Is the New Netherland Settlers project no longer allowed to categorize settlers by place of origin?

Question

I have been surprised to see that Category: Dutch Immigrants to New Netherland was systematically removed from profiles, replaced by categories like Category:South Holland, Emigrants to United States and Category:Migrants from Gelderland to New Jersey, and that Category: Dutch Immigrants to New Netherland has been marked for deletion as  an incorrectly named category. This category was created and maintained by members of the New Netherland Settlers Project as part of Category:New_Netherland_Immigration, which sorts New Netherland Settlers by their nations of origin, also including (for example) Swedish Immigrants to New Netherland,  German Immigrants to New Netherland, and African Immigrants to New Netherland.

Did someone decide that the New Netherland Settlers Project is no longer allowed to maintain categories like these, and that people who settled in New Netherland when it was a Dutch colony must henceforth be treated as if they settled in an English colony (like New Jersey) that was created later, or even in the United States of America that was created much later? Did I (as Project Leader for both New Netherland and United States) overlook some communication notifying me of this?

I guess I don't mind if someone wants Jan Joosten van Meteren (died 1704) (for example) to be in a category for Gelderland people who migrated to New Jersey, but I think that he and others should also be restored to Category: Dutch Immigrants to New Netherland for the purposes of the New Netherland Project.

Comments

It is certainly remarkable that of all categories named <xxxx> Immigrants to New Netherland, the Dutch one is the only one marked for deletion...

Answer 1

If I made an error, I apologise, but as Darren pointed out, the category was marked for deletion.   I did recategorize them as per Migration Category Structure.    If you want to revert the changes, you are welcome to do so, there weren't that many to start of with.

My motivation, I'm currently looking at all the Netherlands, Nederland and Netherlands Project categories and seeing what needs to be tidied up, as there are inconsistencies there as well.  I will  be discussing those with the Netherlands Project first, and if any infringe on any other projects I'll reach out to them first before any other changes.

Answer 2

Looking at the history of changes to [[Category:Dutch Immigrant to New Netherland]] It looks like the change in status to being marked for deletion happened in 2019. It was probably done as that category (as well as many others) doesn't conform to the Migration Category Structure at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Migration_Category_Structure which seems to have been active since 2018.

As for why the other categories in [[Category: New Netheland Immigration]] are not similarly marked for deletion I have no idea. I do notice that the other categories seem to have work done on them since 2019 so they may have been marked for deletion and then removed the marking.  I personally don't do much work in the Migration category hierarchy. 

So it is possible that the changes were communicated a while ago and just been forgotten or misplaced.

I would also like to point out that the person who changed Jan Joosten van Meteren and other profiles is a member of the Netherlands/Dutch Roots project and not a member of the Categorization project. Whatever their motivation of tackling the category changes would be best discussed with them. 

So in conclusion 

• The categories do not follow the proper structure
• The category itself was marked for deletion in 2019
• Communication was likely done then or before then
• The changes to profiles were not done by a Categorization project member

Answer 3

Thanks for the responses here. The story of what was going on here is coming together, and making sense. When I first encountered this, I saw that Category: Dutch Immigrants to New Netherland had not been edited for over 2 years, was marked for deletion, and appeared to be ready to deleted. I thought it odd that there was no recent edit history documenting the request for deletion, and it did not occur to me that it might have been marked for deletion over 2 years ago.  

Around the time that category was marked for deletion, some of its sister categories were renamed to a new name format preferred by Categorization (example: English Immigrants to New Netherland was renamed to Category: New Netherland, Immigrants from England) and were removed from the New Netherland Immigration category and placed in Category: New Netherland, Immigrants, which had Category: New Netherland as a parent, but was otherwise unconnected to the New Netherland Settlers Project. Some New Netherland Immigration categories were unchanged.

It seems that Dutch Immigrants to New Netherland was the only category in the group that was marked for deletion. There was no indication of what was wrong with the name, only that it was incorrectly named. Apparently a Netherlands Project volunteer recently discovered the category and recategorized the contents the same way that Dutch people who immigrated to the United States of America in (say) the 1800s would be categorized.

From all of this, I hope I can infer that it is still OK to categorize New Netherland immigrants as having gone to New Netherland, rather than anachronistically treating them as having immigrated to geopolitical units created much later, such as the United States of America.

I don't often look at these New Netherland Immigration categories. I know they are of greater interest to some other New Netherland project members than they are to me. I do check these categories sometimes -- for example, when I am looking at someone identified with an out-of-the-ordinary place of origin and I am trying to remember who else in New Netherland [supposedly] came from that place.  I hope the New Netherland project can continue to use categorization to sort the national origins of New Netherland settlers.

Comments

Considering there are other locations for immigrants to New Netherlands there should be no issues with creating more accurate migration location categories reflecting the names used at the time. 

Hopefully New Netherlands Project people can find all the former members of the [[Category:Dutch Immigrant to New Netherland]] so they can be placed in more accurate categories rather than one that reflect a different time period. 

One thing I have noticed is there is Category: New Netherland Immigration and Category: New Netherland, Immigrants which should be combined into Category: New Netherland, Immigrants to be consistent with other migration categories. Nothing stopping the New Netherland Settlers Project Category being added as another "parent category" to help keep that project connected.

Off topic for some reason the Link creator didn't work for me earlier yet it has started working again for me now. Hence why there are links to the categories in this post.