Category talk:People Who Do Stuff That Is Not Normal

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Opinion I

Would strongly suggest the deletion of this category. It is entirely point of view and assumes some arbitrary norm from which others may be deviating. I doubt it is even worth a page as a tag line for a movie is not enough to support an article and should just keep its mention on Baby Snakes (The Film). Duncan 22:51, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Opinion II

Agreed, we obviously cannot create categories for each every listing.

For instance, each album track is not attached to a category having the album name. Otherwise we could even create categories such as "Musicians who played on The Man From Utopa", "Albums published by Verve", etc.

Plus categories are performance consuming, so maybe we should establish rules limiting their use and defining when they are truly needed or not.

Or maybe we can just propose to follow the Wikipedia guidelines:

BTW, we are not following thise interesting one ;-) => "An article should usually not be in both a category and its subcategory".

¡Hasta luego!

Maroual 00:35, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Opinion III

I created this category and I understand why the choice of title might be a bit unserious. But to me the Category:Supporting Cast is very vague and pointless, since it just lists everyone who had "something to do with Zappa". There are a lot of persons whose activities cannot be categorized, because they are not musicians. Audience members, for instance, or eccentric people Zappa once met. But that's why I think that there should at least be an attempt to list these people into a separate category. Now it's all just one big mess of people who have ALREADY been listed in other categories, people who are just small references (Joseph Goebbels, Stalin,... were just namedropped in The Real Frank Zappa Book) and people who are called "supporting cast" but actually never supported Zappa at all!! Crazy Jerry was just someone Zappa met. He never went on tour, was never featured on an album and it's never implied that he was a fan. Ronald Reagan was probably never aware that Zappa existed. Lou Reed was a even a sworn rival of Zappa! So why call all these people "supporting cast"? Isn't that a misleading title?

I know that Category:People Who Do Stuff That Is Not Normal sounds not very neutral. But at least I choose for a description Zappa used for these people. I could've called them "eccentrics", "freaks", "crazy people", "insane people",... but these are all very negative and subjective terms. Since Zappa himself didn't take himself serious, why not keep this category as long as it's in tone with his humorous style and actually categorizes a lot of people who belong in the same category? If there's one person who celebrated "not being normal" in his work it's Zappa! Or maybe just one page where we can divide these people into "people who Zappa once met", "audience members", "musicians",... so that we can at least have one page where we can sort out what kind of people are thrown together on the heap of "Category: Supporting Cast"?

Also, consider this pointless article which adds nothing to this wiki and isn't even neutral: "Earth". If this is allowed, then my article is at least a lot more relevant.

User:Spider of Destiny 19:14, 12 December 2010

"People Who Do Stuff That Is Not Normal" sounds libellous to me. Did you not spot the :-) at the end of the Earth article? There are more pressing things to worry about and as they say on Wikipedia just because other crap exists does not make a good argument for keeping more crap. Duncan 22:45, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

That's just my point. The entire article Earth is basically there for humorous reasons and the ":-)" only adds to this. Why is Category:People Who Do Stuff That Is Not Normal then so much worse? Simply because I have written it? And "libellous": half of Zappa's arguments in interviews in this wiki are very strong subjective arguments that are bound to make some users angry! Besides: most of the "People Who Do Stuff That Is Not Normal" are dead or won't use this wiki. Have you ever thought about the way they are portrayed in Zappa's work or the way they are described in these articles? They all look like crazy people, just because users only write down the subjective and negative comments Zappa wrote down about them. But for some reason that's all OK! I get the impression that adding articles is excellent, but adding categories that at least try to make the mess more clear and well-presented is highly discouraged. I don't get it. Category:Supporting Cast is so vague, misleading and basically just adds to the mess. And sorry, but that article about Earth is plain stupid, completely not neutral or serious and unneccesary. And it has nothing to do with Zappa!! All it lists are some boring statistics, ripped from Wikipedia. Some of my contributions have been deleted for less serious reasons than that. User:Spider of Destiny 14:51, 13 December (UTC)

To single out "People Who Do Stuff That Is Not Normal" you would need to define "normal". People who waste their time arguing over ultimately pointless minutiae on a wiki are not normal. The category is making a judgement about someone which is not the purpose of this wiki. Libel is a written defamation of an individual against which they would have legal redress; it has nothing to do with making people angry. Yes it is OK to report what others have said, that is the purpose of the wiki, but we should not enhance it, or extrapolate some inference that was not there to start with. Duncan 15:13, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
Duncan, why are you being so impolite to me?: "People who waste their time arguing over ultimately pointless minutiae on a wiki are not normal." and calling my article "crap". Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean you have to start insulting me. I simply don't understand why a clearly useless article like Earth which is simply designed for humorous reasons is considered "O.K." in comparison with "People Who Do Stuff That Is Not Normal". I don't mind the existence of that "Earth" article, nor do I mind if "People Who Do Stuff Is Not Normal" is a too offensive title for the categorisation, but if "People Who Do Stuff That Is Not Normal" is considered to be not serious enough for this wiki, then "Earth" should be removed as well for the same reasons. Use the same removal criteria for each article. User:Spider of Destiny 23:11, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
I was talking about myself wasting time but if the cap fits.... I was describing the argument from Wikipedia regarding crap articles... Stuff you add here does not belong to you. It is not your article as you give up all right to it when you click on the Save page button. If the Earth article troubles you so much do not look at it.... There is a world of difference between a pointless article and introducing a category which could be seen as libellous and then arbitrarily adding people to that category... Articles are not the same as categories... Articles can be edited, rewritten and generally improved; categories are forever... or until they are deleted. Duncan 10:51, 14 December 2010 (UTC)