Category talk:Saint John the Evangelist

Cat rename

The category name is far inferior to the former "John the Evangelist". "Saint John" can mean a lot, including other saints, and a variety of places. It is unclear and, with the "Saint", POV. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 20:13, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I have no objection about "Saint John the Evangelist", but: 1) Why is "Saint" a POV problem? He is objectively a saint of the Roman Catholic Church, and of a number of others. 2) Why are you creating duplicate categories right now instead of waiting for a consensus here and asking for cat renames? --Eusebius (talk) 07:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

EDIT: It is not you, sorry (old conversation), my question is directed to G.dallorto. --Eusebius (talk) 07:43, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The point is not about calling "saint" a saint. As a fervent atheist, I cannot care less about who is a Saint or not. For me, this is a mere encyclopedic fact, just a help in categorizing images (of sculptures, of paintings and so on). Nothing more. But you cannot merge into "saint John" both "John the Baptist" and "John the Evangelist", as it was done, and without any previous discussion either. Should a decision been taken in this sense, of course I would adapt, but no discussion hadbeen taken for the move beforehand. It just happened overnight.

Secondly, for art history and history at large, traditional names are more handy than convolute "politically correct" names. The most widespread name is the one which most people would use all the time, compelling us for maintenace reasons to move again and again scores of images from the "wrong" to the "complicated-and-unheard-of-but correct" category. Previous examples include Category:Petrus (which was correct, since we had agreed on the reasonable convention that all the names of popes should be in their Latin form... but no one grasped that Petrus and Saint Peter were the same person) and Category:Peter for Category:Saint Peter, ditto for Category:Paul of Tarsus for Category:Saint Paul, that had to been discarded because nobody used them anyway, whereas the "wrong" one was recreated again and againg and filled up again and again in a short span.

Furthermore, in our case the merge created confusion between two separate saints. If you want to keep Category:Saint John anyway, in my opinion that should be then a disambiguation page listing all of the saints naned John, which are quite a few, I can assure you.

In short, my request was not about POV, but merely about practical reasons. --User:G.dallorto (talk) 20:11, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I created the disambig page myself. --User:G.dallorto (talk) 20:31, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Let's just make it clear that (unless there's something I haven't noticed) I'm very ok with the change you've made/you're making (and with your reasons here). I mistakenly answered a very old comment about POV. I just don't have time to help with the change right now (and I've probably been lazy about it in the past). BTW, do we agree that having several galleries (with different names) for the same person, simply being redirections to the category, while being categorized in it, is pretty nasty? --Eusebius (talk) 09:28, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

POV

It still is a POV problem. "John the Evangelist" is recognized in all Christian denominations, but most protestant churches do not believe in people being "Saints" by putting a word before their name. This is a mainly Catholic phenomenon. --AndreasPraefcke (talk) 08:21, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Can I suggest you begin a discussion at COM:CFD? There would be a wider audience and probably a debate of better quality leading to a community decision. Here this is just two or three persons. --Eusebius (talk) 08:35, 15 May 2009 (UTC)