Category talk:Colors of the rainbow

Deletion debate

The following information passed a request for deletion.

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.

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Category:Colors of the rainbow

Who cares. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:09, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

keep. Given that there are 4 million google hits for "colors of the rainbow" it seems that some people do. There's no need to delete everything that isn't totally devoid of fun. Conrad.Irwin 12:12, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

• Keep. This is a useful reference for language learners, and would be even more useful if it contained Category:fr:Colors of the rainbow, etc. Thryduulf 12:47, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
• Fun, shmun. If language learners need fun, let them go to Simple.wikt.

But seriously folks, wouldn't each of the colors except the headword belong under the "Coordinate terms" header for each of the headwords in the category. This would have the decided advantage of focusing the semantic information implicit in the category membership not on the page, but rather on the specific sense of the specific PoS of the specific etymology of the English headword. DCDuring TALK 14:07, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and consider the size of the cat. I think this should go. Cf. my comments on cat:Days of the week, above, s.v. #Category:Walt_Disney_derivations (later link, I suppose, category talk:Walt Disney derivations).​—msh210℠ 17:40, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Hm, re size of the category, yes it only has some seven entries now (in English), but considering that the division into seven is just a convention, as the rainbow comprises a continuous spectrum of colors, this category, if kept, should contain also [[spring green]], [[cyan]], [[chartreuse]], and many others, though not, e.g., [[magenta]], [[pink]], or, of course, [[grey]]. Despite all that, I still say to delete.​—msh210℠ 16:34, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Abstain [keepish] We're a dictionary, not a bandwagon, so I reject inclusion of a category on the basis that the phrase has been repeated 4 million times on the Web. We need more fun lexical categories, but let's not start adding categories just for fun. But even worse is removing a category to redundantly categorize these terms manually in the bodies of 7 entries. If we're going to categorize terms based on attributes of their referents, then every colour will eventually be in 1,000 categories (colours of the rainbow, cool colours, Pantone colours, reds, tints, shades, colours of animals, retired Crayola crayon colours, etc). I'd rather see a thousand category links at the bottom of 1,000 entries than 1,000 typed-in lists of 7 to 1000 links on each of 10,000 entries. Yeah, I'm no math wizard, but let's keep using the categories framework to categorize entries.

But would someone please just try to come up with a lexical justification? (Language learners can already find lists of colours at w: Category:Colors – why do we need to group these terms because their referents are found together?). —Michael Z. 2010-04-28 23:18 z

Don't see anyone needing to learn all of these colors. I don't think I've used the word indigo since school. Perhaps primary colors or common colors would be more appropriate which did not list synonyms/variants but their most used word (e.g. purple, not violet). Or move to an appendix? -- 124.171.194.6 23:57, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

FWIW I think {{list}} and appendices cover this quite well. Futhermore we have a lot of double categorization, with things like scarlet being in Category:Reds and Category:Colors. Category:Blues is another matter, because it could refer to blues music or blue colors. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:44, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

I've often wondered what categories are actually for. Are they to help our users find information (in which case, do we have any evidence that our users use them)? SemperBlotto 11:28, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

On a general note, I'm moving the entries out of Category:Colors and into subcategories, apart from where not applicable. If we're (rightly IMO) gonna categorize reds, pinks, blues and greens, this category falls between the gaps. It's a lot more specific than 'Colors' but a lot less specific that the names of individual colors. So per SemperBlotto, I think this category can't fit into that system, and should be delete for 'not helping the Wiktionary reader'. Mglovesfun (talk) 09:29, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Keep. Mglovesfun: We can't sort colors by "red", "green", etc. in general, because some languages and cultures do not divide up the colors in the same way that English and the majority of modern European languages do. There are languages that make no distinction between red and orange, and others that make no distinction betwen green and blue. If we sub-categorize everything, there will be some very confused users, and some languages where items are horribly miscategorized. Color perception differs more from individual to individual that most people realize, and the color nomenclature and distinctions in a culture are usually quite specific and have to be especially taught; they are not universal nor are they inherent in human perception. --EncycloPetey 23:48, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how that justifies *this* category though. Nobody's saying that [[Category:Colors]] is going to be deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 17:55, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Delete You make some good points EP, but I wonder how any of them defend the keeping of this category. This is not a lexical category, and no one has made any good arguments (that I can see) for its merit in a dictionary. I'm ok with Category:Colors, as it's a fairly straightforward categorization, and color names can have some interesting lexical properties (as EP's alluded to). -Atelaes λάλει ἐμοί 00:23, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

• delete Ƿidsiþ 17:28, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Kept as no consensus.​—msh210℠ (talk) 16:54, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Delete The title means the same thing as "Colors". As Michael Z. says above, the rainbow is a spectrum which contains "all the colors of the rainbow". "Primary colors" would be better. — Robin 00:49, 10 October 2010 (UTC)