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The following discussion comes from Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. This is an archive of the discussion only; please do not edit this page. -Kbdank71 21:23, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Irish categories of inconsistency

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I've begun to take a more detailed look at the Irish categories, so more to come here later and on Category talk:Ireland. These are the easy ones. -- Beland 05:39, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You need to have Category:Sportspeople from Northern Ireland and Category:People from Northern Ireland. "Northern Irish" is a modern "fudge", not accepted by many people in the region. Ultimately, people from the area are likely to call themselves Irish, British, both or simply say they are "from Northern Ireland". It's a sticky issue - certainly the crude use of "Northern Irish" is to be avoided. zoney ♣ talk 10:23, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
If we need to declare that there is simply no acceptable adjective form to refer to the people of Northern Ireland, that's OK with me. There are other countries where is form is akward, like Trinidad and Tobago, or controversial, as in the United States. Rather than decide this haphazardly, we should try to come up with uniform guidelines. In general, the noun forms are clearer but longer. We can: 1.) Be consistent, and always use the adjective forms, and accept some awkwardness; 2.) Be consistent and always use the longer noun forms; or 3.) Adopt a mixed usage, preferring short adjective phrases when they flow cleanly, but using noun forms in awkward cases. One benefit of consistency is slightly easier navigation - you can just change the appropriate word and go to a different country, as opposed to having to guess the correct wording or click your way there through category links. But most people just click around, I'm sure. Consistent naming would also cut down on the number of broken links that editors make when they guess the wrong form (or assume a convention is universal when it's really not) and don't check their work. (At least, for those editors who notice conventions and attempt to follow them.) -- Beland 02:48, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
"Transport" should be used rather than "transportation". Transportation is the usual US term, while "Transport" is the term used in its place in Britain/Ireland. Hence we in Ireland have a "Department of Transport", "Minister for Transport". Please do not force inconsistent English on a non-US topic. zoney ♣ talk 10:25, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm not trying to force usage on anyone; that's why we have a discussion instead of just implementing these things by fiat. But once again, there are several different places where this issue comes up, and it'd be nice to come up with a general solution. If you take a look at Category:Transportation by country, you will see that all the "countries" there, including "Ireland" have a "Transportation in X" article and a "Transportation in X" category. Again, this makes it easy to know what the article or category you are looking for (or are linking to) would be called. But as you rightly point out, this may not follow local usage. We have 87 or so X_by_country categories so far. I assume we should pretty much pick either 1.) Be consistent and use the same term for the same thing everywhere, or 2.) Follow local usage; and do either 1 or 2 for all ~87 topics. Personally, I vote for consistency. Wikipedia's audience is worldwide, and so is the category system. Americans will be reading all about Ireland, just as much, if not moreso, than about their own country, and vice versa. I don't care whether we use a US term, a UK term, or vary depending on the topic. Following local usage would be my second choice because it seems a bit untidy. It makes a little more sense for articles, where you actually have to use these vocabulary terms in proper nouns and whatnot, and the locals will probably dominate the editing, anyway. I think of the category system more like your library catalog, which references all history books under "History" and not half under "History" and half under "Things that happened in the past". But I'm sure there are good arguments for doing the opposite...discuss, discuss... -- Beland 02:48, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I would definitely oppose the use of Northern Irish as an adjective. People from Northern Ireland (for example) is clearly more in keeping with common usage here on the island. One specific I have seen is Northern Irish soccer, which is a thing that does not exist. The two governing bodies are the Irish Football Association and the Football Association of Ireland (north and south respectively), avoiding the NI issue completely. I agree with Zoney re transportation. I think Transportation in Ireland should be moved to Transport in Ireland and Category:Transportation in Ireland should be emptied to Category:Transport in Ireland and then deleted. Filiocht 08:28, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)

OK, it looks like these are approved:

It sounds like we want to do this:

If we're going to do this, then we should do it for all the countries that use "Transport" instead of "Transportation". I will make a new nomination to this effect, then, as part of an examination of all the _by_country categories. -- Beland 03:39, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

And we also want to do:

I'll make a new post regarding the Fooian bar vs. Bars of Foo issue for _by_country categories across the board, then, and run a scan for all instances of the unacceptable "Northern Irish". -- Beland 03:39, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

All of the above have been implemented. -- Beland 08:33, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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