Wikinews:Water cooler/policy/archives/2010/August

Copyright?
Please offer a third opinion at Talk:Australian Prime Minister accused of poor leadership on climate change. Given that there are already 2 contributors and 1 reviewer of the article, it seems appropriate to seek another opinion before blanking this article for copyright reasons, as I am inclined to do. --InfantGorilla (talk) 07:05, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Resolved. --InfantGorilla (talk) 16:13, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Quoting another journalist
Please respond at Talk:Deadly flooding in Pakistan kills hundreds to my follow-up question - is it too late to rewrite it now?. If it isn't too late, please be bold and rewrite it. --InfantGorilla (talk) 17:40, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Location categories
If an article belongs to a location subcategory, does that automatically mean it should be in all location categories that are ancestors of that subcategory? Also, under what circumstances might the article be about a particular country, but also be in a higher-level regional category that doesn't include that country? To make those questions more concrete: --Pi zero (talk) 05:32, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Hiroshima marks 65th atomic bombing anniversary belongs to Category:Japan, Category:United Kingdom, Category:United States, and Category:France. I figured that since it actually took place in Japan, it surely ought to belong to Japan's parent, Category:Asia.  But should it also belong to the other categories' parents, Category:North America and Category:Europe &mdash; and if so, what about Category:European Union (which I'm not sure whether or not to think of as a location category)?
 * An even more extreme example of that is that 21 sites added to Unesco World Heritage list belongs to... well, a lot of specific location categories, and then also Category:South America (presumably because the conference took place in Brazil) and Category:North America (I'm not 100% sure why) &mdash; but based on the specific locations, it would also belong to Category:Asia, Category:Europe, and Category:Oceania.
 * Revenge killings follow shooting of Karachi politician belongs to category Karachi, and its ancestors Pakistan and Asia. But it also belongs to Middle East; should it, and why or why not?
 * Looking at the articles in Category:Afghanistan, I see that, crudely speaking, 40% of them do not belong to Category:Asia, and 25% of them do belong to category Category:Middle East. Those two aren't even significantly correlated: 30% belong to neither, and 15% belong to both.
 * yes, we use categories in wikinews atomically (is that the right word?). Something in category:Alberta should also be in category:Canada and category:North America, otherwise the portals break (because doing category intersection of category + anything in its subcategories is quite expensive so dpl doesn't support that sort of thing.) Bawolff ☺☻ 05:41, 14 August 2010 (UTC)


 * In most cases, I'm with Bawolff - but, in cases like the Unesco thing, one might argue that it wasn't so related to the continents that it should be turning up in them (the irony of that example being, if it was a single site then there would be enough focus for the location's parent continent to join in). As to whether we should make those kind of judgement calls is another matter entirely.
 * To address the issue of the EU cat - no, that's not a geocat to me. Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 11:24, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

My thinking now on the first point: Category:Oceania, say, can be interpreted at one extreme as identifying articles that relate to the whole of Oceania, in which case I wonder if the category might get deleted for having too few articles in it; or at the other extreme as identifying articles that relate to some part of Oceania. Bawolff's point about intersection categories seems to me to make it impossible to compromise between these two extremes, since it demands that there be no exceptions. Framed in those terms, I think  category=Oceania category=United Nations  should include the Unesco article, so I find myself persuaded to Bawolff's position.

This has implications for Category:European Union. The category-intersection argument should apply to all categories that might be used in an intersection search for articles; so as long as Category:France is a subcategory of Category:European Union, every article that belongs to Category:France should belong to Category:European Union. That makes EU a location by any other name. If there are some articles about France that are not about EU, then Category:France should not belong to Category:European Union. --Pi zero (talk) 19:57, 15 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Oceania is not an organisation. The EU is, just like Adam Air or the United Nations. Note that if you extended that to the UN, then every country in the world would be in the cat. (Well, there's around four nations not represented...). Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs) 20:00, 15 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Countries belonging to the UN are not subcategories of Category:United Nations. Countries belong to the EU are, however, subcategories of Category:European Union; in fact, they seem to be the only subcategories of Category:European Union.  --Pi zero (talk) 21:31, 15 August 2010 (UTC)


 * That rather begs the question of why those subcats are there in the first place... Blood Red Sandman  (Talk)   (Contribs)


 * Agreed. If whether it is a location category depends on whether it has the subcats, then the addition of the subcats amounts to turning it into a location category.  Category:France was made a subcategory of Category:European Union on [ 21 March 2007].  That's almost two years after Category:European Union was created (13 May 2005).


 * Shall we remove the location subcats? ---Pi zero (talk) 22:12, 15 August 2010 (UTC)


 * All of which has (belatedly) led me to this and this. Apparently the question was not whether Category:European Union is geographical, but whether Category:France is geographical.  It seems to me that the, er, geographicality of France is long settled by precedent.  --Pi zero (talk) 22:26, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm of the opinion EU countries should be subcats of the EU cat (and arguably same for UN). I don't see anything wrong with members of an organization being subcats of the orginaization. Bawolff ☺☻ 08:23, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * To comment, adding all the members of the UN to that cat seems fine. That's 192 countries, all except the Vatican and Kosovo (plus Taiwan, if you count it), maybe excessive, but it makes sense. — Mike moral  ♪♫  20:57, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * My position is that if categories X and Y may both be used for constructing DPLs of articles, and X is a subcategory of Y, then every article that belongs to X should belong to Y. If it isn't true that every article in X should be in Y, then X shouldn't be a subcategory of Y.


 * Therefore, if the 192 countries were added to Category:United Nations, it would be necessary to add most of the articles on Wikinews to Category:United Nations, making it a largely useless category that should probably be deleted. Since I take the position I do on the relationship between categories and DPLs, and I don't want Category:United Nations to become useless, I oppose adding the member countries to it.


 * For the same reason, I think the current subcats should be removed from Category:European Union.


 * The generalization of this is that if categories X and Y are both used for constructing article DPLs, and X is a location category but Y is not a location category, then X should not be a subcategory of Y. --Pi zero (talk) 22:59, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Both Category:United Nations and Category:European Union are about political entities. Such categories should only apply where they unambiguously relate to news about the political entity. --Brian McNeil / talk 23:32, 16 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Exactly. --Pi zero (talk) 02:44, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
 * So,... Pull every single country out of the UN these categories. Or, only apply a country-level geographic category where it is relevant, such as UK implements another, hated, pro-freedom Euro-law. ;-) --Brian McNeil / talk 03:12, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Whole versus sum of parts
Perhaps each country category should be split into two (if there are enough articles to warrant it): a geocat, with the current name, and an orgcat (because "polcat" is too much like "polecat") whose name has a parenthesized modifier on it. Choosing a lucid, non-POV modifier may be tricky; for now, I'll just use " (org)".

My reasoning:
 * At the city level, it seems sufficient to use a single category for both purposes.
 * At the continent level, there's no political entity, so continents are pure geocat with no associated orgcat.
 * Other entities above the country level, besides continents, are uniformly political; so they should be pure orgcat with no associated geocat.
 * At the country level, though, one may want to construct queries using either the geocat or the orgcat, and the scale is large enough that membership of the geocat may swamp that of the orgcat.
 * Assigning the unmodified name to the geocat, rather than to the orgcat, will be easier to use and will cause fewer and less severe errors.

Details:
 * Each country orgcat would belong to the corresponding geocat. Geocats never belong to orgcats.
 * Geocats belong to other geocats based on geographical containment. Orgcats do not belong to other orgcats based on being member states.

Example: Paris |        v       France <- France (org) |     v    Europe <- European Union --Pi zero (talk) 18:01, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * There would be Category:Paris, Category:France, Category:France (org), Category:European Union, and Category:Europe. Category:Paris is both geo and org.  Category:European Union is org.  Category:Europe is geo.  Category:Paris is in Category:France, and Category:France in Category:Europe.  Category:France (org) is in Category:France, and Category:European Union is in Category:Europe.


 * (Putting on SA hat) What is the problem you are trying to solve?
 * If you're looking for the equivalent of a Category:Politics of France, that's what DPL is for.
 * Every article should be in at least one topical cat and one geo cat. If I'd some clue where the perceived problem was, I might be able to suggest something. --Brian McNeil / talk 19:54, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Is it bias to leave my signture on an article?
When I write articles I make sure to leave my name on the article.... Yet some editors think that is bias or as if I'm taking a non-neutral point of view on the subject... I don't see that and I haven't run into anything in the Wikinews policy that says I can't leave my signature on an article. What does the group think?--Yamariel (talk) 22:49, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It's simple, you can't. Diego Grez return fire 22:50, 15 August 2010 (UTC)


 * There are a variety of hidden templates for regular contributors to flag articles where they are the main authors. Concern has been raised because what you submitted appears quite similar to what is written elsewhere. That is more of an issue to address. --Brian McNeil / talk 22:52, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Correction notice for factual clarifications?
The discussion Talk:NCAA 2010 ice hockey east and west regional tournament results remains unresolved after three weeks. Please have your say. --InfantGorilla (talk) 10:35, 23 August 2010 (UTC)