Category talk:Presidents of the United States

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Category name?[edit]

@DannyS712: Should we perhaps stick with the "<role> of <entity>" pattern, as Prime ministers of Pakistan or Category:Members of the US Senate. In which case we might make this "Presidents of the United States". --Pi zero (talk) 14:19, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Pi zero: sure, I have no objection - should I move the category myself? --DannyS712 (talk) 14:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DannyS712: I can take care of it without leaving a redirect; no problem. --Pi zero (talk) 14:27, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sister linking[edit]

Although this has followed my categorization of Category:Members of the US Senate, I perceive I've misjudged how these should be linked. The point of using {{topic cat}} for these is to treat them as topics, thus as targets for redirects from mainspace, and those redirects would otherwise go to Wikipedia articles, in this case w:President of the United States. In which case, the sister links ought to be guided by that association. --Pi zero (talk) 14:44, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If I created this wrong, I'm sorry. I also just made Category:Members of the US House of Representatives following your senate category. Sorry for the trouble --DannyS712 (talk) 15:01, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't trouble. This is just growing pains. You're providing the initiative, you're doing a bunch of the basic work. It's greatly appreciated. The moment when one starts to move forward in some direction is the moment to consider possible adjustments to that direction. --Pi zero (talk) 15:47, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
So I'll ask: where should a centralized discussion be held about the categorization policy of wikinews? I have some ideas, but they should be discussed more widely. Is Wikinews:Water cooler/policy the right place? --DannyS712 (talk) 15:57, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I've started a draft of my proposal at User:DannyS712/Categories --DannyS712 (talk) 16:14, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@DannyS712: I'm not enthusiastic about trying to impose any sort of policy on this stuff. Very, very many years ago there was an attempt to do that, but the character of the project hadn't yet been full formed at that time. We don't want to be hedged in with detailed policies about things; that way leads to the sort of bureaucratic red tape that Wikinews has traditionally trouted Wikipedia for. It's usually better to leave things flexible. I've imagined that eventually we might put together a conservative essay on categorization, but generally our formal documentation of these things lags many years behind our best practices, for which the primary repository is living. (A case in point is our Wikinews:Newsworthiness page; we refined our practices, and occasionally had some quite pleasant community discussions about them, over many, many years before eventually reaching the point where, somewhat as an afterthought, we articulated them in page form.) --Pi zero (talk) 16:35, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that, but it also means that there is no easy place for a newcomer (like me) to find the guidelines --DannyS712 (talk) 16:46, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that can be a drawback/challenge. Three ways of mitigating it come to mind.
  • We can try to have the existing precedents consistent with where we want to go, so that if someone copies the way something has been done in an existing instance, what they're copying will be what we'd like to do more of.
  • We can try to help them along by explaining things. That is, of course, a somewhat labor-intensive and inefficient process, but it is part of the overall picture. Notice that this is exactly how article review works: reviewers try to give feedback that will help the writer to pick up on our principles, traditions, best practices, tricks of the trade.
  • We can grow semi-automated assistants that will provide users with recommendations/guidance as they go along; basically, semi-automated assistance is a more distributed form of the same sorts of things one might, in principle, put into standalone information pages. The dynamics of both writing and using semi-automation should differ from those of writing information pages, and that's a whole world of techniques I look forward to exploring — but of course there's a long lead time on getting there.
--Pi zero (talk) 17:06, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Would you be willing to list the exist precedents at my draft page, so that I can see what the status quo is? Also, if you would like any scripts written, just let me know what you want done and I'll take a look. --DannyS712 (talk) 17:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The question of precedents will take some deep thought. As for scripts... well. My idiosyncrasies, cropping up. I dislike bots and full automation, as I believe the human touch is of paramount importance; hence my interest in semi-automation; and I maintain semi-automation must be grown by the community, a highly challenging approach, for which I've a strategy in mind and I'm willing to defer the specific tasks impacted by the semi-automation in order to bring that strategy to bear on them. --Pi zero (talk) 18:03, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Any time one imparts as much sage wisdom as I've done above, there's a significant risk of having to eat one's words. We'll see. This is an intensely formative time for our category best-practices; we're having some really interesting discussions. --Pi zero (talk) 14:30, 25 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

First Spouses of the United States[edit]

Afaict we currently have categories for three four of these.

--Pi zero (talk) 14:52, 25 August 2019 (UTC) updated 15:25, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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