Awards, Honours and Decorations Categorisation Proposal - Voting [closed]

Question

The purpose of this post is to vote on the proposal for the naming format for Medals and Civilian Awards categories.

The current naming format allows the creation of almost identical category names for awards that should not be treated as the same. e.g. The Victory Medal was issued by multiple authorities and countries over one (or more) conflicts and time periods.  The name of the award, medal used in the category name should reflect the name, time period (if necessary), issuing authority or country and the conflict name if pertinant.

Changing the category names to reflect the name, time period (if necessary), issuing authority or country and the conflict name if pertinant.

Thank you for reading, and providing any and all input.

Details of the proposal are available on the Space Page, Categorisation - Medals and Civilian Awards

You can vote by an uptick on the Yes or No answer below.  

Comments

Craig, I'd add Military and War  as a tag, I think members in the M&W project would follow that tag.

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I think your question should have a link to the initial discussion.  There was a lot of things discussed, including by people on the Category Project, which I think this will impact.

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After reviewing 'some' of the earlier discussion and the space page, I have some questions:

1. If templates / stickers have to be added or changed, has that Project been involved and approved of the proposed changes since those will need changes, as well as the Related Help Pages?
2. Categories - many new categories will need to be created, correct?  Has the Category Project approved of this proposal and the impact on them when an incorrect Category is used, ie it shows in red? 
3. If Categories or templates / stickers are being changed, are you expecting EditBot to make any of the changes or are you planning on it being a manual effort by you and / or others? If EditBot, has Ales been informed to see if he agrees that it can do what you want?

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Have voted yes to this proposal. Weirdly, the current category naming format also allows the creation of identical category names for some different  locations too. 

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exactly my point.

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Craig, is there a reason that you have not answered any of my questions?

Never mind Craig, when I looked below I got my answer since both groups were questioning it, also.

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Hi Linda, 

I assumed that my answer to Steve covered your issues, but to repeat myself:

1. Templates / Stickers WILL NOT BE CHANGED.  The content of templates will be altered to match changing categories.
2. This process of category change is the process to notify the category project, so yes, they have been notified.
3. Editbot will be employed as required.  The largest single group is 2335+ (a week ago) in the Victory Medal category.  This will only be done after all sticker content has been altered, as Editbot will not manage those changes. They need to be done manually, a task I am willing to do. Ales has by tagged on this thread.

Does that answer your questions?

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A general comment here. Craig has identified a problem, proposed a solution with details, and offered to do most of the work required to implement it. I'd like to thank him for this myself, and respectfully suggest that we try to support him in the endeavour, rather than raising too many obstacles. The result will be an improvement. Some details may need adjustment, but the overall plan is a good one which should be applauded.

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Well said.

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Thanks JIm

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Completely agree Jim. My full support to Craig.

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I thank him, too, for pointing out some things that need to be addressed.

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I have updated the proposal, with specifics of how the structure is to be applied.

Answer 1

Hey Craig - thanks for undertaking this - this is a hard discussion.

A few administrative items that should be addressed first:

1. Please remove the "voting deadline".
   • There are quite a few problems that need to be worked out and these discussions could take weeks.
   • There are many projects that will be affected by this proposal (Military and War, Categorization, Templates, country-specific Projects, etc.). They all need a chance to review and weigh in.
2. Please remove the "otherwise vote will not be counted" statement from the no votes. While you can encourage feedback, you cannot require it for the vote to count.

For more information on the Categorization proposal process, see: Proposing Category Structures.

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About the proposal:

1. There seems to have been concerns brought up in the initial discussion. Have these been addressed by the current proposal? If not, those concerns needs to be considered.

2. The wording on the page that "The proposal is that all Awards, Decorations and Medals should include enough detail in the category name to distinguish the Award or Medal correctly at a glance in the category picker." is definitely a concern for me. Categories should not be named for the sake of internal tools. They should be named in accordance with agreed upon naming standards, and as approved by the community.

3. In regards to the proposed naming structure - I completely disagree with the Proposed format.

a) The scope of the proposal seems too broad. For example, the Victory Medal was not awarded for any specific conflicts or "receiving country". The way the proposal is worded will lead to confusion in how to name the categories and end up creating duplicate / misnamed categories meant for the same purpose.

b) The naming presented (when using optional named parameters) is too specific, and will lead to categories with very minimal profiles. This presents a number of issues that go against General Category Naming Rules.

Comments

Also, why is it such an issue to use the tools in the best way possible to reduce human error?   That is what computers are best at, so why not use the category picker in this manner to reduce human error. 

In short, the Category Picker is not a reliable / infallible tool.  It is limited in display (returned results) and you often need to know the full name of a category before the correct results display. It was designed more as a tool format category names, not to actively search for every possible category available.

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Thank you for making my point so well.  The proposal is lexible enougt to meet the nuances you have so elloquently described.  

And yet the category picker is provided and is the only tool available without adding additional software packages.  

I finally worked out why I was not understanding.  Your argument states this is too big a proposal and also states that it is not big enough to meet all the nuances. Your question above gives graphic details of the ability of the proposal to meet the nuances of the category, but allows the smaller scale of not splitting (as you have done validly here) as required.   You are arguing that the proposal is not big enough and that it is too big.  Please pick one.,

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Hi Craig, there is definitely a misunderstanding here.

My stance remains that the proposal is too broad (in scope - covering all medals/awards) yet so generalized in nature (for category naming) that there will be no consistency or ability to determine what a correct name is - since by your own admission, they are all applicable.

This is not flexibility, but ambiguity.

I appreciate that you are willing to tackle this, and is definitely needed - but the proposal as it stands now is not enough to give a solid approval to. It will cause more work for members of the Categorization team, as well as cause confusion for members trying to use these categories.

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Craig, Steven, Natalie, Danielle, just throwing this into the discussion. 

A big issue identified has been duplicate names of some medals. Victory Medal (the one that started it all) immediately comes to mind. So, for example, when we have duplicate location categories, 2 or more locations within a state with the same name, we determine an identifier, such as a county, to include in the category name for the duplicate locations. 

But, we don't add the identifier to every location category, only to those that have been identified as having duplicate names. The remainder are named according to an agreed standard. Locations are not exactly the same as medals, but could a similar principle be used?

• Do we know how many actual duplicate named medals there are, with categories on WikiTree?
• Once identified, discussion could continue on a suitable identifier.
• A naming standard for non-duplicated medals? Just the actual name of the medal?
• country projects as well as M&W might be able to help with identifying duplicates 
• Less to be renamed and less profiles to be changed manually, again, country projects might be happy to help with their own profiles where necessary, if say, the Victory Medal where to be divided into categories by country.

Is duplicate named medals the only issue? If not, what other issues are there?

  

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I like what Margaret said about only concentrate on the 'few' that have a duplication problem.  As it is written up, as Jo said below, it is written as ALL Medals, Award, Decorations need to have the country on it, which I don't think was the intent and is probably not needed.

In the structure explanation for the 3rd item, it says that the medals could include the conflict name after the receiving Country, but that information is not included in the Category information, which has 'Optional Receiving Country' only, nothing about the Conflict, which is seen in the last example.

Are the new categories only going to be created if there are multiple profiles to be put into those categories?  If new categories should always have multiple profiles, are you sure that all the countries and medal combinations will have multiple profiles?

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The proposal now states this situation clearly.

Duplicates is the main concern, and future proofing this is a big part of the proposal.  As a minimum, all awards (military and civilian) should have the name of the award, and the name of the issuing authority.  All other aspects are optional and ONLY to be used when 

1. The award is still ambiguous as a category name, and could be identified incorrectly, or
2. The Country Project seeks to further categorise award with the addition of the receiving country, when that award was received by more than one country. (Lots of examples of this already.)

All of this detail is clearly documented in the proposal, which was edited with this details on 16 Feb.

Steven, Numbers (2.5m US Campaign medals, 5m Imperial campaign medals, just for WWI) are an issue, but do nothing or change, that will still be a concern that should be taken up in another discussion, like should we have categories for campaign medals at all? 

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I relooked at the Proposal and I did NOT look to see what was changed.

My comments stand, as stated. Unfortunately, again, you fail to answer any of the questions.

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Linda,

In the structure explanation for the 3rd item, it says that the medals could include the conflict name after the receiving Country, but that information is not included in the Category information, which has 'Optional Receiving Country' only, nothing about the Conflict, which is seen in the last example.

Additional (but unnecessary in my opinion) detail added to proposal, as the examples in item 3 included both options.  

Are the new categories only going to be created if there are multiple profiles to be put into those categories?  If new categories should always have multiple profiles, are you sure that all the countries and medal combinations will have multiple profiles?

I have no idea the point of this question, and I cannot answer what I don't understand.  All categories have one or more porfiles, or high level categories have sub-categories.  As stated in the proposal: 

This proposal, to limit its scope, is only dealing with the individual awards to which personal profiles are added. It will not deal with the hierarchy of the Awards and Honours category tree.

So, as low level categories that contain profiles, they would be created if there is one or more profiles that requires that category.  That is the way ALL categories work on Wikitree.  If this is not what you mean, then please ask in another manner, but I am now assuming I have answered ALL your questions in FULL.

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The way your #3 in the Structure is worded, for the 2nd example, it looks the same as the Category, which is what makes it very confusing to people that don't know what you mean and are trying to understand it.

Your statements in this post, as well as the earlier one, and as I read your proposal, it sounded like the Categories had to be created first before anything could start being transitioned into them. That statement to me means that you could be creating Categories without knowing if you will have profiles to go into them. That is all that I was asking about.

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Linda, the proposal has always been about splitting up existing categories into more proper format to avoid the existing ambiguity and make it easy for future profiles to be correctly categorized first time around.  There are already lots of profiles in the wrong places as is.

Answer 2

Craig, at present I am having trouble following your examples.

Perhaps because in the original conversation, the choice of Victory Medal as an example was then confused with the Victoria Cross which are as you know completely different.

Please provide the 'Dummies' explanation of how implementation of this proposal would be a benefit.

Comments

Have you looked at the examples Medals and Civilian Awards - Examples on the proposal.

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Yes I have, and it doesn't help.

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I agree. It look like a category is changing, but doesn't include one that is in conflict, which is why I am confused.

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All Victory Medal and War Medal names are in conflict because people select the wrong category for their profiles, placing British Soldiers in US categories and vice-versa. This is all about category changes to help people select the correct category with a minimum of research required.

e.g my profile is for an Australian, so should I select the United States or the British War Medal.  No detail on the category to help me, and I am lazy so I pick the wrong one and move to the next task for the day. AT least with the country name, I would probably pick the correct category.

You will say that the person should check, and I agree, but real world use is NOT like that, and this is an opportunity to use the real world use to Wikitree's advantage, and it is so easy to do.

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Your explanation sounds similar to the problem that Natalie posted about with the Roll of Honor where people are not 'reading' the template correctly and they are entering the country where they were were injured instead of where they lived and had served from.  

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It is like that, Linda. Many people don't read the information even when it is there.

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I always reread those help pages when adding a couple of those military ones.

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Sorry, I cannot make it any simpler.

Answer 3

As I recall, the United States had "victory medals", and they were named "World War II Victory Medal."

Therefore, the proper category would be "United States (service?) WW II Victory Medal." The medals issued by the U.S. for these are different for the each of various services, so there would be an United States Army WW II Victory Medal.

This is all from my memory - but the actual names of the awards is different than the shortened version most people post.

So Yes, clarify they using the actual name of the award as promulgated by the country and service.

Comments

This brings in possible confusion with "use their conventions instead of ours". The World War I Victory Medal (now) was simply the "Victory Medal" when issued.

Answer 4

I don't think I understand enough about the subject to vote.

Question 1: Will changing the names break existing profiles with the old category?

Question 2: Will changing the names break the sticker? formats? It has been my experience that if the template does not match the category name, it shows an error.

Question 3: Will they show in the category search if you type a partial name? I ask this because the united_states_railroads category that has existed for a long time will not appear in the search. Even if you type it out correctly by name. Whenever I type it, the only one that shows is united_states_railroad_images. This leads me to believe that change could break the search box, and a user might not find the category. Maybe someone from the software side could answer these questions.

Comments

Question 1: Yes and No. You can rename a category which has EditBOT do all the heavy lifting of changing category names on profiles. But many profiles are categorized incorrectly already, which will continue to happen until someone manually edits them.

Question 2: No. Nothing will break, but it will create duplicate categories for a short while. Those will have to be manually cleaned up (like the categories themselves above).

Question 3: United States Railroads is listed as a High-Level category. This removes it from the category picker.

Answer 5

I have voted no as my concern is this reorganisation is absolutely HUGE, as it seems from its description to include all Medals, Awards and Decorations. This doesn't seem to have been covered in the previous discussions. 

A lot of those awards are not military.

I (along with members of the England Project's Cat Team) have a vested interest in the Crown Honours of the British Isles which would be swept up in this reorganisation (including for instance, The Order of the Garter and the Royal Victorian Order)

Last year, we thought that sorting out the Baronetage categories for England would be a fairly straightforward task. It escalated pretty quickly to the recategorisation of all the Titles of Nobility of the British Isles and Ireland. We convened a working group of members of the Cat Teams of the constituent nations of the British Isles to construct an overall "what to we want the hierarchy to look like in the end?" diagram. The lower branches of the diagram sorted themselves out pretty easily, it was the higher levels which took some thinking about. We produced this which then got batted around the Categorisation Project google group and G2G.

If the overall plan is to reorganise the whole Medals, Awards and Decorations hierarchy, you might want to consider creating a similar diagram (with input from a group of the interested parties) so we can all see the endpoint and be agreed what needs to be done. If this is just a Military Medals recategorisation, then that also needs to be made clear.

Jo, England Project Managed Profiles / England Categorisation team

Comments

Thanks, Jo, for chiming in on the discussion. Especially as, yes, this affects the England Project very much.

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I have been thinking about this topic for several days. I asked for clarification and the Dummies explanation without receiving any further information.

And I am still unsure about the scope of this proposal.

I agree with Jo Fitz Henry.

The initial conversation and continuing on to this proposal appears to be based on issues around military medals.

https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/1533309/awards-honours-and-decorations-categorisation-proposal

However the title of the proposal is Awards, Honours and Decorations.

The first sentence of this discussion says

' The purpose of this post is to vote on the proposal for the naming format for Medals and Civilian Awards categories'.

The only examples that have been given are military awards.

There are thousands of other awards from many, many countries, plus states, provinces, municipalities, universities,  foundations and others.

I also understand that if a person is not familiar with categories in general it can be both confusing and difficult to pick the correct category.

I have no problems at all with simplifying the category picking process.

However this proposal at it currently is presented covers an immense range of Awards, Honours and Decorations, I feel the scope is far too wide.

Due to the lack of clarity in this proposal I have voted No.