists until we can describe it; it does not exist axiomatically, nor can one safely assume that it does. So what if a collective wisdom evolved before computers! How do computers invalidate that wisdom? What have the computerphiles done to improve upon it? How is my argument about variant prose categories any more or less "truth"ful than your dismissive argument that it is mere style or grammar? Choosing between "Law:Canada" and "Law of Canada" is far more a matter of stylistics between the use of a colon and "of". "Truth" has nothing to do with it.

    Your inquisitorial posturing before the law professor should probably not be taken seriously because it sets up a false dichotomy. We are, I believe still talking about categories? Turning this into a choice between the rule of law and chauvinism is unwarranted. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 04:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

    I'm not sure I understand most of the above. What I do understand is that we impose hierarchy by putting the "law of Canada" category (whatever it be named) into categories "Law" and "Canada".

    I think this may come down to the distinction between nomenclature (what things are called) and taxonomy (how things are organised). We have a perfectly workable taxonomic system (i.e. categories) and therefore have no need to co-opt our nomenclature for that purpose. We are free to call things whatever we want, because we have some other, superior, way of defining our taxonomy.

    It is universally accepted by those who study w:formal concept analysis that ontological taxonomies like what we are faced with here cannot by modelled using a w:tree structure; what is required is something more powerful, namely a w:lattice (order). Well, guess what? Our category system is a lattice, and your put-a-colon-in-the-name approach is a tree. This is fundamentally why the "Law:Canada" versus "Canada:Law" problem arises when you co-opt nomenclature in this way, and why it doesn't arise when we define our taxonomy through our category system, and keep our names for naming.

    Hesperian 05:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

    Actually, I think the problem with the category system isn't so much whether it is arranged as a "tree" or as a "latice", it is that, having grown organically, it is "inconsistant". This makes it difficult to navigate to find the sub-catagory you want, as different people organize things in different ways. It's not so much a problem here, but it is on the larger projects (and will be as this project grows, unless steps are taken). My preference would be a (mostly) "non-hierarchical" category system - documents are place in multiple simple "base" catagories rather than the appropriate sub-catagory(s), though this would likely require improvements in the search. Documents would not be placed in catagory "Canadian Acts of Parliament, 1986" (subcatagory of "Canadian Acts of Parliament", subcatagory of "Law of Canada", subcatagory of "Law" and "Canada"), but would be placed in catagories "Canada", "Act", and "1986" (or similar), and a catagory search of with these would bring up all documents which would have been in "Canadian Acts of Parliament, 1986" (or "Law:Canada - Acts, 1986", or "Canada:Law:Acts:1986", or whatever). Heirarchy could come in by making "Acts" a subcatagory of "Law", so that a search for "Canada" "Law" "1986" would bring up "Acts" as well as other instruments, case law, etc. Advantages include easier maintenance (no or less heirarchy to organise/maintain) and easier to find documents (don't get hidden on some obsure/oddly chosen branch of the tree). Disadvantage is that that it becomes useless to browse individual catagories due to the number of documents in them.--T. Mazzei (talk) 03:49, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
    We largely agree?? What you call a "category search" is a search through a multidimensional lattice. For that to work depends on having search software that can cope effectively with the process that you describe. It also requires a judicious choice of basic categories lest it become just as muddled as our present ad-hoc collection of categories. The tree and lattice approaches address different constituencies in the same way that in traditional libraries one can find books either by looking in a card catalog or by browsing the shelves. These experiences are qualitatively different. Why not have both? They should complement each other. Categories are still easier to maintain than the list pages in the Wikisource: namespace, the latter being more suited to want lists. The inconsistencies of idiosyncratic categorization are a gradually growing problem, and the work needed to fix is gradually becoming more onerous. Ideas that made sense when they were first applied outlive their usefulness, but there is often a marked unwillingness to stand back and view familiar categories in a larger context. Attempts to bring about reforms of this kind of thing encounters defenders of the status quo. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 06:46, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
    Whether you're deciding to put "Law of Canada" into categories "Law" and "Canada", or deciding to name your Law of Canada category "Law:Canada" rather than "Canada:Law", you are making decisions about names and structure. Both system rely equally upon "a judicious choice of basic categories"; both are equally prone to "ad hoc" structures; both are equally vulnerable to "the inconsistencies of idiosyncratic categorization". You're presenting your colon convention as a magic bullet which will solve all the ills of our current system. In fact it is vulnerable to all the same ills, plus it creates a whole new set of problems viz "Law:Canada" versus "Canada:Law". And if that isn't bad enough, you'd have to get it right first time, because recategorisation under your colon convention is non-trivial—it requires a category rename, and at present that is not supported by MediaWiki. A bad idea is a bad idea, and you can't make it good simply by banging on about bringing "reform" in the face of obstructionist "defenders of the status quo." Hesperian 12:54, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
    You're the first one to speak of "magic bullets", so I fail to see your basis for imputing such motives on anyone else. The "colon convention" is not my new invention, nor am I wed to any particular punctuation in that regard. I am quite willing to draw upon the accumulated wisdom of librarians, who took many years to hammer out their ideas, and others in developing working categorizations and to engage in discussions in the course of development. I like to avoid being tainted by your desire to "get it right the first time"; the system may need to be reworked several times—so what? I don't adhere to the fallacy that by getting it right the first time we will conveniently be able to avoid talking about something ever again. You seem to forget that it is searching in your lattice that is not supported by MediaWiki; that is not the case with a hierarchical system. If categories need to be renamed, that's no big deal. Consensus-building is about finding common ground; it requires presenting constructive alternatives and not just a piling on of negativity. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 18:24, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
    Mediawiki searches categories. Hesperian 00:10, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

We seem to be going around in circles, and possibly drifting slowly away from the topic. Time, I think, to summarise our positions and refocus. Here goes:

The fundamental difference between a lattice and a tree is that lattice nodes may have multiple parents, whereas tree nodes may only have one. In a lattice-based taxonomy, such as the Mediawiki category system, a category for Canadian law could have both Canada and Law as parents; but in a tree-based category system such as the proposed system of hierarchical naming, a category can only have one parent. You have to choose between "Law:Canada" and "Canada:Law". This is not merely an extra design decision to be made; it is a fatal flaw. You have argued that we should be able to browse the category list in an orderly manner to get where we want. Thus "Law:Canada" will come before "Law:Chile"; but one might just as well argue that "Canada:Law" should come between "Canada:History" and "Canada:Sport". By adopting a tree-based system, we will be forced to make myriad decisions like this, decisions that are undesirable and ought to be unnecessary. Furthermore any decision that is made must be made consistently. If, in far-flung corners of Wikisource, different editors begin building hierarchies rooted at Sport and Mexico respectively, then the moment someone has to create a category for Mexican sport, a decision must be made whether to name it "Sport:Mexico" or "Mexico:Sport", and either way vast numbers of categories must be renamed in order to maintain a semblance of order.

I cannot see any concrete suggestions as to how Wikisource would benefit from the proposed system. I see claims that the two are complementary and "qualitatively different", but the argument behind that claim is built solely upon analogy with categories versus lists, and looking up a card catalogue versus browsing the shelves. Suggestions that the proposal would result in a taxonomy that is less "ad hoc"/"injudicious"/"idiosyncratic" have not been supported by any argument, and have, I believe, been refuted.

My position is that we already have an excellent taxonomic system in the Mediawiki category system, and that we will gain nothing whatsoever by coopting our names in order to overlay our taxonomic system with another, redundant and inferior, one. The proposed system offers no apparent benefits, and would, I believe, create vast maintenance headaches.

Hesperian 01:13, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

One person's rhetorical declaration that a concept has been refuted does not make it so. Nor does your personal failure to see any benefits imply inferiority, nor is there any value to FUD about maintenance headaches. You would do as well standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier to declare victory; that would still not justify your cause.
The categories-versus-lists debate is an entirely different matter. It is between a top-down a priori list system, and a bottom-up a posteriori category system. Both have their places.
There may indeed be redundancy between the two approaches, as there would also be if further approaches were introduced. Redundancy can be a good thing. Multiple systems increase the chances that more people will be able to find what they are looking for. How is your series in Category:Wikisource species index pages significantly different from what I am trying to do here with law? At least I would have kept those pages to the genus level until there was enough there to warrant expansion.
Not all proposed systems will survive, but if they are to fail they should do so of their own accord, not just because some individual can argue more loudly against them. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 04:55, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
"How is your series in Category:Wikisource species index pages significantly different from what I am trying to do here with law." Um, we're talking about a hierarchical naming convention for categories?
Yes, classical taxonomic systems in biology are clearly hierarchical, and modern cladistics even more so. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 08:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
Indeed; they're even tree-based. But the topic of this discussion is your proposal to co-opt category naming in order to superimpose a redundant and insufficiently expressive taxonomy on top of the taxonomy we already have. My series in Category:Wikisource species index pages does not do that; it does nothing even remotely like that. In terms of the topic we are discussing here, these two examples are more than "significantly different"; they are poles apart. Hesperian 11:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I don't deny the redundancy, but "co-opt" and "insufficiently expressive" are your characterizations. I don't object to your hierarchical presentation of species; it certainly supports the necessary redundancy. Just because biology and law are poles apart does not negate parallel developments. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 16:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
"Multiple systems increase the chances that more people will be able to find what they are looking for." I disagree. I think it is much easier to find what you're looking for in a single coherent system than in multiple redundant contradictory systems.
How so? Different people look for things in different ways; students learn in different ways. Your system works for you, and that's fine; someone else finds that another system works better for him, and that's fine too. It is illogical to generalize that into the belief that it will work equally well for everyone. It used to be said that what is good for General Motors is good for the United States, and that's now a bankrupt extrapolation. Redundancy need not imply contradictory. In some systems such as law it can be problematic, but in others, notably where safety is a factor, it becomes a fail safe device. What evidence, other than your personal experience, is there that that your approach is so much better? Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 08:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
"Not all proposed systems will survive, but if they are to fail they should do so of their own accord". You seem to be saying that every proposal has the right to be implemented. On that basis, I propose we use non-hierarchical prose names for our categories, exclusively. Is that the end of this discussion?
It's not the end of the discussion if you want to insist on the word "exclusively," because that would make it equally valid for a contrary proposal to be used exclusively. I would say more that every broadly reasonable proposal has the right to be tried. Full scale implementation is only possible if more people are willing to make use of the proposal. Something has failed of its own accord only when no-one is using the technique any longer ... not even its inventor. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 08:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I'll accept that definition; but in my opinion, your proposal is not "broadly reasonable". Anything and everything that can be expressed using your colon convention can already be expressed in our category hierarchy. Therefore anything expressed using your colon convention is either redundant to or contradictory to our present category system. Meanwhile, there are an infinitude of basic relationships that are routinely expressed in our category system, that cannot be handled by your colon convention; e.g. the trivial fact that "Law of Canada" is a subtopic of both "Law" and "Canada". As far as I can tell, your colon convention is utterly without merit, and therefore a proposal to implement it cannot be considered reasonable. Hesperian 11:15, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
When did it become "my" colon convention, as you have intimated four times in that short paragraph? I began with suggesting a spaced hyphen, and readily agreed when someone else expressed a preference for a colon. Something is "broadly reasonable" if it can have some kind of sane rationale attached to it, and is not destructive of others' efforts. A denial of broad reasonability in reference to one's own opinion does not imply that it is so outside of the framework of that opinion. Nobody is disputing that "Law of Canada" is not a proper hierarchical branching of both "Law" and "Canada", but that does not justify the gratuitous dismissal of alternative treatments as "utterly without merit." Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 16:47, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
In reviewing your last four or five posts on this topic, I perceive a distinct trend away from discussing the topic, towards discrediting me and my motives: "inquisitorial posturing", "a marked unwillingness to stand back and view familiar categories in a larger context", "inability to step back and look at things in a broader context.", "computerese mentality", "never anything more than inertia", "defenders of the status quo", "piling on of negativity", "FUD", "some individual can argue more loudly". Frankly, it is starting to piss me off. If you have an argument, present it, as I have been doing.
Hesperian 06:21, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
It's perfectly obvious that I have stayed on topic throughout this discussion; if you want indulge in some perception that you have been personally discredited that is your privilege; I have no desire for such ad hominem games. Each of the quoted snippets came within a specific context in response to a specific position, nothing more nothing less. I have been presenting my arguments all along so I can only assume that your closing statement was a rhetorical claim of victory to make Schopenhauer proud. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 08:28, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Categories are parameters within template, hence template(s) need modifying to get change. -- billinghurst (talk) 11:42, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

1901-1903 — Reforming the Army

The following discussion is closed:

There seems to be rough consensus for moving this to the project namespace. Either way, it's the only solution proposed, and this discussion is 5 months old. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 13:32, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Seeking opinions on what should happen to the above page, which is not a work. Either move it to Wikisource: namespace or possibly merged to another US page, if there is the appropriate page available. -- billinghurst (talk) 12:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

This is from a series of white papers on the subject used for the main article. Each of the sub-pages is a separate paper. I got side tracked into other things, but can finish the series.
If page seems to be subject matter, rather than an overarching work in its own right, it may be considering whether it is better sited the Wikisource: namespace. That is move 1901-1903 — Reforming the Army to Wikisource:1901-1903 — Reforming the Army -- billinghurst (talk) 05:17, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
A possible principal criterion for that kind of decision is the origin of the organizational structure. If the structure is inherent in the work itself, including Tables of Contents for anthologies and periodicals it should remain in project namespace. If the structure is a pure wiki creation, it should be in the Wikisource: namespace. If there is any general introductory or prefatory material to accompany the substantive pages, having it would help to clear this question. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 07:13, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Here is the original link:[3]

    • Now that I think I understand what is going on (?) I can support keeping it where it is. The page reflects a specific project outlined by someone outside wikisource. The source should be referenced in the header, and the contents should faithfully reproduce what the source says about its project. The four interlanguage links should probably be removed since they are not about what this project would be in those languages. There are a few other relatively minor points, but I'll hold off for now to avoid creating confusion. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 18:33, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
IMO it was a keep, though as a project it should be in the Wikisource: namespace, not listed as a work. I still think that it should be moved to that namespace, and I haven't seen any argument to have me differ from that POV. [Part of the issue is that we don't have a identified forum for such discussions] billinghurst (talk) 23:11, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
So then, what are the criteria for when such a page belongs in main or Wikisource: namespace? Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 17:01, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
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