Recently, I closed a CFD discussion which included upmerging several categories into this ctegory (Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2014 August 12#Category:Ice hockey people from Detroit, which included several cities other than Detroit, all from the US and Canada). Unfortunately, this has mnade the category huge (over 1,100 pages). I think we need some method of splitting it - and city seems to be the way which makes the most sense. Any opinions here? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• I have notified Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ontario, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ice Hockey, andf all the participants of the discussion mentioned above. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:50, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Once you get the the provincial level if you split it further you start to get trivial and non-defining categories. I personally think that state/provincial levels are about as much as you want to split before the categories stop being defining. Some categories will always just be large. -DJSasso (talk) 14:11, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Personally, I don't think it needs to be split and sets a bad precedent to do so ("Ontario was split, why not Birmingham, Alabama?"). For what it is worth Category:Baseball players from California is twice as big. Rikster2 (talk) 14:12, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

To be fair, I think we need to split that one, too (I didn't know about it - should we link to this discussion from places relaterd to that category?). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:48, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

For the record, I disagree. The category is sufficiently descriptive and I don't think the size is an issue at all. Rikster2 (talk) 15:13, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• The purpose of a category is to group together related articles, whether or not we find the number satisfying. According to IMDB, for instance, there are over 21,000 actors who've been born in New York City. Nonetheless, that'd be a valid category. Ravenswing 14:32, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

  If we sort actors by placer of birth, we could probably split NYC by burrough; I don't think we split any NYC-related category by smaller units than that. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 14:48, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• As an editor who started two of the CFDs, I agree with the policy of not breaking down below provincial/state level. The CFDs have clearly shown a consensus for only that. There are big categories around but people have to deal with them....William 14:55, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• The cfd was unanimous. Some categories are indeed necessarily large and this seems to be one of them (Category:1960 births is another). There's no obvious reason to link together 2 ice-hockey players who happen to be from Detroit. Catscan does a perfectly good job of this for interested persons, who must be a tiny minority. So - no need to split. Oculi (talk) 20:06, 21 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• The CFD was producing much too much fragmentation, by going down to particular cities or towns. We are frequently merging American categories for "People from Boo" to "People from Foo County", Boo being a small place in Foo County. I am not Canadian and do not know the local political georgraphy, but the obvious solution to me is to do a split by county (Or equivalent). Peterkingiron (talk) 16:17, 24 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
  • The key here is the category size. Category:People from Malverne, New York would probably be too small; there is probably a number of people which, if there were that many articles about people from Boo, the category would be acceptable - and it doesn't matter how many people live there, or how well known it is. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:44, 24 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

RFC: A wider handling of the situation[edit]

Proposal: We agree on a minimum size: any category by city and sport where we have that many entries, we allow the creation of the category. I think 100 sounds good. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:13, 29 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Oppose Categories are supposed to be defining of the person for whom they are on. There is a point where categories get to specific and are no longer defining which player by town is. It is already standard across the wiki to not have sports go down to the individual city level. Heck we have had numerous CfDs on people thinking province/state was already too specific. A category of 1000 people is not that large in the case of a location based category. The only reasonable way to split these further would be to split the players and the coaches, but even that wouldn't make much a difference since the majority are players. -DJSasso (talk) 13:43, 29 August 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]
• @Od Mishehu: Oppose This idea is an important one that touches upon the very purpose of the category structure (i.e. show all articles with a given attribute regardless of size vs. keep sub-dividing attributes until a viewable number of articles is reached). In practice, neither of these philosophies is prevailing in general; both have active use (cf. "X births" tree & "People from X" tree).

Personally, I think the defining-ness of the attribute is more useful. Nations (e.g. Canadian ice hockey players) are of clear relevance to the subjects. The 1st national subdivision level (e.g. Ice hockey players from Ontario) is less useful, but still of sufficient breadth that readers may define people in those terms. Further down (e.g. Ice hockey people from Chatham-Kent) makes us question whether that attribute really is that defining at all.

These categories are in effect identity categories. Major cities are more useful in this sense because people identify with a city in a much more meaningful way (and we define people in that manner too). It is very rare that people identify with boroughs and municipalities. SFB 18:31, 6 September 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Oppose DJ Sasso said it well. If the category is correct, it may be big. Category:Harvard University alumni is over 9,000 strong (after diffusing athletes and graduate school alums). We don't need to go lower than state/province for specific sports. Rikster2 (talk) 08:13, 8 September 2014 (UTC)Reply[reply]