Category:Four traditions of geography ( talk| | history| logs| links| watch) ( XfD| restore)

I disagree with the closer judgment; I believe I raised enough points in the discussion to bring serious doubt to this category's deletion, and "When in doubt, don't delete."

Tl;dr at the bottom.

I don't mean to repeat arguments from the discussion, but I believe that context is needed on this topic to decide on it fully. Geography is a big field, and the debate on how to subdivide and categorize its subdivisions has raged in outside literature for well over a century, and how it is done varies by culture and between individual geographers. As a geographer, I don't know if others know about the depth of this topic, but I feel the strong need to continue advocating for what I believe to be the best course of action and provide literature and rationale, even if many people disagree. If people are unwilling to change their minds, compromise, address the full scope of the organization problem, or propose alternative solutions based on sound literature, I don't know what is left.

The Four traditions of geography are likely the most consistent and strongest supported method of dividing the discipline proposed in the past century, originating in the 1960s, a search on Google Scholar shows the original peer-reviewed publication has over 600 citations, with other well-cited papers on the topic existing. This topic is taught to geography undergrads, and the paper is required reading for many geography graduate programs in my anecdotal experience with two of them. The four traditions are not the only method for dividing geography; various methods have various levels of support in the literature. Another similar but different approach is Category:Branches of geography. Generally, the four traditions organize high-level theory and historical approaches to geography, while the branches are more "applied." While the word "branch" might sound good to someone, the use is inconsistent within the literature from my search. Ultimately, the best approach I could find was to use the organization methods from UNESCO Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems and other literature to put together three well-supported "branches," however this is not the only possible approach. The book "The Philosophy of Geo-Ontologies" by Timothy Tambassi is one of the best sources to understand this.

Creation or deletion of high-level categories is something that should be approached very carefully to avoid being original research on the Ontology of Geography. After discussion and to remain consistent with other fields on Wikipedia, I created the category Category:Subfields of geography, which served as a container for these two different approaches to dividing geography, as a place a field that didn't fit either could be dumped or to place future categories for organizing geography based on literature. In my opinion, this created a defensible compromise between what the literature says and simplifying Wikipedia classification. Changing this high-level organization needs to be done with considerable thought and discussion. The category for the Four traditions was proposed for deletion and relisted twice without further discussion (other than my own comments trying to get more feedback) either time. While I tried to argue the points above, I don't believe they were considered. In response to feedback by editors in this, I created the Wikipedia page for the four traditions, and provided explanations for why they should be included. Reactions to the nomination, in addition to my opposition, were two calls for deletion and a comment that requested the page for the four traditions be created. Ultimately, the discussion involved, by my count four editors in addition to myself. One reason given to delete was that "This concept has been proved notable, but nobody has proved that it needs a category over other ways of subdividing the discipline of geography." The other methods of subdividing geography, however, have less consistent support in outside literature than the four traditions, which I pointed out but was never responded to. In deleting this category, the "Subfields of geography" category now only has "Branches of Geography." Branches are inadequate to take on all subfields; however, as that term is established in the literature, it has limitations and less support. Category:Human-Environment interaction, one of geographies four traditions, is now unconnected to the main geography category, and it is not clear how to link them in a way that is consistent with the literature. These points all need to be addressed in the discussion for deletion of the four traditions category, but that did not happen.

tl;dr:

Because of these reasons, I dispute the deletion of Category:Four traditions of geography based on disagreement with the closer's judgment. I discussed this on their talk page and was directed by them here. I believe that more voices were needed in the discussion, at the very least, and that deletion was done without fully considering/addressing the implications with an action plan to move forward based on policy and outside literature. I don't believe Wikipedia is a democracy, and that " Consensus is not determined by counting heads but by looking at the strength of argument and cited recorded consensus." While more discussion and thought may be needed, I don't believe a nominator and two in support of deletion are enough to establish a consensus against the amount of literature on the topic.

Thank you for taking the time to read this; I understand that people don't like reading large bodies of text or replying to stuff after they have said their piece, but for consensus to really be reached and the status quo of how the pages are organized to change, I believe these issues need to be addressed and thought out. I know it may seem tedious, but if minority opinions don't speak up on topics, they risk being steamrolled by small groups of editors without a strong understanding of the topic. -- GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:03, 26 December 2023 (UTC) reply

See related discussion at User talk:Pppery#Deletion of Four traditions of geography category. I don't have much more to add here that I haven't already said there or in my closing statement. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 20:10, 26 December 2023 (UTC) reply

• weak endorse At hand is the question as to if this categorization is "defining". The !voters felt it was not. I feel it might well be, but I'm not an expert. I've done enough reading to believe it's a reasonable claim, but don't have evidence that professionals in the field consider it defining. Just for fun, since I know a lot of folks in this field, I'll ask around. That said, the discussion was closed correctly--we not only look at "truth" but "consensus". And while I think I'd have !voted to keep this, there just isn't enough evidence that the !voters were wrong to overturn the close. Hobit ( talk) 22:31, 26 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  How much evidence is needed to create doubt on consensus when there are only two votes for deletion, three if you count the nominator? Please do let me know what the people you know say about this (and their general position in the field), as a grad student in geography, I don't always know what others think. I'm sure many undergrads who I made memorize this can't remember it after info dumping after an exam, but I'd struggle to think anyone with a masters degree in geography wouldn't consider them defining, if only from a historical sense. GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:21, 27 December 2023 (UTC) reply

• I've long since given up trying to make sense of how CFD decide things. The people who care about categories enough to participate at CFD are a subset of Wikipedians who have their own reasons for doing things. They do quite often seem to delete categories that are useful to some editors and aren't doing any harm, and I don't know why. I wouldn't fault Pppery for following the consensus -- that's what we instruct sysops to do, so in that sense I'd anticipate a slam dunk "endorse" outcome at this DRV.
  But this isn't a content decision. It's about how we organize content, and we ought to be offering lots of ways, so our users can index and catalogue articles in a variety of ways -- that's a helpful activity and one we ought to police with a light touch.
  My advice in this case would be to look for a compromise. Can we bring it back but not as a category? Could we usefully listify it? Make it into a portal, perhaps?— S Marshall  T/ C 22:52, 26 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  I made it a page already based on content because a voter didn't think the category was important without one. Organizing content is a content decision, and how we subdivide a discipline is something heavily debated in the peer reviewed literature. A nomination and two calls to delete, with strong peer reviewed papers on the other side of the conversation is cause for doubt. I am completely losing faith in the consensus process overall, 1 or 10 sources won't change minds, and two votes are enough to disregard those sources. It's like a Facebook comment section. If this category is deleted, a literal set of categories used by geographers to divide the discipline, I don't know why we have categories at all. GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 03:58, 27 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  I'm not surprised you're losing faith in the consensus system. It relies on volunteers reading, thinking, and self-educating, and it assumes they've done so. Sometimes they haven't, or they !vote with their friends rather than on the evidence. There isn't a better alternative, unfortunately.— S Marshall  T/ C 15:38, 27 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  The alternative was, from my understanding and reading of Wiki policy, that votes are taken taken into consideration with the arguments and sources presented. Wikipedia is not a democracy, in my understanding. If 1000 editors voted on something based on their opinions, but one presents a well sourced response using credible outside sources, the 1000 should be disregarded. As it stands, the quote on your page resonates with me lately, "Anti-intellectualism [is the] notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." This is not the first time I've been voted down recently despite having sources, and the majority having opinions. I would hope that an admin would see that three editors have not actually done their reading, but it's certainly easier to do a head count.

  Thanks for the reply. GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 19:53, 27 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  S Marshall, the category was listified (or rather article-ified) at Four traditions of geography. Anything more than that would probably be excessive.
  The point is, really, that it doesn't help to have mountains of categories, each tied to a different way to organise content. That's why the categories need to be defining, and useful for navigation. —  Qwerfjkl talk 21:24, 30 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  I article-ified it during the deletion discussion because several people thought without a page it wasn't demonstrated as significant, it's funny how this is now also used as justification to keep it deleted. It is more defining and better supported within the literature then the remaining categories, and deleting it has created the need to reorganize other higher categories, without a clear way to do which both satisfies outside literature and is internally consistent that immediately obvious. GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 00:38, 31 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  GeogSage, what higher categories need organising? —  Qwerfjkl talk 09:26, 31 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  Hello,

  I had pointed this out in a few other comments. The Four Traditions was a container category that had held Category:Spatial analysis, Category:Human-Environment interaction, Category:Regional geography, and Category:Earth science, of these the category Human-environment interaction was connected to the category tree only through the four traditions. It can't be simply dumped into another category without a bit of thought as this is a well established concept in the literature.

  The category Category:Branches of geography was parallel to the traditions within the category Category:Subfields of geography. It contains Category:Human geography, Category:Physical geography, Category:Technical geography. Branches are a term that exist in the literature to organize the discipline (you can read about them on the main geography page), so we can't just dump all fields into them or it's original research on ontology. Subfields of geography was created to maintain consistency with other disciplines on Wikipedia within the category Category:Subfields by academic discipline. This category does not have strong supporting literature, so the idea was to have the various approaches to organizing the discipline serve as categories within it. It is important to note that there are many approaches, and it may be good to leave room for non-western models as well, I did not create categories for organizations like Five themes of geography, but could see the argument made if someone really pushed on it. Now that the four traditions has been deleted however, this category and the Branches seem redundant, but just dumping everything into either one is not ideal, and choosing one over the other is a huge debate.

  I believe that the situation before deleting the four traditions was stable, and have proposed (without reply yet) the possibility of creating a category just titled "traditions of geography" that can satisfy not only the four traditions, but others that have been preposed in the literature over the years to augment the original "traditions" model (this would satisfy the "lack of growth potential" argument I believe).

  Trying to organize these categories was something I spent some time and thought on, and had at least one other editor help along the way. My main frustration is that I don't believe the same level of thought is being done in deleting this category, and I don't think the reasoning for keeping it was fully considered. To reorganize it, I think significant thought will need to be put back into the problem, and had asked for that thought to be done before deleting the category for the four traditions in the original discussion. I think this has made a bit of a mess in my opinion.

  Geography is an umbrella discipline, which covers extremely diverse topics, as opposed to other more specialized disciplines like sociology or geology. The debate on how to organize it goes back centuries (literally, I can give you sources if you want) and may be a bit more extreme then other disciplines due to the highly integrated and interdisciplinary nature of the field. By making these categories, we are inadvertently weighing in on this debate, which is why I tried to inject established schema. I hope corrections to this will be appropriately thought out with consideration to the literature and internal Wikipedia consistency.

  Thank you for taking the time to read this and your question. GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 18:46, 31 December 2023 (UTC) reply

• Endorse Having read the discussion, I think this was the only way it could have been closed based on the discussion. (I also happen to think the reasoning was correct as both a non-defining category and a category of limited growth - the arguments for keeping the category were based on content, not on the usual ways of determining whether a category should be kept or not, but we haven't lost anything considering a page which covers the topic as a whole is currently in mainspace.) SportingFlyer T· C 23:13, 26 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  The only reason there is a page on the mainspace is because someone didn't think the topic needed a category without one, so I made it as the main article for the category, as they requested. The growth potential for the category is within the four subcategories, the "four traditions," which are all fairly large categories. How many peer reviewed publications are needed to prove something is a defining category? This method of categorization has better consistent coverage in outside literature then the other existing categories, and I don't understand why "growth" matters based on the Wikipedia:Categorization page. GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:15, 27 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  This isn't a second attempt at the CfD, and I don't wish to be drawn into a discussion, but from my view the category was doing one of two things: either it only serves to categorise the three or four articles currently at the Four traditions of geography article, in which case the growth potential for the category is extremely limited, or it serves to replace or complement the branches of geography categorisation scheme, which would probably require an RfC to discuss because it's at such a core level of the categorisation tree, and is not something I'd necessarily see passing. Pattison's terms are discussed in the literature but I think it's a difficult argument to make that an alternative categorisation structure would be needed, considering we err on the side of not categorising things. SportingFlyer T· C 05:06, 27 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  I've spent a lot of time on this exact topic and like discussing it, and at this point am pretty much giving up on this despite feeling its ridiculous. The four traditions of geography category was a Wikipedia:Container category, and held four categories, Category:Spatial analysis, Category:Human-Environment interaction, Category:Regional geography, and Category:Earth sciences. It was not just the four pages, it was complementing the branches of geography categorization scheme. Unfortunately, "Branches of geography" is difficult to establish as this is an active area of debate within the discipline. I modified this category and the main page of geography to have three branches (based on the UNESCO approach and a couple journal articles), physical, human, and technical. These three categories are similar to but not identical to the four traditions, and while this is the best order I can find based on the literature, they are not as well established and consistent as the four traditions. Based on a previous discussion with another editor (I think it is in the now deleted four traditions talk page), I created the category Category:Subfields of geography to hold both the Branches and the four traditions. This was to maintain consistency within Wikipedia's category Category:Subfields by academic discipline. By having the two models for subdivision, branches and traditions, within this higher category we were able to satisfy the literature and maintain internal consistency. We also had the door open for other potential complementary models for dividing geography, as the two we have here are not the only possibilities, and are mostly based on European/Western approaches. Deleting the four traditions with one nomination and two votes did make major modifications to the core of the categorization tree, created an orphan category (Human-Environment interaction), and has made the "Subfields" and "Branches" seem redundant. However, dumping everything into either category through a merge would represent original research on the ontology of geography... It's a mess and why I'm very frustrated. GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 19:47, 27 December 2023 (UTC) reply

• Endorse - The closer was correct. The appellant seems to be filibustering, and seemed to be filibustering at CFD. Is the appellant saying that the closer should have ignored consensus and supervoted? Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:14, 28 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  • Comment Don't mean to seem to be "filibustering," I just believe that it is the responsibility of us all to argue to the best of our abilities and if we believe a decision was not based on sound reasoning, dispute it, especially if we hold a minority opinion. Wikipedia is odd in that it needs in depth discussion on a topic, but doing so seems to annoy people. I've found several individuals who seem to assert their opinion into a conversation, refuse to change it, and then decry discussion that goes against their view. Invoking these policy from admins really feels like an attempt to stifle dissent most of the time.

  I believe that the literature I presented verified the category was one in use by geographers in the real world, and that the implications for deleting it to the organization of other categories were not fully addressed. I believe that two votes for delete in addition to the nomination do not represent a strong consensus that could over ride outside sources, and more discussion was needed. Overall, I believe the category was deleted based on the subjective opinion of a few, rather then in consideration of the arguments presented based on sources. As the discussion had been relisted several times, I was trying to think of how to get more discussion going without looking like I was shopping for support. Without additional discussion or addressing how the other impacted categories would be dealt with, I think that there was doubt to if it should be deleted, and that no consensus had been reached. As the delete comments were, in my opinion, mostly WP:ITSCRUFT, I was not asking for a "supervote," in my opinion.

  GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 19:04, 28 December 2023 (UTC) reply

• Comment - I think that what GeogSage wants is to use the parent category Category:Four traditions of geography as a container for four subcategories, one for each tradition, and put each geographic article in one (or sometimes two) categories. If so, that is probably a very good idea, but needs to be discussed in a less adversarial forum than CFD, and with more attention to the child categories. If so, maybe WikiProject Geography would be a better forum. Can this DRV be closed as Endorsing the deletion, but as a Soft Delete so that the category and its children can be recreated based on subsequent discussion to clarify the need for and use of the category? Robert McClenon ( talk) 18:14, 28 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  • Comment Thank you for your comment and suggestion. Prior to deletion, this was what the category for the four traditions of geography was doing, and it was deleted without an in depth conversation to discuss the child categories and implications for broad organization. It held Category:Spatial analysis, Category:Human-Environment interaction, Category:Regional geography, and Category:Earth sciences, with the main article for the category being Four traditions of geography. Deleting it has created orphan categories, makes some categories seem redundant, and makes addressing a reorganization challenging in consideration with the outside literature and internal Wikipedia consistency. I brought it here because I felt the discussion on it did not consider this, and that the consensus was weak in the face of the literature. Honestly, I don't even know how to go about fixing the mess without doing original research, so a soft delete and discussion on more focused group would be beneficial.

  (honestly, I feel like the problem is the average person is familiar with the word "branches" when dividing a discipline, so "traditions" sounds weird. In this case though, the four traditions have more consistent literature then branches, although I don't see why two broadly overlapping supporting categories can't coexist. A good compromise I've found in a literature review recently for a "new" category could be just "Traditions of geography", as there are more then one publication that have attempted to build on the four traditions by preposing a "fifth." I'm considering a subsection on the page for the four traditions to discuss this, and eliminating the "four" word would allow more room for "growth". I was considering making this category anyway, but wanted some resolution here first.)

  GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 18:40, 28 December 2023 (UTC) reply

• Endorse delete and proceed as above. Something good rolled out in the end! gidonb ( talk) 03:39, 31 December 2023 (UTC) reply

  What good rolled out in the end? Proceed with what above? Sorry for the confusion. GeogSage ^{( ⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:41, 31 December 2023 (UTC) reply

We can move forward using McClenon's suggestion. gidonb ( talk) 00:19, 1 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Category:Dutch wheelchair tennis players ( talk| | history| logs| links| watch) ( article| XfD| restore)

This was deleted per WP:G5 about 12 years ago and I cannot find any Cfd discussion at all either. Not sure if it applies here even but wanted permission to recreate as part of Category:Wheelchair tennis players. Omnis Scientia ( talk) 14:53, 26 December 2023 (UTC) reply

• Unprotect, and consider doing so speedily. A G5 from 2011 shouldn't constrain a good faith editor in 2023.— S Marshall  T/ C 17:13, 26 December 2023 (UTC) reply
• Speedy unprotect This is an uncontroversial request. SportingFlyer T· C 18:10, 26 December 2023 (UTC) reply