Category talk:American Revolutionary War veterans

Structure? [14 April 2011]

Should subcategories be just by state? By regiment or militia? Wikipedia's hierarchy is very detailed. I suspect many people don't know enough about their veterans to distinguish between militia and continental army, but I've never spent much time on this issue.--Amelia 11:30, 10 April 2011 (EDT)

I think by state is probably our best best, with inclusion of categories for Continental Army and Continental Navy. I would encourage us to adopt the same sort key that we're using on Civil War veterans category|surname, first name.

If this is the plan we adopt for Rev War, I'll also start this for War of 1812 veterans as well. -- Amy (Ajcrow) 07:19, 13 April 2011 (EDT)

The more I think about it, the more I think we need one more level below the state. There are more than 80,000 Revolutionary War pension and bounty-land applications -- and not every soldier applied for a pension. (In fact, relatively few Rev War soldiers did.) Since the unit names are so irregular, what if we divide by last initial? American Revolutionary War veterans -> Pennsylvania Revolutionary War veterans -> Pennsylvania Revolutionary War veterans - C (which would be the link on Christian Crow's page). It will look a bit wonky at first, but it will keep us from having to do a massive re-organization of the categories later. We'd still need to do the sort key so it wouldn't put everyone under "P" for Person, then by first name. Thoughts? -- Amy (Ajcrow) 14:01, 13 April 2011 (EDT)

Agreed on the sort key. I'm wondering about the need to subdivide, though. Clearly, the state categories will be to large to browse. But how far do we go to make categories small enough to browse? Do veterans with the same last initial have enough in common to make it worth it? I'm torn between thinking it would be useful to find all the veterans with surname X, and thinking that the initial categories are extra work/weirdness for a function that could already be accomplished by search. I don't suppose there's any "category theory" somewhere...--Amelia 00:56, 14 April 2011 (EDT)

You can have that same argument about any potentially large category. Things in any category could be found by search. So what's the point of having a category to begin with? I think the point of the category is to browse. Maybe last initial isn't the way to break it down. But a statewide category is going to be **huge**. Think about it: if there were 130,000 vets (and there were lots more than that) and 13 colonies from which they served, that's 10,000 vets per state category. Hardly useful for browsing.

Let's move this over to the Watercooler and take another stab at getting some input. For a category as large as Rev War vets, I'd like to try to get some more input before we implement it large-scale. -- Amy (Ajcrow) 07:15, 14 April 2011 (EDT)

Agreed. I know they'll be huge. I think even large categories are useful for marking pages, but it would be nice to have something rationally browseable. And since I know virtually nothing about this area, input would be nice!--Amelia 10:03, 14 April 2011 (EDT)

Tories [20 November 2011]

Should we have a category for Tories in the Revolutionary War? See Person:William Deaton (1).--Beth 18:33, 20 November 2011 (EST)

Rename category or new category? [8 February 2012]

American Revolutionary War Patriots

.

I was thinking I could write the DAR or SAR to get permission to post their logo for people associated with the revolutionary war in place of or in addition to the image I posted. It might be a good way to promote WeRelate with their members. The logos could click through to the DAR or SAR websites. What do you think?--sq 12:39, 7 February 2012 (EST)

Knowing nothing detailed of this research or DAR/SAR sensibilities, I would say "Patriots" could be a subcat of this one, defined as participants not enlisted, and put whatever logo/badge on the category page. I personally don't like badges on pages because I don't think they scale and they don't convey enough information to justify top of the page placement. (If we had a Rev War template that went at the bottom and had info like dates and resources, I would be in favor of that.) I don't think we can rename because veterans is used for all wars and patriots isn't.--Amelia 23:12, 7 February 2012 (EST)

I agree with Amelia for a slightly different reason. We created the category specifically for veterans. "Patriots" -- defined as someone who provided aid but was not in the military -- are not veterans. I'm not sure if it would be better to have Patriots as a subcategory of this one or make it a separate category on its own. I'm not against the badge idea, per se, but I think that gets into a sticky situation, as there are numerous veterans and patriots who have not been proven for DAR/SAR/CAR. I don't think we want to get into the business of verifying all of that. If someone wants to add a graphic showing that the ancestor has been proven, fine. But I don't want to automatically add it whenever we add that person to a Rev War category. -- Amy (Ajcrow) 08:48, 8 February 2012 (EST)