Category talk:William Shakespeare

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:William Shakespeare

Overly specific.​—msh210℠ (talk) 18:15, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

delete. We have a search function and Related terms sections for finding entries connected with Shakespeare. WP has a whole set of links for the encyclopedic stuff, too. DCDuring TALK 18:44, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Why is "overly specific" a reason for deletion? —Internoob (Disc•Cont) 23:31, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we have any rules, or even guidelines on what topical categories are allowable. So it just comes down purely to personal preference. I think "overly specific" means that we may not want to allow more and more specific categories. Mglovesfun (talk) 00:58, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah (on all counts).​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:28, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Keep. I basically agree with Mglovesfun and msh210 in one simple idea: "overly specific" is expected to be, at least in part, a good reason to avoid or delete a topical category. (I believe nobody would want Category:Brown quadrupedal animals or Category:Musical instruments that touch the ground.) However, as it may or may not be implied by Internoob's question above, this justification is most certainly not enough. Aside from my ridiculously long examples, I would expect more solid reasons for delete a category. What harm does it do? What functions does it not fulfill properly? As a reply to DCDuring's "We have a search function and Related terms sections for finding entries connected with Shakespeare. WP has a whole set of links for the encyclopedic stuff, too.", let me mention that searching for "Shakespeare" through Special:Search yelds many terms without direct connections to Shakespeare, except the use of quotes from his books. Category:William Shakespeare may be filled with words coined by him, such as, if I am not mistaken, "credent", "fracted" and "friended", among other words; for a similar category, see Category:Lewis Carroll. --Daniel. 05:48, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Shakespeare is too specific IMO to be a dictionaryworthy topic of words.​—msh210℠ (talk) 06:28, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Keep. IMO, not overly specific. —Internoob (Disc•Cont) 19:44, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Remove Stratford-on-Avon though, as it's not related to him or his works, he just lived there. Might as well add England if we keep Stratford-on-Avon. Mglovesfun (talk) 19:47, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

• Put all the content in an appendix, where it can be treated as non-entry-type content to be further developed. For example, which terms are Shakespearean hapax legomena? which terms are instances where Shakespeare provides first attestation of PoS conversion? In which plays (including those on uncertain authorship) was the term used? The use of topical categories rather than appendices is a lazy dead-end way of treating possibly interesting linguistic material. Populating the category solely with proper nouns of some Shakespearean association is positively deceptive. DCDuring TALK 15:41, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Kept: No consensus. --Daniel. 13:56, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Stratford-on-Avon was removed from the category, presumably as a result of this discussion. Feel free to create more discussions to define criteria for inclusion, exclusion and organization of the members of this and other similar categories. --Daniel. 13:59, 21 May 2011 (UTC)