Category talk:Assassin Brotherhood members
Deletion proposal
I noticed that Darman put up a deletion proposal for this category (though without opening up the discussion), and I firmly stand by it. His listed reason that Assassin Brotherhood is a not a gender-neutral term is actually aside from the point even though I also share the same reservations about the name for that reason. Category names should be as concise as possible and employ demonyms when possible.
This category, alongside "Templar Order members", was created by a now-banned moderator using his bot to preempt community discussion, as was his way. This is because once he moved the hundreds of pages, it would be a monumental task for anyone else to move them back since only he controlled the bot. His reasoning had been that the "Assassins" category should be used to mean assassins by the general noun, i.e. for people like John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. He then changed all categories on organizations to the format "[x] members" under the argument that they should all be consistent and the "necessity" of one category "Assassin Brotherhood members" being formatted in this way meant that all others should follow suit.
I have already mentioned that this is incorrect because the standard is that category names should be to use the most concise demonym as much as possible. For people of Mongolia, we use "Category:Mongolians" (for the nationality) and "Category:Mongols" (for the ethnicity), not "Mongolian people". But for people of France, we use "Category:French people" because our community had decided that "Frenchmen" was dated and also too gendered, because "French" alone can mean the language, and because unlike the pluralized "Mongolians", "Frenches" is not a word. The fact that the category for French people is in the format "[x] people" does not mean that the categories for Mongolians, Greeks, Egyptians, etc. also have to be in that format. For the same reason, even if the category for Assassins should be "Assassin Brotherhood members", it does not follow that every other category for organizations must follow that format if there are available demonyms.
Apart from this point, though, there are other issues with this former mod's reasoning. As I have already pointed out in Category talk:Assassins, the line is blurred between assassins of the general noun and Assassins of the proper noun. A great deal of Assassins were also assassins. The general noun assassins, while including the men who killed Lincoln and JFK, does not exclude Assassins who also committed political assassinations. The category should also include many Templars and Templar puppets who enacted assassinations as well. For this reason, I entirely object to even having a category specifically devoted to grouping "real-world assassins" from an in-universe perspective because from an in-universe perspective, the group really goes far beyond the likes of people like Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth. Such a category would be too overbearing and confusing, seeing as we already had debates about where we draw the line.
But even if we were to have such a category, the primary topic for the term (A/a)ssassins in Assassin's Creed where capitalization is ambiguous is still the Assassins. They are the protagonists of the series and almost every time someone mentions the term, it refers to them. When people search for a category page by the name "assassins", they will almost certainly be looking for the Assassins.
There is the final point that our former mod moved these pages all without authorization, abusing his bot to contravene any community discussion. Hence, in this case, it is within the staff's right to instantly move all the pages back, but I have decided that it may be better to still open up some room to discuss about it first. Certainly if there are no objections in 1 week, we will begin the arduous process of moving the pages back and deleting this page.
tl;dr
- The standard for category names of groups is to use the most concise demonym.
- Reserving "Category:Assassins" as a category for real-world assassins from an IU-perspective makes no sense and creates a host of complications and problems.
- The protagonists of the series, the Assassins, is the primary topic of the term assassins where capitalization is ambiguous, hence "Category:Assassins" should only ever be about the Assassins.
- The creation of this page and the corresponding page moves was an unauthorized act committed by a now banned mod who abused his bot to preempt community objections, as was his frequent practice. Sol Pacificus(Cyfiero) 17:40, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
- Having read all of this, I hereby second the motion. Much more thorough reasoning than what I had given, too. Guess we'll have to move/fix all other [Category: X members] by removing the word "members", then, yes? – Darman (talk) 17:55, 19 June 2021 (UTC)
- No, only the ones where there is a demonym that can be used. For example, what is the demonym for Order of the Ancients? If it isn't clear there is one, then for that category page, it would still have to be "Order of the Ancients members". Sol Pacificus(Cyfiero) 18:31, 19 June 2021 (UTC)