Category talk:Female people
- See also RFC discussion which will be archived at Category talk:en:Women. - -sche (discuss) 21:34, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).
It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.
Discussion
[edit]and a number of other "Male" and "Female" categories, apparently all created by User:Hergilei
These are misnamed: they're really masculine and feminine forms of various categories of nouns- there's really nothing in these that isn't covered by the corresponding categories without "Male" and "Female" in their names. In the languages I've looked at, the members for the "Male" category are the lemmas, and the members of the "Female" category are in the headword lines as feminine forms. These aren't anything lexically interesting like boar and sow or king and queen, just predictable products of their languages' gender morphology.
I think these have escaped notice because they have no English-specific categories, with the exception of Category:en:Female people, which only contains a single Old English entry. For some reason, the "Female" categories have been added to the modules, while the "Male" ones seem to all be in Category:Categories with invalid label. I'm sure there's a lesson in that about gender attitudes, but "Male" and "Female" are both equally useless and should both be deleted. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:21, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- These two definitely need renaming at least, and maybe deletion as well, but there other Male/Female categories I do think are helpful, such as CAT:Male family members and CAT:Female family members. —Mahāgaja · talk 14:49, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- Point taken. I've now spelled out all of the ones I'm actually nominating. Also, there may be a few legitimate members in a couple of these, along the lines of king and queen, but they can be transferred to Category:Male and Category:Female. Chuck Entz (talk) 15:49, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- Delete. I don't think they should be named "masculine" and "feminine", because these are semantic categories and so they should be categorised by the referent rather than the word. If we really do consider these to be grammatical genders, there's nothing in principle against categories for neuter words in any of these categories, in languages that might have them. Consider that Category:ang:Neuter family members could contain at least wīf, after all. So it's better to consider them as natural genders and keep the names "male" and "female". —Rua (mew) 16:10, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
- Delete per nom. Julia ☺ ☆ 02:08, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
- Delete. It's an unnecessary distinction. Ultimateria (talk) 00:12, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
- Keep, although perhaps not in the languages described, but in Ingrian, which I am working with right now, there is a clear difference between Male and Female nationalities, while grammatically there is no difference in gender. See for example ižoralain and ižorakkoi. Thadh (talk) 10:58, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
- Delete Taylor 49 (talk) 18:41, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
- Delete at least "female people" and "male people" (merge to "women" and "men"), IMO. - -sche (discuss) 05:19, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
- Although cf Wiktionary:Requests_for_cleanup#Category:en:Women, which is inclined to reach the opposite conclusion... - -sche (discuss) 23:08, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
- Delete. Intersections of categories can easily be computed using
incategory:. We obviously shouldn't have any conceivable intersection as its separate category. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 10:23, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
RFD-deleted. Could a kind bot-owner (@Benwing2, Surjection, SemperBlotto) please remove these from the articles? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 10:23, 13 March 2022 (UTC)
- It has been decided that these categories be deleted a while ago. Could a bot-owner (@Benwing2, Surjection, SemperBlotto) please un-categorize the articles so that I can delete the categories? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 17:19, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha This is running. It is taking awhile to go through all the categories and subcategories and remove the category references, but it should be done in a few hours. Benwing2 (talk) 03:45, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha I am removing the empty categories but some categories will not be empty, e.g. Category:Male people, which has Category:Male children and Category:Male family members as subcats. We should decide whether to keep these categories as higher-level groupings (in which case people might be tempted to re-add pages to them) or remove them (in which case some useful groupings might disappear). Benwing2 (talk) 04:54, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- I guess it's too late now, but I really wish the deletion had been done more carefully. The bot just removed "Category:xx:Male people" and "Category:xx:Female people" without any consideration whether the entries could be moved to categories that are not up for deletion, such as "Category:xx:Women", "Category:xx:Male children", "Category:xx:Female family members" etc. (and if we have CAT:Women, why don't we have CAT:Men?) —Mahāgaja · talk 09:03, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Mahagaja: There is a discussion about deleting “Category:Women” and transferring its contents to “Category:Female people”. J3133 (talk) 09:07, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Benwing2, Mahagaja: I am not opposed to retaining CAT:Female people and CAT:Male people. It would also be an idea to recategorize all of the entries in the deleted categories to their decomposition, e.g. to put the entries that were formerly in CAT:Female musicians into CAT:Musicians and CAT:Female people (so that the intersections can be computed). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 10:24, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha, Mahagaja: Perhaps a subsection for this RFDO should be created for voting on keeping specifically “Category:Female people” and “Category:Male people”. J3133 (talk) 10:36, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- I guess it's too late now, but I really wish the deletion had been done more carefully. The bot just removed "Category:xx:Male people" and "Category:xx:Female people" without any consideration whether the entries could be moved to categories that are not up for deletion, such as "Category:xx:Women", "Category:xx:Male children", "Category:xx:Female family members" etc. (and if we have CAT:Women, why don't we have CAT:Men?) —Mahāgaja · talk 09:03, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha I am removing the empty categories but some categories will not be empty, e.g. Category:Male people, which has Category:Male children and Category:Male family members as subcats. We should decide whether to keep these categories as higher-level groupings (in which case people might be tempted to re-add pages to them) or remove them (in which case some useful groupings might disappear). Benwing2 (talk) 04:54, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha This is running. It is taking awhile to go through all the categories and subcategories and remove the category references, but it should be done in a few hours. Benwing2 (talk) 03:45, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
Alerting (Notifying Hergilei, Tweenk, Shumkichi, Wrzodek, Asank neo, KamiruPL, BigDom, Hythonia, Tashi, Luxtaythe2nd, Max19582): so as to not add them anymore. Vininn126 (talk) 09:34, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Mahagaja It's not too late, in the sense that any time I do a bot run I store logging output, which includes all pages changed and what was changed. For example, if you want, I can get you a list of all the pages that used to contain Category:Male people and/or Category:Female people categories (and with a little more work I can pull the definitions of these terms, formatted concisely onto a single line), and you can mark the ones you want to have added to a category like Category:Male children or Category:Male family members. Be warned, though, that the list will be > 1000 entries. Benwing2 (talk) 00:36, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Benwing2: If I'm the only one interested in tidying this up, would it be easy to restrict it to the languages closest to my heart (cy, de, dsb, en, fr, ga, got, grc, la, mga, my, pgl, sga, wlm, yi)? The definitions aren't so important. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:19, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
- @J3133, Mahagaja, Benwing2: Should I create a separate undeletion request for Category:Female people/Category:Male people? I'd be in favor of that. Ideally, articles like German Pianistin would be in Category:de:Female people and Category:de:Musicians which allows people to look up the intersection using
incategory:. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 13:42, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
- @J3133, Mahagaja, Benwing2: Should I create a separate undeletion request for Category:Female people/Category:Male people? I'd be in favor of that. Ideally, articles like German Pianistin would be in Category:de:Female people and Category:de:Musicians which allows people to look up the intersection using
- @Benwing2: If I'm the only one interested in tidying this up, would it be easy to restrict it to the languages closest to my heart (cy, de, dsb, en, fr, ga, got, grc, la, mga, my, pgl, sga, wlm, yi)? The definitions aren't so important. —Mahāgaja · talk 08:19, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Mahagaja It's not too late, in the sense that any time I do a bot run I store logging output, which includes all pages changed and what was changed. For example, if you want, I can get you a list of all the pages that used to contain Category:Male people and/or Category:Female people categories (and with a little more work I can pull the definitions of these terms, formatted concisely onto a single line), and you can mark the ones you want to have added to a category like Category:Male children or Category:Male family members. Be warned, though, that the list will be > 1000 entries. Benwing2 (talk) 00:36, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
@Mahagaja See User:Benwing2/remove-cats.male-female-people.cy,de,dsb,en,fr,ga,got,grc,la,mga,my,pgl,sga,wlm,yi. It includes the pages themselves along with all the languages (including ones not on your list) whose language-specific subcategory of Category:Male people or Category:Female people was removed from the page, plus the existing language-specific subcategories of Category:Male children, Category:Female children, Category:Male family members or Category:Female family members that the page belongs to. You can mark the pages according to what categories you want added, using any shorthand you want, as long as it is consistent. I will then add the appropriate categories back. Benwing2 (talk) 03:00, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha Feel free to create the undeletion request. If people feel it's the right thing to do, I'll put back the necessary categories. Benwing2 (talk) 03:03, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha: I agree with making an undeletion request, though those who have participated in this RFDO should be pinged. J3133 (talk) 08:49, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).
This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.
Related discussion: #Male_and_Female_categories
@Chuck Entz, Rua, Linshee, Ultimateria, Thadh, Taylor 49, -sche, J3133, Benwing2, Vininn126: I propose the undeletion of the two above categories. While I voted to delete in the original RFD, I made a mistake in that I didn't notice that the umbrella categories (Category:Female people and Category:Male people) would be deleted as well. Right now, there is no way to find all, say, German words that describe female musicians. As we obviously don't want to have Category:de:Female musicians (because there are innumerable possible intersections), Category:Female people is necessary to compute the intersection using incategory:"de:Musicians" incategory:"de:Female people". If the undeletion request is successful, Benwing will add the necessary categories back (e.g. CAT:de:Female people and CAT:de:Musicians where there was formerly CAT:de:Female musicians). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:08, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- Isn't that what this template is for? Vininn126 (talk) 11:12, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Vininn126: Not all nouns designating female people are feminine equivalents of other nouns (German Hebamme). Further, not all feminine equivalents designate female people (German Käferin). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:24, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- that's actually something that always bothered me about that template. It also feels like we're treating women differently (granted masculine is usually the default in European languages). Arguably, if it weren't the equivalent, you'd have a separate definition line. Vininn126 (talk) 11:42, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Vininn126: we do also have the barely used and poorly named
{{masculine noun of}}. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:14, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Vininn126: we do also have the barely used and poorly named
- that's actually something that always bothered me about that template. It also feels like we're treating women differently (granted masculine is usually the default in European languages). Arguably, if it weren't the equivalent, you'd have a separate definition line. Vininn126 (talk) 11:42, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Vininn126: Not all nouns designating female people are feminine equivalents of other nouns (German Hebamme). Further, not all feminine equivalents designate female people (German Käferin). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 11:24, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- The 2 categories like Category:Male people are NOT deleted.
Oppose undeletions of further categories such as Category:Female occupations. Category:Women can be merged into Category:Female people. Taylor 49 (talk) 15:16, 16 June 2022 (UTC) 15:49, 18 June 2022 (UTC)- @Taylor 49: They are not deleted now (because further discussion was needed about the subcategories they have such as Category:Female family members, which were not included in the RFDO) but they would per the previous RFDO if this discussion fails (thus the subcategories would be moved somewhere else, e.g., Category:Female). Moving the contents of Category:Women to Category:Female people is a separate discussion at RFC. J3133 (talk) 15:34, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- The 2 categories like Category:Male people are NOT deleted.
- This is also something that's irked me as well. AG202 (talk) 15:18, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- Propose to merge all 3 ie Category:Women and Category:Female people into Category:Female where stuff like Category:Female family members can be placed. Taylor 49 (talk) 15:44, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- I was against the deletion of the specific categories in the first place, so I wouldn't mind undeleting these. Thadh (talk) 19:59, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- Just using Category:Female and Category:Male seems OK, but that includes things that aren't people (mainly, animals). I don't think it was necessary or useful to delete Category:Female people and Category:Male people, and I'd support their undeletion. I guess if the entries were separately categorized in Category:Female, Category:Male and Category:People, the intersections could still easily be found. The argument presented in favor of deletion that "they're really masculine and feminine forms of various categories of nouns" doesn't seem correct to me: grammatical gender does not always correspond to whether a word refers to a male or female person. Furthermore, in widely spoken European languages, at least, noun gender, while showing some resemblance to inflection, behaves more like a derivational process than adjective gender does: even if many pairs of masculine and feminine nouns predictably refer to male and female persons respectively using typical morphological means (e.g. Spanish -o vs. -a), the correspondence is not fully systematic and regular (and this dictionary reflects the difference in noun and and adjective gender by having separate entries for masculine and feminine nouns, but not for masculine and feminine adjective forms).--Urszag (talk) 22:09, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
- This is, in my opinion, the worst solution. Vininn126 (talk) 09:57, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Vininn126: Not sure what you mean, since I talked about several options? The first part of what I wrote is a commentary on Taylor 49's proposal to "merge all 3 ie Category:Women and Category:Female people into Category:Female": this seems potentially doable to me, but I also think it wouldn't by itself act equivalently to Category:Female people. Afterwards, I say that I don't in fact think Category:Female people should be deleted. My commentary was about what to do conditional on the event that other people decide that Taylor 49's suggestion is best. Could you clarify which of "not deleting Category:Female people" and "merg(ing) Category:Women and Category:Female people into Category:Female" you consider to be "the worst solution"?--Urszag (talk) 14:41, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
- This is, in my opinion, the worst solution. Vininn126 (talk) 09:57, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
Support the undeletion of "Category:Female people" (and the merger of "Category:Women" into this category) and "Category:Male people". — Sgconlaw (talk) 14:45, 17 June 2022 (UTC)- Support the undeletion of those categories as well. AG202 (talk) 15:19, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha I am not quite sure what the current status of this proposal is. Can you summarize where it appears to stand and what the changes would involve? Benwing2 (talk) 05:51, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Benwing2: It seems like "undeletion" (more a judicial undeletion than a technical one) is imminent. Once that happens, Category:Female people and Category:Male people may be populated by articles again. Ideally, a bot would then add the former contents of Category:Female people, Category:Female artists, Category:Female athletes, Category:Female demonyms, Category:Female healthcare occupations, Category:Female musicians, Category:Female nationalities, Category:Female occupations, and Category:Female scientists back to Category:Female people as well as the former contents of Category:Male people, Category:Male artists, Category:Male athletes, Category:Male demonyms, Category:Male healthcare occupations, Category:Male musicians, Category:Male nationalities, Category:Male occupations, and Category:Male scientists back to Category:Male people. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 10:15, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha: OK, I'm a bit confused, since the categories Category:Female people and Category:Male people weren't actually deleted (same for their lang-specific subcategories, except for the ones that ended up empty). By "undelete" I take it you simply want the pages formerly in Category:LANG:Male FOO to end up in both Category:LANG:Male people and Category:LANG:FOO? Same for Category:LANG:Female FOO? Benwing2 (talk) 02:29, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Benwing2: They weren't de-facto deleted because they contained some subcategories that had not been RFD-deleted but they were in a state of being de-jure deleted. This is why this undeletion request here was necessary to begin with. By undelete I mean having the judicial backing for populating them with entries again. Once the undeletion request has reached consensus (which will certainly be the case within a few days), it may be used again and one thing I want to use it for is exactly what you describe (put what was formerly in Male X into Male people and X, same for s/Male/Female/). — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 02:54, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha: OK, I'm a bit confused, since the categories Category:Female people and Category:Male people weren't actually deleted (same for their lang-specific subcategories, except for the ones that ended up empty). By "undelete" I take it you simply want the pages formerly in Category:LANG:Male FOO to end up in both Category:LANG:Male people and Category:LANG:FOO? Same for Category:LANG:Female FOO? Benwing2 (talk) 02:29, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Benwing2: It seems like "undeletion" (more a judicial undeletion than a technical one) is imminent. Once that happens, Category:Female people and Category:Male people may be populated by articles again. Ideally, a bot would then add the former contents of Category:Female people, Category:Female artists, Category:Female athletes, Category:Female demonyms, Category:Female healthcare occupations, Category:Female musicians, Category:Female nationalities, Category:Female occupations, and Category:Female scientists back to Category:Female people as well as the former contents of Category:Male people, Category:Male artists, Category:Male athletes, Category:Male demonyms, Category:Male healthcare occupations, Category:Male musicians, Category:Male nationalities, Category:Male occupations, and Category:Male scientists back to Category:Male people. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 10:15, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
- @Fytcha I am not quite sure what the current status of this proposal is. Can you summarize where it appears to stand and what the changes would involve? Benwing2 (talk) 05:51, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
RFD-undeleted. @Benwing2 — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 17:23, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
- Note that I have archived the old RFC about Category:en:Women to Category talk:en:Women. (The fragmentation of discussion of these categories across two fora is what led to some of the issues with the last RFD.) If there are still any outstanding issues, such as needing to merge that category into "Female people", it would probably be least confusing to start a new RFD or RFM dedicated to just that. - -sche (discuss) 17:56, 8 August 2022 (UTC)