User talk:Alai/Archive 8

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Category:Automotive companies to Category:Motor vehicle industry[edit]

I am asking you to rethink your position on this one. If any category is to be renamed Category:Motor vehicle industry it should be Category:Automotive industry and not this one. Caerwine Caerwhine 07:33, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

The difference between industry and companies in existing Wikipedia categories (and this distinction goes way beyond the automotive/motor vehicle sector) is that industry categories deal with the process while companies categories deal with individual firms. Thus an article that for example dealt with how the assembly line changed how cars/motor vehicles were assembled would go in the industry category while an article about the Fnord Motor Company would go in the companies category. Caerwine Caerwhine 07:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
I've editted by response slightly to make it clear that if the rename is to Category:Motor vehicle companies, I'm neutral. I find both Category:Automotive companies and Category:Motor vehicle companies understandable, so I'll leave it up to those who have an actual opinion between the two alternatives to make it known. Caerwine Caerwhine 08:13, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Possibly, but since I can't say that from first-hand knowledge, and I'm not interested enough to acquire the first-hand knowledge, I'll leave it to those who do to debate the point. Caerwine Caerwhine 08:22, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Good News/Bad News/Ugly News[edit]

Good News
I've started sorting the US-writer-stub with the new stubs and it looks like by the time I'm done, it might actually be all way down to less than overlarge.
Bad News
It's going to take a while to slog through all 15 pages, especially since I'm taking the time to add categories.
Ugly News
A fair amount of double (or more) stubbing, and I'm trying to be conservative. Caerwine Caerwhine 11:44, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: Scope[edit]

Ah, I was hoping you'd ask ;-)

The formal scope is actually right on the project page: "any article related to the history of warfare or of military affairs" (emphasis mine). There are two basic ideas that are used to interpret this statement in practice:

  • Anything not a current event can be considered, for our purposes, to fall under "history".
  • Anything related to either the (formal) military or to warfare in general (but not necessarily to both) can be considered, for our purposes, to fall under "military".

Obviously, the vast majority of topics will be things like Napoleon or Battle of the Bulge: nice, traditional military history. However, there are a variety of fringe cases that we're also including; for example, the Iraq War (arguably not history yet), or Abraham Lincoln (not formally military—or at least unlikely to be found under Category:Military—but certainly related to warfare in a very major way).

Various other names have been suggested at times—"Military and warfare" was a recent one—but the consensus within the project has been that (a) "military history" is clear enough, at least to the people who'd be interested in taking part in the project and (b) the practical costs of renaming the project aren't worth the minimal semantic gains.

One point that I think should be stressed here: WikiProject scopes and stub or category scopes are subtly different. With a stub or a category, precise definition is beneficial; there is no gain in creating vaguely-defined categories, and no loss in splitting categories apart. With a WikiProject—when dealing with people rather than with articles—the opposite is true: a broad and somewhat hazy-around-the-edges scope