Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/botanists by nationality

Category:Botanists by nationality

• Votes to delete (4): Radiant!, Gwalla, Mel Etitis (qualified), MPF
• Unclear (1): Kbdank71 (implied he would not support deletion if they were subdivided, which has been done)
• Votes to keep (3): Mikkalai, Wincoote, Uppland (vote changed)
• Stop the presses (1): Beland -this is effectively a vote to keep

This is an example of overcategorization. There is a relatively small number of botanists in Category:Botanists, and dividing them by country is not going to make it easier to look them up, especially as many botanists have done work in, for and with a multitude of countries. To make things worse, the subcategory 'English botanists' is subdivided into categories for British and Scottish ones... As below, with 'scientists by nationality', subdividing subfields produces too much overhead and reduces clarity. Delete Radiant! 21:02, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose The convention of dividing people by occupation and nationality is established beyond the point of return. It is essential as some users think in occupational terms and others in national terms. People in almost every field work internationally, but there nationality is still one of the most notable things about them. It is arbitary to attempt to make an exception for botanists. Wincoote 08:26, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Delete, but deletion has to be consistent with every other scientist subcategory to be meaningful. I think we should have categories for scientists by nationality and for scientists by discipline, but not for every intersection of these two (i.e. an oceanographer from Liechtenstein should be found both in Category:Liechtensteinian scientists and in Category:Oceanographers, but not in a Category:Liechtensteinian oceanographers, which will likely be far too small to be useful). / Uppland 16:02, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I am changing my vote, as I think this is a policy issue which should be discussed and applied broadly rather than just in the case of one group of categories. In any case, the inconsistencies with other categories mentioned by me below need to be addressed for these categories to be easier to navigate. Should Category:Naturalists and Category:Biologists be categories of articles or of subcategories? Who fits where? Do we risk using anachronistic terms for some people who worked before modern disciplinary divisions existed? Or, for that matter, anachronistic nationalities (like "Belgian" for people living before Belgium was invented), as Wetman points out below (but the same thing is true for e.g. painters). / Uppland 07:12, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Delete. Agree with Uppland: not every intersectionof categories needs a category of its own. If an article belongs in two categories, put it in both categories. — Gwalla | Talk 20:48, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I like Uppland's idea for consistence; it allows you to find someone if you know his profession or his nationality, whereas Wincoote's approach only allows you to find someone if you know both. Radiant! 10:23, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. occupation/nationality are major established classification everywhere. The fact that there are relatively few botanist in wikipedia says in disfavor of wikipedia, not of botanists. Mikkalai 21:42, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
• Delete — but I like Uppland's suggestion too. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:08, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • There are probably scores if not hundreds of people who have put a scientist in one of the detailed categories, so they are widely seen as having value. Some of the national scientist categories would be vast to the verge of uselessness. What about subcategories which have an non-academic interest, such as naturalists and astromers? Those articles would be lost to non specialists. Wincoote 01:17, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It looks like there is a consensus to delete this. However, the individual subcategories (which are obviously included in the discusison) were not tagged, so we should wait at least a few days before deleting them. -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:19, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Stop the presses! I hate to jump in at this late date here, but this deletion sets a major precedent which has the potential to cause huge problems. I would ask that this deletion of a subfield-of-science-by-nationality category should be reconsidered as part of a deletion of all subfield-of-science-by-nationality categories.

Which, by the way, would be a nightmare. If we can't classify people by both nationality and occupation at the same time, then Category:Nationalities by occupation and a bjillion subcategories would need to be deleted. The deletion of Category:American people by occupation would flood Category:American people with an unmanageble number of articles. If we declare that major occupations like "scientist" are OK, but subfields are not OK, then we will still have a major problem. For example, deleting the subcategories of Category:Astronomers_by_nationality would flood both the national scientist categories (like Category:American_scientists) and Category:Astronomers. Category:American astronomers alone has 242 articles! If the nationality-discipline categories are deleted, we will need to find some other way of subdividing both nationality and discipline categories. Are we supposed to use province and subfield names, or what? If a reader wants to find a person knowing only their nationality, they are going to have to slog through a list of thousands or maybe tens of thousands of articles to find them, no matter how they are classified. Likewise by occupation. This is why we have search engines!

And for consistency's sake, let's not just delete this subtree because it's thinly populated right now. There are plenty of "Fooian DisciplineName" categories; botany is hardly an exception here. To be consistent with other subfields of science, this should be kept, not deleted. Besides, it has plenty of potential for growth. (No pun intended.) -- Beland 05:30, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Delete (hope I'm not too late). Botanists by nationality has been around since October of 2004 and has a total of 6 articles spread out between 5 subcats (2 of them empty). By comparison, Botanists has 199 articles. I think if it were going to grow, it would have already. Also, if this is indeed deleted, it doesn't mean we have to go through and delete the other bajillion "Fooian DisciplineName" cats. Consistency is one thing, but empty (or almost empty) categories is a waste of space. Now if someone wants to categorize all 199 or so botanists into Nationality categories... -Kbdank71 16:35, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'll do it! -- Beland 03:16, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Please note that there may be overlap or inconsistency with some people being categorized in Category:Biologists or Category:Naturalists, both of which are also supercategories of Category:Botanists. It is at present not at all clear where some scientists should be found. / Uppland 04:15, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Major change in status The allocation of all botanists by nationality is complete. I presume that Kbdank71 would now support retention, not to mention Mikkalai and Beland.

Uppland's vote for deletion was dependent on a condition which hasn't been fulfilled and is extremely unlikely ever to be fulfilled. Therefore there is not a consensus for this proposal. There is a comprehensive list of botanists so we effectively have both systems in place concurrently. In addition, I have heard that a coming software update will allow users to "look through" a parent category into its subcategories if they wish. Therefore the concerns raised are transitory, and will soon be irrelevant. Wincoote 20:05, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Delete: naive soccer-fan nationalism at work. A category Botanists is the useful one, with its "Biologists" overlap. Even "European botanists" is invidious. Listing Charles de L'Ecluse as a "Belgian botanist" is like listing Henry Hudson as a US citizen— and besides, it runs counter to everything in Clusius' utterly international career. --Wetman 20:13, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • That is a silly slur. We don't just divide sportspeople by nationality. We do it for poets, politicians, and every other major category of scientist. Scientists are people. A person's nationality is significant. The naivety lies in thinking that mentioning someone's nationality denies their international significance: an absurb proposition. The category system isn't an ivory tower exercise for a few scholars, but a practical way of helping users to get to articles of interest, including articles which they didn't know would be of interest. Having botanists in the national categories encourages serendipity. Who knows perhaps some Swedish schoolchild might stumble on the article about Linnaeus this way and be inspired to become a professor of botany. Wincoote 22:56, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Very strong delete: any breakup of Category:Botanists is an incredible nuisance. Trying to look through 40 subcategories and sub-subcategories to see if a particular botanist has a page or not, or how said page is titled, is an absolute pain in the neck. And Wetman's point is very valid; many botanists operated almost exclusively in areas not their place of birth or naturalisation, many worked globally and cannot be allocated to any country; to call it a "silly slur" is arrogant nonsense. - MPF 20:38, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)