Category talk:British Secretaries of State

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So, I want to divide up this category, so that everyone is categorized by the specific offices held, with only the early (pre-1660) secs of state still in this category. I've set up a bunch of categories - do people feel these are appropriate names? I included "(UK)" when it might be ambiguous, but not for things like the Welsh, Scottish, Indian, Dominion secretaries, which could only be found in Britain. But, at any rate, the problem is that in recent years (especially the Blair years), the names of the various secretary of state positions, and their exact competence, is constantly shifting. Should we have a separate sub-category for each different title, or should we try to combine them - so that, for instance, all Secretaries of State dealing with education are in the same category, even though they may have had slightly different titles. Anyone have any ideas? john k 06:25, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I see no problem with organizing generally based on area of competence - thus Presidents of the Board of Trade are thrown in with the Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry (and all the minute variations thereof). I think Heseltine actually went back to the old title. We probably ought to decide on the groupings now, to avoid confusion later (like, Overseas Development, Consumer Protection?) Mackensen 06:35, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Presidents of the Board of Trade are different, I think - they're not Secretaries of State. Listing, say, John Bright as a Secretary of State for Trade and Industry would be problematic. I do think that this category should be specifically for Secretaries of State, and not for ministerial or board presidential positions which preceded similar secretaryships of state, because "Secretary of State" is an office with a specific meaning in British constitutional documents...as to groupings, I dunno. Education is pretty obvious. But there are some offices that get reorganized in different ways every couple of years (thanks a lot Tony Blair), which doesn't help. john k 07:08, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, that's my mistake...shouldn't be up editing so late. Mackensen 15:07, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

By the way, all Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry are also Presidents of the Board of Trade. The title just isn't particularly used anymore. So Category:Presidents of the Board of Trade could include all of them, while Category:Secretaries of State for Trade and Industry would be able to focus on just those who were secretaries of state. john k 07:09, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We could categorise them all by their exact titles, and provide links on the category pages to similar categories (so Category:Secretaries of State for Education and Skills could have links to Category:Secretaries of State for Education and Employment, Category:Secretaries of State for Education and Science, Category:Secretaries of State for Education, etc.). That would avoid any problems with the constant merging and splitting up of departments. Proteus (Talk) 08:28, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think that that probably sounds best - exact categories, and super-categorisation where appropriate (so Sec.s State Education and Employment, Education and Science, and Education are all children of Education and Skills). But this is still messy - shouldn't Education and Employment also be a child of Work and Pensions, given it's the primary overlap?

James F. (talk) 10:21, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It would be easier to have them all children of Category:British Secretaries of State and provide all the information on mergers and related positions through links in individual categories (a miniature version of their main articles). Otherwise we'll end up with a ridiculously complicated system (the Employment from Education and Employment went to Work and Pensions, which also acquired Social Security, which itself used to be part of Social Services, the other half of which went to Health...) which will only discourage users. Proteus (Talk) 10:49, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

To say nothing of that quagmire over at Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions. On principle, I'm opposed to having a one-man category, but I don't like omitting information either. So what was Prescott? Environment? Transport? I don't like combining Environment and Transport, as they've only been merged twice (1970-76 and 1997-2001), and Environment seems to have been annexed by Agriculture. Mackensen 15:17, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

OK, each position name gets its own category, even the singletons, and all are direct children of Category:British Secretaries of State. How's that?

James F. (talk) 16:05, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That seems fine. What do we think of the use of "(UK)" to disambiguate? john k 16:21, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. Mackensen 17:00, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If we are to have separate categories for each position, I express my concurrence with the solution agreed upon above. Of course, "GB" needs to be used instead of "UK" as appropriate. BUT: I must agree with a comment John Kenney made on another page:

"I tend to be of the opinion that categories for subjects that have or could have succession tables are a bad idea. What value does Category:British Prime Ministers have? It gives you an alphabetical list of British prime ministers. How is this useful, when there's already a page that chronologically lists British prime ministers, a link to that page from the articles of every British prime minister, and succession tables to allow you to easily jump to that person's predecessor(s) and successor(s). So why is this useful? Especially since, by this logic, James Callaghan will end up in Category:British Prime Ministers, Category:British Foreign Secretaries, Category:Chancellors of the Exchequer, Category:British Home Secretaries, and Category:British Labour Party leaders, but not in Category:British politicians. Wouldn't it make more sense just to put all British politicians in Category:British politicians, and leave the individual offices to the older methods which worked perfectly fine? That is, I think categories are inappropriate for things of which there is only one at a time. I'd be happy to see Lord Callaghan in a Category:Prime Ministers, for instance, since that would presumably list politicians who were prime ministers in various different countries (although we might want to limit such a category to current prime ministers). john k 20:38, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)"

-- Emsworth 19:40, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I thought someone might find this. I think the massive rush to categorization has, for the most part, overtaken my words - there's so many categories about that it's better to be specific, especially since we've gotten to the point where we have hierarchical trees that actually work. Initially, everything was being done in a very haphazard fashion. Since we now, for British politicians, at any rate, have a functioning tree system, I don't think these issues are as crucial. But what do other people think? john k 20:13, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It does strike me as a needless duplication. Given the choice between categories and succession tables (with the accompanying list), I'd prefer the latter, since it gives me context. I'd be in favor of [[Category:British politicians]], because that's something we don't have. I mean, a category for Chancellors of the Duchy of Lancaster doesn't do anything that the list doesn't, and the list also has those Chancellors about whom we lack articles. I recognize this isn't a situation where we'd do only one and not the other, but I'm not sure what further categorization offers. Mackensen 20:42, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Well, yes, I partially agree. I obviously completely agred three months ago. I don't know... john k 22:04, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is a problem with Category:British politicians, though -- it'll be at least as large as Category:Peers. We can't just shove all of them into one category; however, I agree with the above logic that these categories will be redundant with the many lists found lying around, along with the succession tables. ugen64 23:07, Oct 9, 2004 (UTC)