AnselmoD79

Questions

I made a mistake when creating a category page and forgot to capitalize a letter, how do I fix this?

See here. --Sopoforic 09:01, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Also is there a way to have an alphabetical TOV that expands. Specifically I have a list of names A-Z, but want it to be closed and then allow it to be opened. here is a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influential_women

I doubt you should made this page. We already have Category:Women, which are presumably notable and thus influential people. That page has no clear inclusion criteria, which violates WP:LIST. You probably ought to have this article deleted. --Sopoforic 09:01, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

NO, it is meant to be a part of the women page, that is the entire goal. Please do not delete this I just spent 4 hours. If I am allowed to spend more than a few hours on it perhaps then it can have clear inclusion criteria.

First, please sign your comments on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~). Second, what 'women' page are you referring to? It has nothing to do with Woman, so I suspect you mean something else. But the issue isn't that it doesn't currently have an inclusion criterion listed, but that it probably isn't possible to create such a criterion. Two different people will consider very different sets of women to be influential. We should assume that every woman with an article was in some way influential, and we already have a category containing all women with articles. What additional value will Influential women add? --Sopoforic 09:08, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Are you kidding? you just posted it yourself three paragraphs above this line. [Category: Women] Within the category you directed me to, there is a pre-modern women. What benefit does it add, I am creating a list of women who are the first to achieve major accomplishments such as being the first female prime minister, or the first female university president, etc. These are important milestones in women's history. How can you tell me there is no value added by these, when this website has multiple pages dedicated to things like street names in Boston? AnselmoD79 09:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you quite understand what I'm saying. The women that have articles in wikipedia have all done something notable, or else they wouldn't be here. The question, if you are to make such a list, is what makes the women in your list more important? What makes those women objectively better? Is there a way to objectively decide that some set of women were influential, but not any of the others that have articles? That's what you'd need to do in order to have this article. We have to keep a neutral point of view when writing articles, which is why we can't have (for example) List of cool people or List of the best actors ever. You can't make those lists without introducing your point of view into them. --Sopoforic 09:28, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

(more) I had reservations about that category of influential pre-modern women for these reasons, and, sure enough, it's being considered for deletion. See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion#Category:Influential_pre-modern_women. --Sopoforic 09:30, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I am beginning to see your point. Obviously though, I am not making just a list of "cool people" so since you can see that I am putting people like Margaret Thatcher, and this is my first day, instead of just saying be objective, offer a suggestion on how you would narrow this. List of firsts is honestly the most direct and clear standard one could apply. AnselmoD79 09:33, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, I would offer suggestions if I could, but since I'm not sure if this article should exist, it's not easy for me. The right way to do things is to discuss what we each think about the article (the reasons I'm not sure it should/can exist, the reasons you think it should/can) and come to a decision based on consensus. My issue is that this is too general: how do you decide which 'firsts' should be listed? First female president of a major company? Define major, then, and why this is important. First female astronomer? Why astronomer? There is already a list of first female office-holders, which I see you've edited already, so you're aware of it.

Incidentally, welcome to wikipedia. You'll find that you'll have many discussions like these if you stay here for very long, especially if you're dealing with contentious issues. Don't let it bother you too much, though. It just means that we're all trying to work to make wikipedia better--even if we don't always agree on quite how to go about it. --Sopoforic 09:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Fine honestly, I don't care that much anymore. Just do what you want with the category, but I am making a list of women who were the first to achieve major positions does prime minister, president, secretary of state cut it for you or will you just wait until I am done and then delete? AnselmoD79 09:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

There was an edit conflict, so my reply up there was written before you wrote this. Further responses follow:

Whoa, cool down. I'm just trying to help you out, and let you know what the policies are. No pages or categories are deleted without discussion, except in very specific cases (like spam). What I'm doing now is trying to see whether it's possible to prevent the page from being deleted.

As I noted above, there is already a page at List of the first female holders of political offices that lists those things. That's probably a good page to have, but you don't need to duplicate it. Who else, besides holders of office, would you want to include in your list? --Sopoforic 09:48, 14 January 2007 (UTC)