User:Noleander/sandbox/6

RfC on WP:DEFINING categorization guideline

Background

A common scenario is that a biographical article about person P is categorized into a group-membership category, such as Category:Harvard University alumni. Often, these categorizations are challenged because the person is not notable because of their attendance at the Harvard - in other words, person P is notable for something else, they just happened to go to Harvard. Sometimes theses challenges rely on the assertion that P's attendance at Harvard is "not defining". This sort of scenario is not limited to college alumni categories; many other categories, such as Category:Eagle Scouts, have related issues.

There are three related WP guidelines that provide guidance about whether a person can be included in a category: WP:DEFINING, WP:COP#N, and WP:BLPCAT (text of these guidelines is given below). Those three guidelines stand in isolation, and barely mention each other. This leads to confusion and ambiguity. Novice editors often get misled and confused.

Proposal

This RfC proposes to clarify those guidelines by adding links and some explanatory text. Specific proposed changes are:

a) WP:DEFINING - Add the following guidance (wording here is rough, for illustrative purposes only): "Membership of a person/thing within a category is a separate issue from the existence of the category itself. The "Defining" test focuses on the existence of categories, but it also may be used to test if an individual person/thing belongs within a category or not. When DEFINING is used to test if a given article belongs in a category, other guidelines may also be applicable, such as WP:COP#N for biographical articles."

b) WP:COP#N - Add the following guidance (wording here is rough, for illustrative purposes only): "Most group-membership categories (such as Category:Alumni by university or college, Category:Eagle Scouts, etc) are subject to two tests: (a) Does the WP:DEFINING guideline permit the category exist at all? (b) Is the category considered to be a "standard biographical detail" (which removes requirement that the membership be relevant to the person's notability)? There is no black-and-white rule for answering these two questions: the community makes these decisions on a case-by-case basis."

c) WP:COP#N - BLPCAT is already linked-to near COP#N, but it should mention that BLPCAT adds some specifics to COP#N's ""standard biographical detail" guidance.

d) WP:BLPCAT - Add a link to WP:COP#N and explain that BLPCAT provides some specifics to WP:COP#N's "standard biographical detail" guidance.

What this RfC is not

The intention of this proposal is not to create a new rule, or bring more WP:CREEP into WP. The intention is simply to clarify the existing guidelines, and link them to each other.

This RfC is not intended to expand the scope of WP:COP#N's "standard biographical detail" to include college alumni categories or any other categories. Presently, COP#N contains a very brief explanation of the "standard biographical details", namely: "... in particular year of birth, year of death and nationality." If the community, as part of this RfC, wants to refine the definition of "standard biographical detail" (e.g. to explicitly include (or exclude) college or ethnicity) that could be accomplished; but it is not the primary goal of this RfC.

For reference: text of the guidelines

1) WP:DEFINING - "One of the central goals of the categorization system is to categorize articles by their defining characteristics. Categorization by non-defining characteristics should be avoided. ... A defining characteristic is one that reliable, secondary sources commonly and consistently define, in prose, the subject as having. For example: "Subject is an adjective noun ..." or "Subject, an adjective noun, ...". If such examples are common, each of adjective and noun may be deemed to be "defining" for subject.... if the characteristic would not be appropriate to mention in the lead portion of an article, it is probably not defining; "

2) WP:COP#N - "Categorize by those characteristics that make the person notable: Apart from a limited number of categories for standard biographical details (in particular year of birth, year of death and nationality) an article about a person should be categorized in terms of occupation only by the reason(s) for the persons notability. For example, a film actor who holds a law degree should be categorized as a film actor, but not as a lawyer unless his or her legal career was notable in its own right. Many people had assorted jobs before taking the one that made them notable; those other jobs should not be categorized."

3) WP:BLPCAT - "Categories regarding religious beliefs or sexual orientation should not be used unless the subject has publicly self-identified with the belief or orientation in question, and the subject's beliefs or sexual orientation are relevant to their public life or notability.... "

Some relevant historical discussions

Some of the relevant past discussions include:

Proposer's motivation

My motivation in proposing this RfC is to bring more clarity to the above-named categorization guidelines. In particular, I want to help novice editors who may find the current wordings confusing and ambiguous. I do very little work with categorization, and I am not interested in deleting or keeping any specific categories that may be related to this RfC; nor am I interested in adding or removing any article from any category. The few times I have done categorization work, I found the multiplicity of guidelines to be confusing.