Closer's notes
The rationale for deleting or containerizing broad-based categories of people-by-century (primarily in the context of the 20th and 21st centuries) is by now quite well-established, and a look through the CfD archives for the past few months will yield many discussions where this rationale has been upheld by consensus and few or none where it has not. The issue becomes, then, whether a particular intersection (or set of intersections) merits an exception, and in this case consensus was that an exception is not warranted for 20th- and 21st-century rulers.
For the seven categories nominated for merging, I think that a "no consensus" close is appropriate in light of Johnbod's argument that they are "part of wider schemes" in which "by-century cats are the main division of the main category", but "different from categories for journalists, sportspeople, etc.", and that "it makes no sense to leave the 20th century people like loose change in the head category". The "no consensus" close is by no means an indication of a rejection of BrownHairedGirl's argument or an endorsement of Johnbod's, but rather an acknowledgement of the possibility that the circumstances surrounding these categories may be qualitatively different from those surrounding the other nominated categories and of the desirability of a more focused discussion to address these issues.
-- Black Falcon (talk) 18:23, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]