Category talk:Three

Category:Three
Tagged by. Does this have anything to do with ? TeleComNasSprVen 21:21, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Delete, most of these should be in prefix categories. For the others, it's not worth keeping this category. -- Prince Kassad 21:39, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I mentioned this category, in that discussion, shortly before it was tagged. It has characteristics of Category:Importance, Category:Coffee, Category:Water, Category:Female, among many other categories. That is, they apparently exist for the sake of listing which definitions that involve a single concept: As an example, "Category:Coffee" contains frappucino, coffee grinder and coffee shop. --Daniel. 04:41, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * It's a really weird category containing many things. Things that are etymologically related to three, often via Proto-Indo-European, or things involving three 'things'. My instinct is delete as it's no use to anybody. Interesting perhaps, but we do seem to forget that categories are supposed to be useful for our users and just come up with fanciful things to please ourselves. So delete and let's think about Wiktionary users more often. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:38, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

By the way, keep as in line with Category:Coffee (these two are categories involving the concept described in the title). --Daniel. 18:12, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. The category seems to contain terms whose definition involves three or threeness in some way, as dactyl--"A poetical foot of three syllables (— ~ ~), one long followed by two short, or one accented followed by two unaccented." The terms do not really seem to be included by etymology: the terms that start with "tri-" naturally also semantically contain the number 3 as long as the etymology follows the semantics at least a bit. I find the category actually quite interesting, but I admit its selection criteria are unlike those of most topical categories. For the record, here is the content of the category: 3-D, 3D, dactyl, hattrick, hattrick, lovetriangle, ménageàtrois, samisen, shamisen, teapoy, ter-, terce, ternary, third, thirteen, thirty, three, three-space, threefold, threeish, threeness, threepence, threesome, thrice, thruppence, tierce, TLA, treble, trefoil, trefot, tri-, triad, triangle, triannual, triathlete, triathlon, tribrach, tricolon, tricolor, tricolour, tricorn, tricorne, tricycle, trident, tridentate, triennial, trifecta, trifunctional, trifurcation, trigamy, trigon, trihedron, trilemma, triliteral, trillion, trilogy, trimester, trimetallic, trimeter, trinary, trinity, trio, tripartite, triphthong, triple, triplet, triplex, triplicate, tripod, triptote, triptych, triquetra, trireme, triskelion, tristate, trisulphide, trisyllabic, trisyllable, trit, tritactic, triumvirate, trivalent, troika. The category was created on 8 September 2009 by PalkiaX50. Category:One, Category:Two, Category:Four and Category:Five, which are similar categories, were all created by Facts707 on 13 February 2010; each of them contains only a few items. --Dan Polansky 13:47, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep, the category is useful, I don't get where Mglovesfun is coming from at all. A friend of mine wanted to know a word for "to reduce to one third the original amount". I sent him a link to this category and hopefully what his looking for is in there. Bbx 10:04, 22 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think this is potentially useful. I agree it is a weird mish-mash of etymological and semantic threes! Equinox ◑ 10:07, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Kept for no consensus. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:34, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Category:Five
These are proper topics as such, but where does it stop? Category:Fourty-two? Category:Googol? 19:22, 12 August 2012 (UTC)


 * See also above. It has been closed as kept on 8 August 2012 for no consensus. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:39, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Category: One, and Five - delete. Maro 19:54, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
 * But not Two, Three and Four? Mglovesfun (talk) 20:05, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, only these two. Maro 20:11, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Is there something special about the numbers 2, 3 and 4 that you are not telling us...? 20:26, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Category Five has only one page in it and One has two entries. Category:en:Three has 83 entries so someone can find it useful. You've made separate sections for each category here so I suppose we do not consider them collectively but separately. Maro 22:28, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, it doesn't really it make sense to me if we think a category for 'Three' is a good thing to have but a category for 'One' is not. What is important about 3 that it is more deserving of a category of its own than 1 is? 02:03, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
 * We do have the option to add things to categories. Mglovesfun (talk) 08:50, 13 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Delete I doubt that these are of use to anyone other than their creator. Criteria for existence of and membership in topical category tree are simply the whims of creators, patrollers, and voters. The membership in classes like this ends up being quite Borgesian. DCDuring TALK 13:30, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
 * delete and please stay with prefix/suffix categories instead of creating such pseudo-etymology categories. -- Liliana • 16:52, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I have decided to vote keep, as I am unconvinced by the stated arguments for deletion, and as Roget's 1911 thesaurus has entries per several small positive integers: "87. Unity", "89. Duality", "92. Triality", "95. Four", and "98. Five". See for instance The categories are not really etymological; they contain words whose meaning contains the particular small number in some way. --Dan Polansky (talk) 18:44, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * If we do decide to keep this, then we would have to agree where to stop, though. I doubt Category:Forty-two is something we would want to keep. 18:53, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * We should stop when the category can no longer contain an interesting number of member entries. Have you had a look at Roget 1911? --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:47, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, thesaurus. I'd support a Wikisaurus:one, Wikisaurus:two etc. without second thought, but surely not this. -- Liliana • 19:50, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Why do you support thesaurus but not a topical category? Which argument of yours applies to a category but not to thesaurus? What is the negative consequence of having these topical categories? --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:54, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Categories appear at the bottom of every page. If we have topical categories for everything people can come up with, it will be an utter mess. -- Liliana • 19:58, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Links to the thesaurus will eventually appear in every member entry of each thesaurus page. So again, how are categories different from thesaurus pages? Furthermore, which of the member entries of the categories proposed for deletion are overcrowded with topical categories? Certainly not trimetallic. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:03, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * And not to forget, you cannot sort category members by hypernyms, hyponyms, holonyms, meronyms, synonyms, antonyms etc. like you can with a Wikisaurus page. -- Liliana • 20:07, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I am the last one in English Wiktionary to fail to appreciate the charms of Wikisaurus over topical categories. But with "triality", "three" or "threeness", the semantic relations that you have mentioned do not find any use. I still do not see why you oppose topical categories while having no objections to thesaurus entries. I also do not see you respond the points I have raised, or admit an error. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:14, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Delete the categories; make and link from entries to an appendix, if desired. - -sche (discuss) 18:59, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

For the record, the English variants of the categories now have the following numbers of member entries: The great job of filling the categories seems to have been done by ; kudos. --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:51, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't get the relevance of there being a thesaurus entry in Roget for having a category in Wiktionary. For having a Wikisaurus entry, yes.
 * Appendices are great places for laying out thematic relationships with much more detail and richness than a simple listing.
 * Delete each and every one. DCDuring TALK 19:13, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * You have already voted delete, DCDuring. Topical categories classify words by semantics, just like a thesaurus does. (A true thesaurus like the Roget's one, not a dictionary of synonyms.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:47, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Category:en:One: 33
 * Category:en:Two: 47
 * Category:en:Three: 92
 * Category:en:Four: 52
 * Category:en:Five: 66
 * And six has 29, seven has 21, eight has 32, nine 18, ten 25, eleven 20, twelve 18, thirteen 13. There are no categories for fourteen and above yet. 19:55, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Good. Now what is wrong with these categories? Why do you want them deleted? What is it that you do not like about them? --Dan Polansky (talk) 19:57, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * As topical categories by themselves I am not sure if there is anything really wrong with them, although I do think there should be less and broader topics rather than more and specific ones. The issue I have with these categories in particular is the precedent they set towards having categories for more and more integers without end. Judging them based on how many entries they (can) contain does not work, because more can always be added. 20:04, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Only attested entries can be added. I doubt that you can find a meaningful number of memeber entries for Category:en:Thirty-five. I challenge you to find ten candidate entries in Wiktionary for that category. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:08, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Explicitly abstain. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:12, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Now that some people have been working to create new categories and fill them all, I am leaning towards keep myself. But I do hope we keep the highest at 20 for now. 01:40, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Strong keep now that they have a lot of entries. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:01, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Keep em, they're well populated now. ~ Röbin Liönheart (talk) 15:49, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Kept as now well populated.--ElisaVan (talk) 13:22, 2 October 2013 (UTC)