Category talk:Tools

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Deletion 20150513[edit]

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At some point I'm sure someone meant for Editors to be for level editors and for other kinds of utilities to go here as "Tools." That never happened, and changing it to work that way at this point would cause a lot of problems. I suggest we eliminate this category and move its supercats directly onto Category:Editors, since it is redundant. --Quasar (talk) 14:30, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Disagree, plenty of tools aren't editors. What about frontends like ZDL or Doom Launcher, and miscellaneous utilities like WadSpy? I also note that Category:Multiplayer utilities has only Category:Multiplayer for supercat. Category:Tools might have been under-used but it's not redundant. --Gez (talk) 15:12, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
The alternative is to appropriately populate it, in that case. That's not an outcome I'd argue against. --Quasar (talk) 16:06, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Except, we have to be mindful that root supercategory Software also exists, and it isn't immediately clear what the distinction will be between tools and software. Not all software are tools, obviously (see Doom II screen saver for a primary example). --Quasar (talk) 16:09, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
This is a tricky one.  Arguably, editing utilities and frontends/launchers are sufficiently different concepts (within our scope) to be subcategories of Software.  On the other hand, Gez is correct by the dictionary: a tool is a means to an end (IDE) and a tool is a program to create or modify other programs (DeHackEd).    Ryan W (talk) 16:07, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
I am opposed to such a broad interpretation of tools as to make root Category:Software redundant. If a piece of software does not accomplish at least one specific work task and result in one or more outputs, to me that is not a tool. Any software is a "means to an end," for example the screensaver is a means to keep your old CRT from getting burn-in. But that doesn't make it a "tool." Tool is simultaneously both too inspecific AND too specific for such a thing. I do not see launchers or frontends as "tools" either, to be frank. I think if Tools is going to be retained in addition to software, then the distinction needs to be refined, and categories/articles moved as is appropriate. Otherwise I am going to continue to support the deletion nomination on the basis of this being a semantically confusing and redundant category. --Quasar (talk) 11:18, 21 May 2015 (CDT)

Closed as Keep on 2015-10-16 and due to fact that on review, I find the proper articles fall under here rather uniformly so far. I have clarified the category description, however. --Quasar (talk) 12:29, 16 October 2015 (CDT)