Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 February 13

• Note The argument that because Wikipedia is a global encyclopedia does not mean that there should not be categories of national subjects such as American Actors or British politicians. Putting the merits of the main argument aside, the fact that there might be a category of Turkish pages or Chinese pages does not mean that Wikipedia still can't be from a global perspective. The point of these kinds of categories is to facilitate navigation among pages dealing with similar topics.--Sparrowhawk64 (talk) 01:29, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Of course that is true, but that's not what I was arguing. Creating Category:Actors and Category:American actors as a subcategory, or Category:Politicians and Category:British politicians, is not akin to creating Category:Conservative organisations and Category:Conservative organizations in the United States. "Actor" and "politician" have essentially the same meaning in the United States, Turkey, China, and everywhere else; "conservative" does not. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 02:48, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I agree with Debresser and TVC 15. Your rationale for deleting is sketchy at best. First of all I agree that the definition of conservatives changes but if you follow that logic you should remove conservative from all pages. If you truly want to solve the problem you could rename the category modern conservative organizations. Just because a word changes its meaning over time (as a huge amount of English words do) does not mean the word becomes useless. On your second point, that may be true but that's why we use reliable and/or academic sources and not original research. On your next point, while conservatism varies from country to country and indeed Wikipedia is a global encyclopedia, that is why this organization is named "American conservative organizations." As for your claim that it will confuse readers, if the reader has common sense they might read the pages in the category to realize American conservatism may be different from other strains or they might possibly read the page Conservatism in the United States to learn the difference. Additionally your claim that even the center-ground in American politics is against even a slight move in that direction is odd seeing as how earlier you claimed that the center ground is relative and fairly indefinable but not that only but it's also original research. As for your last point, American conservatism is conservative on all fronts. If you're economically liberal and socially conservative you may be a Southern Democrat or more authoritarian, if the opposite is true then that is American libertarianism. It is understood that these organizations espouse conservatism in most of its forms: economically, fiscally, socially, and culturally. While each organizations ideas and policies will vary slightly (otherwise if they all agreed there would be little point in having multiple identical organizations), that does not mean we need to drop this category completely.--Sparrowhawk64 (talk) 00:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Reply. Please read

  WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation: "Assert facts, including facts about opinions—but do not assert the opinions themselves". Labelling a organisation or person as "conservative" or "liberal" or "progressive" is an opinion, and it's perfectly fine to include in the article a referenced assertion that the organisation was described as "conservative" (or whatever). However, a category is an unqualified, unattributed and uncontextualised editorial statement, which is why there is a long-standing consensus not to use the subjective and inconsistent terms as the basis for categorisation. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:03, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  Your comment reminds me of this: "Categories are important because they function to classify the subjects of articles—they appear with an even greater claim of factuality and objectivity than the content of articles." -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 01:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  That one paragraph is the single best reasoning I have yet heard for deleting articles of this type. It makes incredibly good and well reasoned points. However, two things prevent me from agreeing to deletion of this and similar types of categories: if an organization says it promotes conservative values or claims to be conservative and reliable sources agree, and the fact that users should be able to navigate among similar organizations because Wikipedia is dedicated to the spreading of knowledge and information.--Sparrowhawk64 (talk) 01:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  That argument applies to American users browsing this particular category, but Wikipedia does not exist solely or primarily for American users or to cover American topics. The fact is that "conservative" has radically different meanings in different countries, and even within countries in different contexts. As for the point about self-identification, I will again point to the portion of the closing rationale for Cat:American progressive organizations: if there is no agreement on a definition of 'conservative', then self-identification does not lead to an objective fact. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 02:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  So since Wikipedia is a global encyclopedia then by your logic we should get rid of every category of American things, actors, politicians, writers, etc. "Conservative" may have radically different in different countries but there is something called the International Democratic Union that brings together conservative parties from all over the world. If, in the American context, the organization and reliable sources identify an organization as such then it should be included in this category. We all know Wikipedia does not exist solely for American users and simply repeating that is an American category over and over does not provide rationale for deleting this category. Please read my note above on the issue.--Sparrowhawk64 (talk) 04:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  That would be an effective reductio ad absurdum if the comparison was valid. However, it is not, because "actor", "politician", and "writer" (unlike "conservative") have the same meaning in an American context as they do in any other context. By the way, I just realized that I had neglected to make clear one point: I am not suggesting that Wikipedia should not identify an organization as "liberal" or "conservative" if that assertion is supported by reliable sources. My suggestion is only that a category is not the proper mechanism for doing that. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 07:19, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Seeing such high praise, I had to read the subject paragraph, but my reaction differs a bit. A preliminary observation: it was written as part of the "categorization philosophy/obsession" of one editor, User:Postdlf, includes the related belief that the category must be vital to the subject, and does not appear to be followed generally or even widely on WP. My observation is, to the contrary, category tags are often applied without much relevance or even sourcing; for example, Anderson Cooper is categorized among "Spanish Americans," which may be slightly interesting but hardly relevant and is totally unsourced. Different people might look differently at category tags, and I think some are like the 'customers who viewed this product also viewed...' on retail sites. In any event, many conservative and liberal organizations both seem to meet User:Postdlf's standard.TVC 15 (talk) 02:03, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  I linked to postdlf's comment in reply to BrownHairedGirl, not to Sparrowhawk64. The quote is indeed the opinion of one editor, but Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#A simple formulation is not. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 02:44, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  That link says:

  By "fact" we mean "a piece of information about which there is no serious dispute."...

  By value or opinion, on the other hand, we mean "a matter which is subject to dispute."

  So, that supports keeping the category, since there are plenty of organizations as to which there is no dispute.TVC 15 (talk) 02:56, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete
  ping 01:24, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Keep the politics of these organizations is their defining characteristic, more so than anything else. Lumping these all together with other identified political organizations only harms navigation. Alansohn (talk) 02:01, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Noting that a political organisation is defined by its politics is about as tautological as observing that black things being defined by having a dark colour; the centrality of their politics is not in dispute here. What is at issue is whether a term used to describe "

  WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:30, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply

  ]

• Delete I can see this getting incredibly messy. As already noted, "conservative" does not have a clear, objective definition in which an organization could be categorized. It's general meaning is so broad that I don't think categorizing this will be helpful. It's general meaning also changes depending on what part of the world you're in. So we would be relying on either only categorizing organizations that self identify as conservative, or else make subjective judgement calls on who is and isn't included. At best this category would only serve to be inaccurate and cause headaches. BeardedScholar (talk) 04:08, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Per MS Encarta, conservative means "in favor of preserving the status quo and traditional values and customs, and against abrupt change;"[21] liberal means "favoring gradual reform, especially political reforms that extend democracy, distribute wealth more evenly, and protect the personal freedom of the individual."[22] There are plenty of examples of conservative organizations where there is no dispute that they are conservative, i.e. they self-identify and

  Pcap, there are two different categories under discussion here, “Conservative Organizations” and “Conservative organizations in the United States,” so you might want to consider both separately.TVC 15 (talk) 04:42, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply

  ]

• Delete What is conservative is highly subjective, and even in the US, many "conservatives" are not conservative, they are traditionalist, they favor change to a older tradition than current practice. If they were truly conservative they would favor the status-quo. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 09:50, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • That sounds more like an argument to rename the category rather than deleting it. For example, "conservative or regressive" or "conservative or traditionalist," etc. However, the fact that some specific organizations may reasonably be disputed does not mean the entire category is subjective, for example
    planets is a category even though Pluto is disputed. Rather, the presence of constituents as to which there is no serious dispute establishes them as facts, and thus the basis for a category.TVC 15 (talk) 07:36, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply
    ]
    • You trotted out that Pluto argument elsewhere, and still apparently miss the difference. There has long been a clear, objective definition of what is a planet, one which could be be applied objectively and produce consistent results in the hands of different observers. What has happened is that the definition has recently been slightly refined, in a way which paced some smaller planets such as Pluto outside the definition. No subjectivity is involved, because either test is objective. The same does not apply to "Conservative", because there is not and never has been an objective test of Conservatism. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:22, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • That description makes it sound as if the process were neat and automatic, as if someone widened or narrowed the lanes on a road and everyone simply followed them. In fact there was a lot of debate about Pluto, and divided voting. Likewise the isolated examples of a single party in Australia, and one in Ireland, and one in Japan, amount really to a few comets or rocks or planets in space; their existence does not undermine the validity of the category with regard to its defining elements (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, etc.), and has no effect on the American category. You write as if words start out with official meanings that can only be changed by official action; that might be a valid argument in France (where the
        Academie Francaise has authority over the French language), but the argument simply doesn't apply to the English language, which evolves all the time; in the English-speaking world, definitions evolve to follow usage, not the other way around.TVC 15 (talk) 21:48, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply
        ]
• Delete the supposedly worldwide category, no opinion on the US one. This is one of very many cases where a title that may make sense, when restricted to one country/region, becomes meaningless when we attempt to apply it in a geo-neutral way. Conservative organisations in the United Kingdom would be taken as meaning 'those within or related to the Conservative Party', therefore groups that claim to be unaffiliated would not fit there. Liberal means the reverse in much of Europe from the US meaning. A Democrat outside the US is a supporter of democracy but not of a given party, and so on. The only non-POV way I can see to make a worldwide list of conservative organizations would be either by self-description (Organizations claiming conservative values or something), or by membership of an international alliance if such exists. Sussexonian (talk) 10:11, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Affiliation to an organisation is an objective fact capable of verification, and makes for stable NPOV categories. One such example is the Socialist societies affiliated to the British Labour Party, categorised in Category:Labour Party (UK) socialist societies.
  However, while Organizations claiming conservative values might make a viable list, I don't think it works as a category, because it still has the problem that "Conservative values" is too subjective a concept. Category:Organizations claiming conservative values would effectively be categorisation by shared name, grouping together organisations of widely differing policies and values.
  I understand the distinction which you make between the American-only category and the global one, but we still have nothing resembling an objective NPOV definition of what belong in the American category. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:29, 14 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per nom. These types of categories that are used to group various organisations from a variety of countries or contexts as simply "conservative" are very problematic. In a nutshell, it promotes a subjective point of view with respect to the organisations. Vote stacking is bad and I think it's happened here. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:15, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • objective definitions have been provided, and your stated concern about "a variety of countries" does not apply to the United States category. If you want to participate in the discussion of possible canvassing or forum shopping, please move your comment to the collapsed section of this page, above; I will move this sentence also and respond there; otherwise, replying here would produce the kind of digression and diversion Black Falcon sought to avoid by creating the collapsed section.TVC 15 (talk) 22:09, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not convinced by the so-called objective definitions. No need to move things to the box; I explicitly didn't join in there because I didn't want to get involved in the pointless back and forth debate going on there. My view is that it happened, and that it shouldn't have, and I have nothing else to add about it, really. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:19, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      • Sadly that reaction (calling debate "pointless") seems rather typical here. Hardly anyone changes their initial 'votes' regardless of the growing number and quality of arguments on each side. Some of us do try to research further, and to listen to each other, but your response is at least candid. Since you're 'locking in' your view about vote-stacking (total two people notified, including at least one already planning to participate and one admin), what is your view on forum shopping?TVC 15 (talk) 22:29, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        • As I said—not interested. Please restrain your self-righteousness just as I am restraining telling you everything about what I really think. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
          • While it's thoughtful of you not to want to hurt my feelings with what you really think, it also prevents me from having a chance to address the specifics, which is worse. The reason why the liberal and conservative categories are useful is because they are objective, despite a few editors' circular insistence to the contrary. Deleting them does not appear to enhance WP in any way.TVC 15 (talk) 09:32, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
            • Simply repeating that "these categories are objective" does not make them so. You have not demonstrated how the Encarta definition you favour can be applied objectively, nor why that definition should be preferred over others, and you have not addressed any of the specific problems set out in the nomination (such as the mnay different types of conservatism). You appear oblivious to the distinctions and contradictions between
              religious conservatism, fiscal conservatism, libertarian conservatism, and liberal conservatism; the existence of liberal conservatism rather undermines your simple polarisation of politics as either liberal or conservative.
              You also appear to have missed the referenced quote from R. J. White in the lead section of the article Conservatism, which address this issue directly: "To put conservatism in a bottle with a label is like trying to liquify the atmosphere ... The difficulty arises from the nature of the thing. For conservatism is less a political doctrine than a habit of mind, a mode of feeling, a way of living." This category is just such a futile attempt to bottle the un-bottleable. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:30, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply
              ]
              • So, even though hundreds of millions of Americans have essentially the same picture of where "conservative organizations in the United States" are on the political landscape, nevertheless the phrase is meaningless because of a quotation from R.J. White? Evidently (s)he edited a book that was published in London in 1950, but did (s)he even run (or stand) for office in the United States? The article on
                planets. For centuries and around the world humans have relied upon evidence to form judgments applying terms like "reasonable," which is a ubiquitous objective standard, to specific cases; similarly, Wikipedia builds on consensus based on reliable sources. We are not machines following a computer program, yet somehow we manage to find our way through. Navigation aids help, for example categories.TVC 15 (talk) 05:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply
                ]
                • Ah, you seem to be getting it. We work by consensus. And consensus has consistently been against using categories to categorize by "liberal"/"conservative" statuses. Progress! Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:51, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
                  • We must have different definitions of
                    planets, even though some people think it should remain, because the consensus is that it should be excluded. (And, in the case of the American category, these examples are almost equally remote. Nevertheless, even if they were in New York, which is also sometimes called a state of mind, they would still be exceptions as to which there is no consensus, thus they could be excluded from the category without deleting the whole category.)TVC 15 (talk) 21:59, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply
                    ]
                    • I wish you luck with concerns about the fate of Pluto, but you are still evading the central problems with the word "conservative", which were all set out in the nomination. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:26, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

keep the politics of these organizations is their defining characteristic; this is why they exist. Adding these hundreds of organizations together into the parent Category:Political organizations in the United States serves no navigation purpose whatsoever and is unhelpful to WP readers on its face. Hmains (talk) 05:36, 17 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete As there is not, and will never be, a single, authoritative and objective definition of "conservative" that can be broadly applied to articles, this category fails
  Wikipedia:Overcategorisation: "Adjectives which imply a subjective inclusion criterion should not be used in naming/defining a category." --Loonymonkey (talk) 16:33, 18 February 2010 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• It is already quite hard to follow this long discussion, still I try to collect the most important aspects from my perspective:

1. While I see BrownHairedGirl's point that these categories lack a set of decisive inclusion criteria that are needed to avoid POV. However, conservatism may certainly be defined enough precisely to allow the creation of inclusion criteria. These criteria might be enforced in a way that in case of doubt, an organization is not tagged with this category. So there is no reason to remove a whole category tree just because we've not yet done the work creating these criteria.
2. I agree with SparrowHawk64 that "just because a word changes its meaning over time (as a huge amount of English words do) does not mean the word becomes useless". While definitions change, we can and need to refer to a contemporary definition. After all, it shouldn't be oversestimated how fast things change. A party that used to be conservative around 1900 does have similar policies to a conservative party today. Rather a specific party might have become less conservative, according to the zeitgeist. Moreover, some political organizations even have changed their ideology over time. IMHO we should only refer to its current set of policies, for defunct organizations to the policies of the last significant period of the organization.
3. Also, conservatism may not be broken down to "conserve whatever is". Conservatism refers to a specific world view and a therefrom derived, quite specific set of policies. Obviously there's not just black and white. Rather an organization to be defined as conservatism, needs to support these policies for the most part. I'm avoiding to dig into the discussion on what these constituent policies actually are, cause that would go beyond the scope of this discussion. However, this means that for example the North Korean communist party is not politically conservative just because they try to conserve their power and their set of rules. On the other side, a traditionalist organization in a quite liberal country would indeed be conservative even though they want to turn back the clock. It is this why we can speak of conservatism in general and not just relative to the specific conditions in a country.
4. The category only collects organizations that are described as conservative within the article itself (possibly with the exception of some miscategorized cases which is to be avoided). So even if describing an organization as conservative in one or the other case were POV, the POV is not constituted by the category tag. So we don't have to talk about whether some border cases are to be included or not, the question is just about whether it is possible to correctly use this category.
5. The potential POV problem does not apply to conservative organizations in any way more than to conservative parties, And it does not apply to the United States more than to any other state, so this is to be seen as a precedence for all these categories. To set a precedent, we should however discuss the deletion of more central categories such as Category:Conservative parties and Category:Liberal parties (both dating from 2004) instead. These are the hard cases we need in order to come up with a decision that can be consistently enforced. Nominating a rather weak case such as does not help us a lot, as we're having arguments against this and that stirred up. Some refer to the spelling issue (which can be fixed), others to the necessity to have a separate category for organizations
6. If we removed all of these categories, we'd create excessively crowded catch-all categories of "political parties in x", "political organizations in x" or "Think tanks in x", especially when it comes to the US, the UK or some other English-speaking countries. This would seriously endanger the value of the categorization in the political sphere. This is something we need to keep in sight, even though systematical clarity should not come at the cost of contentual accuracy.

For all of these arguments, I suggest to keep this category and instead focus on a concise definition of "conservative" on a scientific basis, and then set up some useful inclusion (and potentially exclusion) criteria. PanchoS (talk) 14:10, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• It sounds commendably positive to say focus on a concise definition of "conservative" on a scientific basis, but that amounts to

  original research in the face of the article Conservatism which cites numerous sources to stress the inapplicability of that sort of scientific precision to something as fluid and multi-faceted as conservatism. As with other similar categories, the defence that the "category only collects organizations that are described as conservative within the article itself" doesn't solve the subjectivity problem, because the lack of an objective test for conservatism means that all those referenced judgements are subjective, and the commentators may well be using the words to refer not only to different interpretations of the the term, but to Conservatism within different spheres. For example, Bill Clinton, who balanced the US budget, was a fiscal conservative; by contrast George W. Bush was a fiscal liberal, and British Conservative Party leader David Cameron asserts that he is a liberal conservative.
  Deleting the misleading and subjective ideological categories for political organisation does not mean abandoning all categorisation of them; they can and should be categorised by the sphere in which they operate, whether that's family policy, the environment, education, or whatever. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:35, 19 February 2010 (UTC)[reply

  ]

  And don't forget about the "Liberal" Party of Australia, which is the dominant "conservative" party in Australian politics! Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  And the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, which is the dominant "conservative" party in Japan, but is actually more "liberal conservative" than "conservative", espouses economic liberalism and social conservatism, and ultimately (like most parties) seems to base policy decisions more on political expediency than abstract commitment to a clearly-defined ideology or even to an extremely broadly-defined political 'state-of-mind'. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 09:45, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  Don't forget the Progressive Democrats, an Irish political party which combined social liberalism with economic classical liberalism, but whose position in the Irish political spectrum led them to being seen as "conservative". The wikipedia article calls them "conservative liberal" (with a supporting ref), so there we have it all in one: a single organisation which is progressive, liberal and conservative. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:15, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. While I agree we shouldn't categorise people as conservatives, I don't have a problem with categorising organisations as such, providing they self-identify as conservatives. True, the meaning of 'conservatism' has changed over time, and there are some groups whose inclusion in this category could be questioned; but there are many others that are indisputably conservative, and it doesn't seem POV or original research to categorise them so. Robofish (talk) 20:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.