History / administrative note:Wiktionary:Votes/2011-07/Categories of names proposed almost precisely what this vote does: renaming certain categories. It failed, and some (but certainly not all) of the votes in opposition mentioned reasons that are no longer relevant now that Wiktionary:Votes/2011-08/Categories of names 2, proposing that the only entries in "Category:en:Rivers" be English names of rivers, has passed. Hence this vote.
Oppose this creates an amusing "split" in the topical category system which makes us look amateurish and, unless these categories are taken out of the topical category system entirely, I cannot support. The names also seem too long to me. -- Liliana•14:35, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But these categories are no longer topical: they no longer are categories about rivers: they are only categories for names of rivers. They're like "English nouns" or "English numerals" (or whatever we call it).—msh210℠ (talk) 00:13, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
OpposeRockpilot 00:55, 30 October 2011 (UTC) I don't see how this is really different from the previous votes, which both were flawed and resulted in me typing more for something that does the same thing. But it is a flexible "oppose" --Rockpilot00:55, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose It seems like making it more cumbersome than easier, more to type. Some may decide to call a language differently Sinhala/Sinhalese, etc. --Anatoli23:34, 30 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There's less reason than ever to change the short, clear names now that Vote 2 has established that they mean exactly what you'd suppose: names of countries and stars. --Makaokalani16:32, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know... Is it obvious that "Category:en:Games" refers only to the names of games? Because there's plenty of other stuff in there. Equinox◑20:26, 21 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Abstain. Dan Polansky 10:49, 31 October 2011 (UTC) It comes down to whether topical categories should be named in long names. The poll Wiktionary:Beer_parlour_archive/2011/May#Straw poll: Topical category languages shows only a very thin majority in support of long names. On another note, the discussed categories are still topical categories: they classify terms by their referents rather than by their grammatical or etymological features. Even if a category is called "English names of rivers" and thus having a name that refers to the terms as syntactic objects, it is still a topical category, much like a category that would be called "English terms relating to physics". --Dan Polansky10:49, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It refers to terms by the referents, yes, but not the same way category:en:Physics does. The latter includes all terms on the topic of physics. The "rivers" category includes only proper nouns, names of rivers. It's not topical.—msh210℠ (talk) 14:39, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the category for rivers is not "topical" in the sense of "containing all words relating to the topic of 'rivers'". But, by the same token, the category for "mammals" that only contains terms that are hyponyms of "mammal" rather than, say, "mammary gland" would also be non-topical. Thus, in the contrast topical-vs-grammatical-vs-etymological, I still think the category is a topical one, as much as Category:en:Mammals. In any case, we can agree that the category is neither grammatical ("English nouns") nor etymological ("English terms derived from Latin") nor morphological ("English nouns suffixed with '-hood'"). We can furthermore note that the category for rivers (Category:en:Rivers) is a subcategory of Category:en:Geography, which is an undisputed topical category. --Dan Polansky15:08, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Dan that these categories are something between topical and PoS, and also unlike given name categories. Changing the names of categories won't turn them into parts of speech. Why, actually, must categories be either topical or parts of speech? Who invented this idea? The main thing about a category is (1.) that it's useful, and (2.) that we agree which words to put into it. The names of the categories are trivial, and short names are better than long ones. "Category:en:Nouns" would make perfect sense as long as it says there:"This category contains English nouns", just like "Category:en:Physics" says: "This category contains English terms related to physics". It's as if we had decided that the name of a category must reflect whether it contains words describing animate or inanimate objects, and then we'd spend hours debating and voting whether e.g. pronouns are animate or inanimate.--Makaokalani16:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wiktionary talk:Votes/2011-10/Categories of names 3
Support --Daniel 08:26, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
Oppose this creates an amusing "split" in the topical category system which makes us look amateurish and, unless these categories are taken out of the topical category system entirely, I cannot support. The names also seem too long to me. -- Liliana • 14:35, 29 October 2011 (UTC)
Abstain Cred că...nu-mi pasă. Să mă spună cineva, dacă se schimbă ceva. — [Ric Laurent] — 20:54, 29 October 2011 (UTC)