Category talk:Fictional dogs

Category:Fictional dogs
Fucking what? < class="latinx" >Ƿidsiþ 07:36, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Right, delete. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 07:44, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep per my argument from a discussion above: We do have policies for including fictional characters into appendices or entries. Once they're created, it's natural to categorize them. If we keep Pluto, Lassie and Snoopy but delete Category:Fictional dogs, then these entries simply will have to be members of Category:Fiction and of Category:Dogs, merely losing that connection of being simultaneously "fictional" and "a dog". --Daniel. 08:53, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * But so what? < class="latinx" >Ƿidsiþ 08:56, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Is this your best argument? :p --Daniel. 09:04, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Au contraire, Widsith was asking you to finish yours, Daniel, and I do the same hereby. You started an argument, saying that entries will lose the "connection of being simultaneously 'fictional' and 'a dog'" — and then never finished the argument, saying what's wrong with that. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 20:57, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Having a category to display a meaningful relationship between certain terms that would be otherwise members of two separate categories enhances navigability. It's easier to find the fictional dogs if they are together as members of that category. And it usually means less categories shown at the bottom of each entry; in this case, we would have to eventually clean up Category:Fiction and Category:Dogs to avoid redundancy. Then, the latter would be probably restricted only to "real" dogs, which would enhance navigability too.
 * It's like having a Category:Punctuation marks to contain certain terms like "comma" and "hyphen", that otherwise would be scattered through Category:Typography and Category:Orthography. --Daniel. 03:47, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete Can be recreated when well populated. HotCat makes it easy to populate categories once there is a need. If we have a deep multi-layer category structure we will either have many categories cluttering the category section of many of our entries or we will force users to go through many page loads, which are particularly slow for categories, to get to higher-level categories. DCDuring TALK 13:02, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've populated it a bit. It has 15 members now. --Daniel. 03:47, 19 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Delete. No matter how many names of fictional dogs might potentially warrant dictionary entries, it will never be reasonable for anyone to come looking here for names of fictional dogs. —Ruakh TALK 04:15, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Authors of books like Famous Dogs in Fiction might use some material for research, but they're a small target group. Also, there is the pop-culture phenomenon of giving names of iconic fictional dogs to iconic dogs, so dog owners may want to navigate a category like this. --Daniel. 04:46, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * In addition, one possible reason I gave to keep this category is eventually removing these words from Category:Dogs and Category:Fiction per the arguments stated above. --Daniel. 04:49, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete, nobody's saying there aren't any fictional dogs, just that this category is not dictionary material. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:42, 21 February 2011 (UTC)


 * My test for whether a topical category is too specific is if it can include only one part of speech. These would all be nouns, making it more of a list than a topic. Delete. DAVilla 19:32, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, generally, having only one part of speech is not a good reason to call any category "too specific", not to mention deleting it on that basis. For example, Category:Animals and its subcategories most likely are going to have only nouns and I don't perceive it as being too specific.
 * Contrariwise, if having only nouns was strictly a legitimate reason to delete any category, then Category:Dogs, Category:Canids, Category:Mammals, Category:Vertebrates and Category:Animals would be deleted, leaving dogs only in one or more huge supercategories, such asCategory:Nature. --Daniel. 23:44, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't lactate: be in Mammals? &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 04:24, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd rather not expect "lactate" to be a member of Category:Mammals. Similarly, I don't expect "day" or "week" to be members of Category:Days of the week. When the name of a topical category is a pluralized noun, it seems natural to populate it only with hyponyms, rather than with synonyms, hypernyms, meronyms, holonyms, actions, contexts and characteristics. However, this guideline is not implemented consistently in all or most topical categories, so other editors probably disagree with me. --Daniel. 08:31, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Relatedly: Category:Greens apparently follows my guideline by having only names of shades of green. It doesn't have names of green objects or of green animals. --Daniel. 11:43, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
 * But lactate has to do with mammals: a mammal is precisely (except maybe platypodes?) an animal such that the female of the species lactates. A cucumber does not belong in cat:Greens in the same way. &#x200b;—msh210℠ (talk) 16:55, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Categorizing lactate, perhaps hair or even placenta into Category:Mammals is misleading: if these terms are meant to teach about characteristics, or distinguishing characteristics, of mammals, then the study becomes hard due to the excess of names of mammals categorized.
 * An encyclopedia would be a better place to describe mammals detailedly. An appendix, possibly with glosses or explanations, or an improved version of WS:mammal, would be a better place to list terms directly related to mammals. It may or may not be complemented by a highly specialized category, such as Category:Characteristics of mammals, if necessary. --Daniel. 17:13, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Delete. --Vahag 17:21, 24 February 2011 (UTC) Deleted. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:28, 27 February 2011 (UTC)