Category talk:Humans

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I just want to point out- I love that Transformers is a world where Darth Vader and Jules Verne get listed side-by-side. -Derik 20:00, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Nationality categories

Would anybody mind if I made categories based on nationality? —Interrobang 05:22, 22 August 2010 (EDT)

I certainly wouldn't. ---Blackout- 07:15, 22 August 2010 (EDT)

Thoughts: The "Humans" category is huge. What is a category that big good for? How is it used? Huge categories like Humans, Autobots, and Decepticons could stand to be broken up, but nationality doesn't seem like a useful way to do it. It would split all the humans up in a way I would never really look for. I don't know about anyone else. Some cases would be ambiguous anyway. The story could take place in America, but sometimes you would have to assume the character wasn't visiting or on a work visa or something. If we were to break the categories up into something more manageable, I would suggest combining "Unicron Trilogy characters" with "Humans" to make a "Unicron Trilogy humans" and "Generation 1 characters" and "Autobots" to make "Generation 1 Autobots". That wouldn't really make more categories since they are combining two categories. - Starfield 21:07, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

This seems a more useful division than by nationality, but there's still a lot to consider with it. Beyond the fact that it would take a LOT... and I mean "metric fuckton LOT"... of work, since categories like "Autobots" are colossal. We'd be going over virtually every character on the wiki.

There is the question as to what the actual split would be by... continuity family, or franchise? Honestly, franchise seems the better choice, since those are already categories. Replace "Cybertron characters" on each one's page with "Cybertron Autobots/Decepticons/humans" or whatever modifier to "Cybertron" is relevant? --M Sipher 21:20, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

I was actually thinking of doing that eventually. But I don't see why we can't have both. I still like the idea of looking up all of a country's characters on one page instead of trawling through categories for stereotypical names. —Interrobang 21:31, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

PS franchise is better. —Interrobang 21:33, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

I was kind of undecided about the nationalities, but Starfield makes a good point that there are too many ambiguous characters. Dividing by franchise seems like a good idea. --Khajidha 21:45, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

Yea, franchise. I don't know why I said "Unicron Trilogy". - Starfield 21:48, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

Could we have, say, Cybertron Humans as a subcategory of both Cybertron characters and Humans? --Khajidha 21:50, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

Well, yes. That'd be more or less the point. We'd keep the big over-arcing "______ characters" and "Autobots"/"Humans" etc categories, it's just we'd divvy up everything into franchise sub-categories under those. --M Sipher 22:09, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

Just making sure that a subcategory could be under multiple higher categories at the same time, I'm still a little unclear about some things. --Khajidha 22:11, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

I think we can operate under the assumption that they are what fiction presents them to be unless told otherwise. —Interrobang 21:54, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

I can't think of any examples offhand, but what were you planning on doing in the case of Japanese Americans? Or minor characters that aren't presented as any nationality in particular? Would they stay in "humans" until confirmed even if it seems pretty much obvious? - Starfield 22:39, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

This is nationality, not ethnicity, so Japanese-Americans would not be in the Japanese people category unless they also lived in Japan at some point. And ambiguous characters would stay in "humans". That's what I've been doing. (Note by "ambiguous", I mean actually ambiguous. Humans in American settings are seen as American by default unless the fiction shows otherwise in a variety of ways. Default nationality is not ambiguity.) —Interrobang 22:59, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

Alright. That's what I would do, too. Just checking. It is too bad the category is limited to humans at the moment. As an anon pointed out, Pyro is British in Wings of Honor. What if the category was "British characters" and listed under "Characters by nationality"? - Starfield 23:20, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

Oh, right, the G2: Redux dudes. They really should have their nationality actually stated somewhere, if not categories. —Interrobang 23:31, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

Also the Masterforce Pretenders, since they've integrated themselves into human society. —Interrobang 23:39, 29 August 2010 (EDT)

I think there is some potential for problems with the "Asian people" category, given that Asian is not a nationality and treating "American" and "Asian" as though they are mutually exclusive descriptions can be potentially offensive. --KilMichaelMcC 01:45, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

I am all in favor of breaking up our "humans" category into the five nationalities: American, Canadian, Asian, British, and Brown. --ItsWalky 01:55, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

This is one of several reasons why I tried to put the brakes on this as soon as I saw what was going on. This is at BEST damn dicey territory we're entering IF we continue on this path, which I don't recommend. We would need some very, VERY carefully-chosen terminology. This whole thing just seems fraught with ways to fuck this up bigtime. --M Sipher 01:58, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

What exactly is your preferred demonym for people in the continent of Asia, then? I would think people can recognize that "Asian" in this context means "people who live or lived on the region known as Asia, which is a large group that includes Russians, Turks, Iraqi, Indians, and Chinese" and not the race that we lump all Eastern Asians into. Words can have different meanings. And where are "American" and "Asian" being treated as mutually exclusive descriptions? If you have lived in Asia and in the United States, congratulations, you are both Asian (as in "from the continent") and American. Ginrai, for example, would go in both "Japanese people" and "American people". —Interrobang 02:39, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

Okay, do you see what you just did there? If you have lived in Asia and in the United States, congratulations, you are both Asian (as in "from the continent") and American. Most Asian-Americans have not, in fact, ever lived in Asia. --KilMichaelMcC 10:33, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

For fuck's sake. What part of "Asian in this context means people who live or have lived on the continent" is not fucking getting through to you? I am talking about residents of Asia. I am not talking about descendants of people who have traditionally lived in Asia. —Interrobang 13:56, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

I am just responding to your language. If you wish to use for the term Asian strictly in the context of residency, then the category should be "Residents of Asia" not "Asian people," because in the real world millions of self-identified "Asian people" have never lived on the continent. --KilMichaelMcC 16:52, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

And welcome to why we needed to discuss the terminology before applying it, if we even do! The more you have to explain what a category MEANS when the exact meaning is not self-evident in the actual category name, the less useful said category is. RUSSIANS are technically "Asian people". Frankly, I think Thy has the least problematic version of all this with "____ citizen". Because really, I don't think I could give less of a shit what race everyone is and sorting them all out by it. That seems far less important than WHERE THEIR STORIES HAPPEN. The Sumdacs being Indian had fuck-all to do with anything. Might as well start categorizing by hair color. --M Sipher 17:09, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

Nobody said anything about or proposed anything focused on race, other than the insistence that "Asian people" has only one meaning, related to race. (Yes, Russians who live east of the Ural Mountains are Asians. And?) If you realize this, then why are we still talking about it? —Interrobang 17:34, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

There is no insistence that "'Asian people' has only one meaning"... but that "when you say 'Asian people', virtually nobody thinks 'why, this must refer to people who have a citizenship within one of the many varied nations that make up the continent known as Asia!', but rather 'people who are one of the races commonly referred to as Asian'." "I'm tired of these fucking beans" COULD mean that the beans are engaged in an act of coitus with each other according to the grammar, but people are only going to think that's what you actually meant after you show them that the legumes are literally copulating. Again... the more you have to explain what the category name actually means, the more that category needs its name changed. --M Sipher 17:48, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

I think that other people don't see "resident of _______" as important (I know I don't). "Native of _______" or "citizen of _______" seems much more informative. Especially since it would be limited to those whose citizenship is actually known, avoiding the possible ambiguities others have mentioned. --Khajidha 14:09, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

How many non-Japanese Asians ARE there in this franchise anyway? I can think of a whopping four, maybe five (is Cancer Chinese? I forget), and that's if you count the Sumdacs on the grounds of India being part of the continent call "Asia", and really, most people don't think of Indians when they think "Asian". Combine Kil's above concern with frankly limited usefulness, and it all just doesn't seem worth it. --M Sipher 03:05, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

15 Asian residents. Akram, Abdul Ben Faisal (also European), Cab, Cancer, Cancer's sensei, Madame Cee, Chang, Chok-Pa, Doctor Dado, Donq, Kim Jong Du, King of Jordan, Shaoshao Li, Mahfouz, telephone operator. You, I guess would go in every category. —Interrobang 13:56, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

I thought that we established that You are always white.

Especially when the nationality of the Sumdacs is, y'know, American. Man, I can't wait for those revert wars. --ItsWalky 10:24, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

I could see the merits of categorizing humans by CITIZENSHIP. As in, Isaac Sumdac and Carly Witwicky and Alexis McWhatever are Americans, and Faqqadi is Carbombyan, and bin Feisal is Turkish, and so on. If we don't know a human's citizenship, there is no other geographic category worth listing for them, because we could very well be WRONG. Random Japanese Dude might not be "Asian," he might be South African. Tread carefully. --Thylacine 2000 11:18, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

So, can we get rid of the "Asian people" category yet? Either removed altogether or changed to "Residents of Asia" or some such thing? --KilMichaelMcC 13:23, 31 August 2010 (EDT)

Alien humans

Regardless of what is done about nationality, does anyone think a category for non-Earthling humans would be useful? For people like Mace Windu and First One? I think that would be cool. I started one called "alien humans", but there might be a better name. - Starfield 17:09, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

Multi-category search

I may have asked this before, but this seems like as good a place as any to bring it up - is there no way of viewing intersections of categories, Venn-diagram style? It's easy enough in SQL to write the statements and it seems it would be a lot easier than re-editing every Generation 1 Autobot's page with a Generation 1 Autobot category if we could just show the intersection of Generation 1 and Autobots, or Generation 1 and Humans, or Unicron Trilogy and Humans, whatever. --Emvee 06:13, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

Special:MultiCategorySearch --abates 06:22, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

AWESOME. We should use this more. --Emvee 06:31, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

WHY IS THIS NOT LINKED TO IN THE SEARCH BOX ON THE LEFT? --M Sipher 07:42, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

AWESOME! I didn't think we had the technology. No need to make "Generation 1 Autobots" categories. - Starfield 14:58, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

It's not as elegant as an actual category. No subcategories, for instance. —Interrobang 15:00, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

It's still a very useful tool for other things (Autobot medics, G1 security officers, etc) that we should damn well have a link to in our normal search section. --M Sipher 17:22, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

Yeah, not arguing against that. —Interrobang 17:35, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

I think putting a link in the search box requires changing the skin, which is a job for our tech people. --abates 18:11, 30 August 2010 (EDT)

On the contrary, all it requires is editing the right page. I'll go add it now. --Tigerpaw28 00:31, 31 August 2010 (EDT)

Or not. I guess it needs to be an admin? --Tigerpaw28 00:32, 31 August 2010 (EDT)

I think that page is specific to Wikia's Monaco skin and is not used here. --abates 00:43, 31 August 2010 (EDT)

I'll admit I'm not familiar with the site's software, but if we could change those text inputs to selects pre-populated with categories and link it from the search box, that could be one of the site's best features. I've been playing with it pretty much non-stop since my post above. Whee, Comic-only G1 Decepticons! I'm really loving it. --Emvee 11:42, 4 September 2010 (EDT)

It's more than inelegant. It is incomplete because it doesn't dig into sub-categories. A search for Generation 1 characters and Autobots doesn't pick up Skydive (G1 Aerialbot) because he isn't in the category "Autobots", but the sub-category "Aerialbots". That means it isn't very useful at all. - Starfield 13:01, 4 September 2010 (EDT)

But it does pick up Silverbolt (G1), suggesting that Skydive (G1 Aerialbot) just needs to be added to Category: Autobots as well --Emvee 19:27, 4 September 2010 (EDT)