Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:Wonders of the World2

The following discussion comes from Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. This is an archive of the discussion only; please do not edit this page. The decision was to delete the category.

Note: This category was previously nominated and listed as unresolved. For the November 2004 discussion, see Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:Wonders of the World. -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:48, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

CfD discussion

Category:Wonders of the World

Hopelessly POV and arbitrary. - SimonP 23:16, Feb 27, 2005 (UTC)

I agree, totally arbitrary. Delete. Worldtraveller 23:29, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Agreed - POV & arbitrary. Delete. Courtland 00:21, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)
Delete — though in a way it's a pity; it's not without browsing interest. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 00:44, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Move to article — contents not without browsing interest. --Palnatoke 04:39, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete, possible Move; there may be a place for some of this in one or more list-type articles, but as a category it's incredibly arbitrary. Incidentally, I remember removing the Metropolitan Museum of Art from the category, just to show how far the arbitrariness can go. Maybe some of this can be merged into List of popular tourist regions or a new List of popular tourist attractions if the rather nonstandard disclaimer at the top of the previous page is to be taken at face value. Some of it could also be merged into List of archaeological sites (both of them of course), List of historic civil engineering landmarks and maybe a List of natural wonders and/or separately into List of waterfalls etc. But the category definitely has got to go.--Pharos 07:02, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete, utterly arbitrary. – Kpalion (talk) 09:07, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete. Horribly POV and arbitrary. —Lowellian (talk) 10:32, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)
- Repeating what I've said before: "Unless this category is restricted to a very specific list, by turning it into, for example, Category:Seven Wonders of the World (and listing only the ancient list given by Antipater of Sidon), this category will be inherently always POV: who's to say whether any ancient structure qualifies or does not qualify as a 'Wonder of the World'?" —Lowellian (talk) 10:36, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)
Keep or at least move to a list article. I don't believe being arbitrary is a bad quality for categories, as long as they enhance Wikipedia structure by providing interesting and novel ways of navigating it. Inclusion in a category is not an endorsement of value. Paranoid 12:36, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete. Inherently POV unless accompanied by cited references. Category:Seven Wonders of the World should certainly exist, though — I'm surprised it doesn't. — Asbestos | Talk 13:39, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete. Wonderful as, for instance, St Mark's Campanile is, it's not even the most famous campanile in the world. Warofdreams 14:49, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Delete and move to list, article, or ? We should have some articles or other categories here, as others have suggested, but not this category, which is POV. This will take some work. --A D Monroe III 01:58, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Delete and rename to Seven Wonders of the Ancient World or similar. Neutrality^talk 17:44, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)
Delete unless someone wants to precisely define what qualifies for membership, so that it's less arbitrary. JYolkowski 17:53, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Talk page archive

The follow discussions come from Category talk:Wonders of the World:

The basis for the category is the Hillman's list of 100 wonders (see Wonders of the World article). It is, of course, not limited to that list. Other notable lists are the Seven Wonders of the Modern World by the ASCE, the Seven Natural Wonders of the World by CNN, etc.

Below are articles that haven't been included in the category yet, grouped by status:

Wonders from Hillman's list not processed yet

Appropriate article can't be found

Existing articles are either too general (there is Fjord, which is not specific to Norway) or too specific (there is Grand Canal of Venice).

Iguazu Falls – Argentina & Brazil
Ngorongoro Crater – Tanzania
Fjords of Norway –
Karnak Temple – Egypt
Banaue Rice Terraces – Philippines
Hong Kong Harbourscape – China
Canals of Venice – Italy
Rio Panoramic Views – Brazil
Florence Cityscape – Italy

No article with such title

These articles are missing from Wikipedia, but I haven't checked if they exist under other titles.

Articles exist

These articles exist and are most likely appropriate for inclusion. Need to be checked and added to the category when time permits.

Wonders from the main article

The Seven Wonders of the World article lists many wonders from different sources, some of which were not included in the category yet. These are listed below:

Other natural wonders

Other candidates commonly cited (from Seven Wonders of the World):

Medieval wonder

From Seven Wonders of the World:

The Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa (no article yet)

Who the heck is Hillman?

And why should Wikipedia endorse his POV? Anyone may make a list of as many wonders of the world as one wishes and put whatever one wishes on such a list. It's always arbitrary, and as such, against the NPOV policy. Unless we rename the category to Category:Hillman's Wonders of the World or Category:Wonders of the World according to Hillman. -- Kpalion 01:01, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree. This category is inherently POV. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 17:36, Nov 17, 2004 (UTC)

I am afraid I didn't make myself clear enough. Hillman's list is just the basis for the category, not the definite criteria. I felt that a category for all wonders of the world would be useful. The obvious place to start were the 7 wonders, but after that I though adding more articles to it would be useful. I used Hillman's list simply because it seemed a nice list made by a qualified person. Of course, nothing prevents wikipedians (and myself for that matter) from adding more articles to the category or removing some articles from it. The same principle of consensus and discussion applies.

The reason why I didn't call it Category:Hillman's Wonders of the World (similar to Category:AFI 100 Movies is precisely because Hillman is not really an authority on this topic. At least not more than Antipater of Sidonor any other random guy who felt like making a list. So I wanted to make a Wikipedia category, and it just happened that I started by including wonders in Hillman's list. As for the inherent POV of the category, it's not any more arbitrary than any other "judgemental" category of which there are several on Wikipedia. Paranoid 20:33, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What other categories are judgemental? If there are any, they should be deleted too. If there's no definite criteria for including an article in a given category, then there's no point creating such a category at all. Otherwise, the next thing I'm going to do is to place the ten most beatiful buildings in my hometown in this category, just beacause I believe they are wonders of the world. You know what I mean? Besides, there's already Category:UN World Heritage Sites which is more or less a modern list of the wonders of the world. -- Kpalion 23:19, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I won't tell you about judgemental categories, since I find them useful and don't want you to put them on cfd. :) But seriously, all categories at the present require a certain judgement. For example, should Acupuncture be included into Category:Medicine? Isn't this a judgement about effectiveness of acupuncture? Should Prayer be included because there was one study that showed that prayer had some effectiveness? A very significant number of categories, including major ones, are judgemental. In this particular case it's more noticeable, because the very title, "wonder of the world" is presumably a supportive statement, a value judgement, while "medicine" is not. But I don't think it has to necessarily be so, and I think that wikipedians have necessary restraing not to do the sort of vandalism you describe.

I think your example of you putting the 10 best houses in your town here is invalid, because it's not realistic. In reality we would have some border cases (Should Golden Gates Bridge be included? Should Sahara desert be included?), where there are arguments for and against, but which can be resolved in a traditional fashion (include an article, revert with explanations, present a more detailed argument, a counter-argument, a consensus reached). So your example is dishonest, a logical fallacy (slippery slope).

Your argument that there is another category is valid, but I think that the "Wonders of the World" can contribute the "World heritage sites" one and that the latter can't replace the former. I feel, however, that this is a very different argument from the one that was initially made when this category was placed on cfd.

Finally, I want to reiterate what I said on cfd. There can be a very objective criteria for inclusing into the category - if a particular man-made construction, a natural phenomena or a site is included by any author (outside of Wikipedians) in a list which is titled "... wonders ... world" or is obviously similar in theme, then the article about it should be included in the category, unless there is a particularly strong reason not to do it. Paranoid 00:52, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This category is allmost inherently POV, but for that we can thank Anitpater of Sidon, not Hillman. His "Seven Wonders of the World" may have been capricious and arbitrary, even in its day, but is now part of Western civilization whether we like it or not. The Illiad is certainly POV and not a literal historical account of the Trojan War, but since it has long ago entered into the canon of Western civilization that doesn't matter. Basically the term "Wonders of the World" goes back to Antipater, and those who came after him with their own lists were attempting to either update, supplant, or supplement him. While this may well be a fool's errand, it has been undertaken so long that it is worth noting in an encyclopedia. However, to me, for inclusion in this, it should be from a list published elsewhere by someone considered to be a writer of note, and then in my opinion it is suitable for inclusion. Remember, this isn't the place for original research or original opinion pieces; therefore we shouldn't have "Hillmans wonder's of the world" or, for that matter, "Rlquall's wonders of the world", but the opinion of recognized writers (writers who would be deserving of their own Wikipeida article if they don't have one already). Keep if we can set a standard similar to the above.

Note that it's not a vote about the article Wonders of the World but about the category. You may take different lists of Wonders made by various authors and put them in the article. You can make comparisons and count in how many of such lists each object is included. This will be all fine and it can be done from a NPOV. But the category is something different and it can't be made unbiased. --Kpalion 13:47, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Exactly. Kpalion is right. —Lowellian (talk)[[]] 22:20, Nov 24, 2004 (UTC)

CfD results

With two people arguing to delete this category and one arguing to keep, there was technically a 2/3 consensus to delete. However, I don't think that literally two out of three is a very solid consensus, so I'm choosing to err on the side of caution. It has not been decided that this category should be kept (or deleted), but it will be allowed to exist for a little while longer.

The CfD discussion has been moved to Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/unresolved#Category:Wonders_of_the_World. As with other items listed on that page, the hope is that we will later be able to bring it up again and will then come to a consensus. In the meantime, the category can continue to evolve. If you want it to continue to be kept, I suggest working with the folks who disagree with you to see if you can come to a compromise that everyone can accept. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 18:14, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Problems with this category

If this is voted for deletion again I will strongly support. The main problem as I see it is that this is not merely a POV category, but entirely arbitrary, and therefore essentially useless as a category.

Virtually every user will have a different opinion of what should be included, and I'd say edit wars are quite likely. The only ways to include all viewpoints are to include every notable place (which means every article out there, because it shouldn't be out there if it's not notable!), or none.

It also seems superfluous to categories which are definite and not arbitrary, such as, for example, Category:UN_World_Heritage_Sites. I don't see what we gain over that category by including this category. Worldtraveller 17:48, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Categories are not statements about objects, they are merely a classification scheme. There are categories such as Category:Lakes, which are not ambigous at all, but then there are categories such as Category:Stock market, which serve merely to connect articles in some area of knowledge (some of those are not directly related to stock market). And then there are categories such as Category:Media moguls and barons that do not fit the hierarchical structure of the encyclopedia, but instead group together some related articles.

Including an article in a category is not a statement about the value or importance of a particular object, but only an attempt to structure the Wikipedia content in a way that would be helpful to some readers.

All of the content in Wikipedia is arbitrary. There are no fixed rules that determine what should be written in a particlar sentence. Yet somehow we manage all this.

Furthermore I don't understand why you ignore my suggestions on this page that only those objects that were already included in some "wonders of ..." list be included in the category. Why do you sink to the level of strawman attacks? It isn't a realistic concern at all that people start adding random objects to the category and then insist on that to the point of starting edit wars. So far I haven't noticed such behaviour on other articles and I see no reason to believe that wikipedians would start doing it here. Paranoid 19:38, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I do appreciate the point that it's about linking together related articles, but I am not convinced this category is necessary. It's still very arbitrary - anyone can make a list of wonders of the world, there's probably one a week published in travel supplements and magazines etc. Virtually any place, building or area could be included.

It seems to me like having a category called 'great footballers' or 'beautiful music' - it's subjective, and there's great potential for dispute. The name of the category means that including an article in it is passing a subjective judgement on it. Worldtraveller 22:17, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)