Category talk:Civil Service

Hello everyone. I wanted to petition the opinions of other editors regarding this category, specifically what falls into it. Because the term Civil Service means different things in different parts of the world, I was wondering what everyone thinks of this categorization, and whether anyone has suggestions as to renaming it and/or what to include.

In particular, my unfortunate general ignorance of the inner-workings of the British Government makes me wonder about state-run hospitals, and whether we can include them in this category. I know in the U.K., NHS employees are not considered as civil servants, but I am also generally unclear as to the distinction between who exactly works for the Crown, and who works for Parliament. So my question is: how will this affect whether hospitals in general can be included within this category, since GTA games have been located in both the U.S. and U.K.? Is this enough of an issue to worry about? EganioTalk 23:50, 11 June 2008 (UTC)


 * To clear up the UK governance specifically, Parliament is simply the decision-making body, and in a simple sense, the Civil Service implements the policy (decisions) under authority of the Crown (monarch). Civil servants work for the country (and thus the crown) but aren't holders of a political office, nor in the armed forces or health service or whatever.


 * As for this category, I think "Civil Service" is too specific a definition. The terms we've used elsewhere is Public Service for anything to do with the public sector, such as the old Category:PublicVehicles which was (wrongly) replaced with Category:Public transport vehicles. The capitalisation of the latter category is wrong, and PublicVehicles included ones such as street sweepers, garbage trucks, airport vehicles etc (not just public transport).


 * I'd suggest using Category:Public Service for everything to do with public services, from government to law enforcement to healthcare to public transport etc. Also have something like Category:Public Service Vehicles in there as well, which includes garbage trucks etc.


 * My concern is that we're going to end up with a million categories which have 2 or 3 things in. We really have to keep looking at how people are going to USE these categories, and I dont think disambiguating between Civil Service and Crown Servants and Governmental Commissions and other public sector is really helpful to our users - just one category (and one for vehicles) for everything to do with the government etc (emphasis on the 'etc'), and a separate one for Law Enforcement etc, and a separate one for Public Transport etc. Hope that helps - Gboyers talk 00:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, that sounds reasonable. I have been endeavoring to limit the number of categories that end up with a paltry "who cares?" amount of information, so your suggestions are invaluable! EganioTalk 02:58, 12 June 2008 (UTC)