Category talk:French novels

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How can I make the subcategory books by Victor Hugo ? --Melaen 23:47, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

RfC: French novels categorized as French-language novels

This issue started when Smetanahue dismissed (here and here) the categories added by Henry Merrivale and by Sadads.

WP:SUBCAT says:

When making one category a subcategory of another, ensure that the members of the first really can be expected (with possibly a few exceptions) to belong to the second also.

That is the case for "French novels" and "German novels": there are only a handful of exceptions for French novels not being written in French or for German novels not being written in German. Andreasm ^{just talk to me} 17:21, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

• Invited by RFCbot. The question is whether an article on a French language, French published novel would naturally be tagged as only Category:French novels or would also get tagged with Category:French-language novels and whether the articles in Category:French novels do not actually belong in Category:French-language novels. I've looked through the novels in this category, and I've found more French novels that are not French fiction than I have French novels that are not French-language novels. Most of the articles have not been dually categorized as both a French novel and a French-language novel. That seems pretty conclusive that editors work under the assumption that a French novel is, by default, a French-language novel. I therefore Support including Category:French-language novels. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 22:50, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Andreasm, on my talk page you agreed that it would be wrong to intertwine the language and country categories for Indian novels. But where would you draw the line? What about, let's say, Irish novels, which are predominantly in English, but sometimes in Irish?

As for Germany and France, it's not true that only a handful of novels in other languages exist. The category system can't be based only on the articles currently on Wikipedia, it needs to be general and sustainable for all articles that potentially could be created. Many countries have rich literary traditions in minority languages, even if they're not well known internationally. And "a few exceptions" means that the actual number is negligible, not that the proportion is small.

Another thing to consider is that the country categories on WP go strictly by citizenship. That adds writers with multiple citizenships as well. It's much better to keep the two category branches separate and parallel, so they can be combined only when suitable. Smetanahue (talk) 06:56, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Should not be sub-categories they should be see also. Thank you, MarioNovi (talk) 05:47, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

• Invited by RFCbot. If there is even once a French novel that is not in the French language, then "French Novel" is not a subcategory of "French-language novels." I do not think that one should be a subcategory of the other. Many French novels will be written in the French language, but there will be some that are not. A novel written by a French author in the French language should be tagged with the category "French Novels" and the category "French-language novels." Fagles (talk) 01:49, 10 March 2013 (UTC)