Category talk:Ottoman Empire

Oct 2004

Joy wrote: added histories of european countries that were under the OE for centuries

Aris Katsaris: Uh, I really don't think most of these categs belong here. We aren't adding Category:Germany to all the nations that were ever conquered by the Germans.

We aren't, but that's different because the German conquest usually didn't have the same profound effects the Ottoman conquest had. Also, OE is an extinct state so the category is purely historical. It also would be pointless to add links to histories of those states per each individual article in the OE category. --Joy [shallot] 21:51, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I really don't believe your categorization scheme is at all consistent with the rest of Wikipedia. The Ottoman Empire is really NOT a subset of the history of Albania or the history of Greece -- it's instead an *overlapping* set. That's why we have only "History of Ottoman Greece" in this category, and "History of Ottoman Albania" and "History of Ottoman Egypt" -- and so forth.

Other examples -- we don't list Category:European Union under the categories of the histories of all its member states regardless of how important the European Union is to them -- and that's because the EU's history is an *overlapping* set with each of these nations.... We don't list Category:Roman Empire under the category of Category:Greek history or Category:Israeli history regardless of how importantly Rome affected Greece or ancient Israel.

Please reconsider -- it'd be good if we reached an agreement over this instead of revert-warring about it or having to go to a poll. And truly I don't see your idea of listing the categories of empires under the categories of all the nations they ever conquered fit. It'd be like listing Category:United States under Category:Utah instead of vice versa. Bigger groups are supposedly further up the tree -- you've made it in reverse.

Aris Katsaris 22:11, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

You've not replied further to my post... I don't know if that means you simply didn't bother to reply, or were partly convinced... Either way I'm changing it back, since I really don't see it fitting with Wikipedia's categorization scheme concerning old empires. If you're still disagreeing, let's make a poll about this or generally ask for third opinions.Aris Katsaris 23:05, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've not replied simply because I haven't seen it up to this moment. D'oh :) --Joy [shallot] 10:21, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I see now, you replied shortly afterwards. I missed it somehow... too large a watchlist, I guess. --Joy [shallot]

I understand that it can seem inconsistent, but look at the practical effect.

If we put it in history of * cats, then the OE cat appears in the list of subcats at each of those, which is fine. There's a nuisance of having those history cats appear at the end of the OE cat, but that is minor (note that I don't use those by and large outdated skins which list categories on top -- that's a real flop, the categories cannot be superimposed over the article content, they merely add to it).

If we don't put it in history of * cats, we have to make separate categories for "History of * in the OE" and place each of those OE-related articles in those categories, too. Or make categories for each of the OE-related articles, and then make those cats subcats to both OE and the "History of * in the OE".

Such immense amount of duplication would be more damaging to the grand scheme of things than an occasional raised eyebrow upon looking at the bottom of the OE category.

Furthermore, I don't think those other analogies are relevant. These sets overlap but in general the concept OE's existence, given that it's gone, is a subset of the concept of the national/country histories. But that's really semantic nitpicking that I'm not particularly bothered with -- the final functionality, as described above, is what matters. --Joy [shallot] 10:21, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Uh, I don't see why you are talking about making further subcats about "History of * in the OE". An article about an event that involved only e.g. Ottoman Greece and the Ottoman Empire, would be in only two category "Greek history" and "Ottoman Empire". We'd not be creating a new category, we'd be simply placing an existing article under two existing categories. I see no duplication here.

That works for events. What do you do about common concepts? And there's really a lot of them (or at least a potential for them). --Joy [shallot] 20:14, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

This isn't so much about raised eyebrows... it's partly about systemizing the way we categorize old empires -- about not letting a reader get *lost*, by letting him investigate the immediate superset or subsets -- and also about the possibility of future automatic searches. You're considering only the immediate links but I'm thinking about the whole tree structure: eventually there may be a system that will let us say: "Bring us everything that's a descendant of the Greek history category" We'd not want an article about Ottoman *Egypt* to come up -- as it would with your system...

On the other hand with my system, a person would see the "Ottoman Greece" article in "History of Greece", and then through there he'd be able to move *up* the tree to go to "Ottoman Empire". The links are still there, but each relates to the immediate related article.

How about a compromise? We only put Ottoman Empire in the category of those histories that don't have an equivalent "Ottoman *" or "History of Ottoman *" article? That means it'd not be placed in the categories of Albania or Greece for example, since in those cases the Ottoman Empire as a whole is still only two clicks away.

Aris Katsaris 18:03, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

That would seem to work, too. --Joy [shallot] 20:14, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)