< April 26	April 28 >

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: keep Category:PEN New England awards; rename Category:New England awards to Category:Culture of New England. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:36, 27 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Propose deleting:

• Category:New England awards (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Category:PEN New England awards (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Nominator's rationale: WP:OCAT#SMALL. Also delete subcategory Category:PEN New England awards, which has only two articles. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 19:47, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Category:PEN New England awards which is part of the sub-categorization scheme Category:International PEN literary awards. Per OCAT#SMALL "unless such categories are part of a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme." Otherwise we are looking at having sub-cats for some PEN awards and not others which would be arbitrary and confusing for readers, it would break the scheme. Further, there are 7 New England PEN awards (see List of PEN literary awards), so it has room to grow. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 21:23, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename Category:New England awards to Category:Culture of New England which is oddly absent from Category:New England and could easily be populated with existing articles. A "Culture of" category is typical for places. -- Green Cardamom (talk) 21:23, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Category:PEN New England awards, which has multiple parents. It is small, and if the consensus is that it lacks potential for growth, then it should be upmerged to all parents rather than simply deleted. Rename Category:New England awards to Category:Culture of New England per Green Cardamom. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:58, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Agree with BHG. Until someone finds other New England award than PEN, we do not need a separate category for them. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:43, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, Category:PEN New England awards, definitely some significant room to grow here. — Cirt (talk) 00:46, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep - We will probably need both Category:Culture of New England and Category:New England awards, since they form part of a well-developed sub-categorization scheme. There are lots of New England-specific awards. My guess is that many of them are currently dumped in one or several of the New England states or not sorted out of United States. --Lquilter (talk) 17:14, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete New England awards, I see no reason to have a category that only has one sub-cat and no direct contents.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:19, 30 April 2013 (UTC)----[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: keep; nominator apparently overlooked Category:People by region in the Philippines. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:32, 27 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Categorization of people places in the Philippines is either via per province or per city. The only exception is for People from Metro Manila since Metro Manila is composed of cities and not provinces (either way, those at that category are from cities that don't have "People from Foo" categories yet.

This means this one is overcategorization. Almost all subdivisions in the region already have "People from Foo" categories already, save for Zamboanga Sibugay. The people classified here are already classified in its subcategories -- a classic case of overcategorization. –HTD 20:18, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep People from Zamboanga Peninsula is part of an established scheme of categorization and deleting it would wreck the whole pattern. People from Zamboanga Peninsula is a subcategory of three other categories, namely People from Mindanao, People by region in the Philippines (which has 17 subcategories) and Mindanao. People from Mindanao, in turn, is a subcategory of People by island group in the Philippines, which is a subcategory of Filipino people . Lekoren (talk) 20:10, 8 May 2013 (UTC)----[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the discussion was: no consensus; in general, users seem open to some case-by-case fixes. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:27, 27 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose renaming Consistent use of Women/Men or Female/Male as an adjective

Nominator's rationale: This issue is coming up in several individual discussions. The only way to solve it is a group nomination that can consider both options.

There's never been any consistency on which adjectives should be used and individual CFD discussions have produced differing outcomes. Within the first three layers of Category:Women by occupation and Category:Men by occupation we have the following number of uses an adjective for category titles:

• Women 660
• Men 2
• Female 934
• Male 532

There doesn't seem to be any clear reason as to which set is used beyond different creators and rename discussions. Can we get these to a consistent form? Timrollpickering (talk) 15:04, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The other notable thing is that the number of women/female categories is far higher than the number of men/male categories. We have women inventors for women and inventors for men. Ideally we need a method of selecting on two categories (Wikipedia:Category intersection): the major category (lyrical poet, singers, inventor) and either male, female, unknown, or intersex to get a combo category of male lyrical poets, female inventors, intersex singers. Erp (talk) 02:55, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Category intersection is a much-needed feature, but it's far from being implemented and deployed. Everybody wants this feature, but how quickly can we get it? Netrat (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Inventors not only has Category:Women inventors subcategory, but Category:Ethnic Armenian inventors and Category:Jewish inventors subcategories as well. I can't see why nobody's bringing up these issues.

Anyway, if you think current state is wrong, nothing stops you from creating Category:Inventors by gender subcategory under Category:Inventors and then classifying each individual inventor under subcategories of Category:Inventors by gender. Of course, they should be still classified under subcategories of Category:Inventors by nationality, Category:Inventors by century etc. I don't see anyone objecting such solution. Netrat (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Right - Wikipedia seems to think that one is either a "woman" novelist or a novelist, which reveals a bias which might be easier for some to see if one substituted "men" for "women". Would Wikipedia editors tolerate male writers being the subcategory of writers, without an equivalent for female? Tvoz/talk 19:47, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We're talking about subcategories here, that's by definition not either/or, but implying the parent categorization. — HHHIPPO 20:04, 11 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unless a page is included into Category:Wikipedia guidelines, it's deadly wrong to say that "Wikipedia thinks so". Wikipedia is created by thousands different editors with different opinions. Wikipedia is a work in progress. If any given page or category is far from ideal, it is most probably so because Wikipedia lacks enough editors to make every single page ideal, not because editors think it's OK. Netrat (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

First off, we have Category:American men novelists, so your complaint is outdated. Secondly, there are categories that have men subcats but not women subcats, and many of them are not currently nominated for change, so in fact editors do tolerate this situation.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:21, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

These structure types often denote the historical dominance of a gender in a field. Hence why Category:Female heads of state has no male counterpart and Category:Male nurses has no female counterpart. Novelists is a bit more contentious, but in many cases I take this as an accurate representation of history (which for the large part was sexist). SFB 19:25, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We already have many male and female subcategories, for example category: female astronauts. But partly because gender is not diffusing we do not use this imply the need for a male astronaut category, since per WP:DUPCAT the supercategory astronaut is in no danger of disappearing. A problem with this men/women adjective thing is that it duplicates the male and female adjectives long used. But even worse that it is improperly being used to depopulate and destroy a supercategory of American writers. See the guidelines at WP:DIFFUSE. There's rarely any reason to destroy any but the largest super or parent categories when subcats are created, and there's never an excuse to do it for gender subcat reasons. In short, it should be "male American writers" if you must, but American writers must continue as a parent cat. SBHarris 17:47, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lists of all categories (long)[edit]

(Note some of the destinations exist as redirects) Either

Or

• Comment This [1] was a group nomination, and I believe we also had a more recent one last fall.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:55, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I really do not think anything except comedian is common enough to use. However I even more do not think a mass, attempt to standardize is the place to make this motion. I think you should make such a motion in a discussion on that category alone, and not in addition to hundreds of other categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:22, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

• Comment It's upsetting that Wikipedia won't remove this category altogether, but instead responds to people's anger about it by prompting a discussion in which we quibble about terminology: should we use "Woman/Man" or "Female/Male"? This is a red herring, distracting us from the real issue: that the very existence of this page, paired with the non-existence of a page for "male novelists," suggests that male novelists are a norm and female novelists a variation. And not just on sme symbolic level; this sort of small, subtle organizational strategy influences the way we perceive of women in the publishing industry, and is all the more detrimental because it seems so harmless. The page's creation might have been indeed harmless, a well-intentioned error; what if a grade school class is assigned a project on women novelists? Now they have a handy-dandy page to go to. However, there's been a huge outcry about why, good-intentioned or not, the category is specious, and needs to be abolished. The huge, sexist, regressive mistake being made here is that, in the face of this outcry, Wikipedia dares to placate us by renaming the category instead of just removing it already. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.29.129.189 (talk) 20:20, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment While I understand the general reasoning, this binary definition is entirely exclusive to those that don't identify as one or the other - I'm thinking specifically transgender here. Also, I feel if you are going to identify female judges or female novelists, then you really should identify male judges and male novelists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.17.70.50 (talk) 23:33, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose There are very good reasons to use women in some cases, while using female in others. For example it makes sense to have "women judges" categories since judges will all be adults. On the other hand "female singers" makes sense since many singers are notable as children, when some would say "women" is not a workable adjective. I would actually not obeject to using "women" everywhere, but doubt I could convince enough other people to support this.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:42, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• 'Oppose Adult and child have nothing to do with it. Male and Female are adjectives, women and men are not. Aside from the blatant sexism, it's just plain grammatically incorrect to say "women judges" or "women writers." That you're allowed to edit articles on Wikipedia with such a lacking command of grammar is why teachers don't let students use this thing as a resource. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.29.129.189 (talk) 20:26, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I have to disagree with this opposition. If you think "women judges" sounds correct, how does "men judges" sound? "Woman reporter" versus "man reporter"? And if the latter sounds silly, are we still supposed to use "woman" or "female" if the point of discussion is not male? I'm a little tardy to this discussion, so I'm sure there are more elaborate arguments along this line further down the page. mccojr02 02:15, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment There have been past attempts to bring these categories into being consistently named in the same way, and they have failed.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:20, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • A lot of the problem has been the lack of a group nomination and the one way approach of the nominations which meant it wasn't possible in that discussion to change others in the opposite diection. And since when have the likes of accountants, adult models, police officers, government ministers, life peers, MEPs and TDs not all been adults? Timrollpickering (talk) 19:51, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support changing all to female/male Indeed, "women" is no more an adjective than "men", yet the numbers on Wikipedia tell a wildly different story. There is no reason whatsoever to use "women" instead of "female" - why would "female judges" be in any way less informative than the ungrammatical "women judges"? (And to respond to the other point above, if we had to, we could use "female child singers" vs "female singers", not "women" vs what, "girls"? "Men singers" and "boy singers" I doubt it.) That we have only 2 "men" categories and 660 "women" vs 532 "male" and 934 "female" strongly suggests that Wikipedia editors can hear the grammatical error when it comes to "men" but are tone deaf when it comes to "women". And how about some equivalence in numbers - meaning, not female foobars vs foobars, but rather female foobars vs male foobars - or don't make the distinction at all. Time to change this already. Tvoz/talk 18:32, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per JohnPackLambert. Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 19:16, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Here [2] was a pervious general discussion. I believe we also had one lat fall.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:56, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment The grammar argument ignores actual historical usage. This [3] google scholar search shows up all sorts of places where people use the terms like "Spanish American women writers" in academic writing. "Women writers" is cearly a term that is actually sued, however much some people think it is ungrammatical.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:59, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support for consistency. Also, ungrammatical usage is inappropriate for an encyclopedia. Miracle Pen (talk) 20:03, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Then there are articles like this one [4] the "representative role of women judges". On the other hand google scholar produced 3,000 hits for women singers and 6,600 hits for female singers. There is no consensus that it is ungramatical to speak of "women signers", "women judges", "women writers" or so forth. The relative results for female writers at 16,100 to women writers at 74,800 suggest that "women writers" is clearly the preffered term.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:08, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak oppose. I think we should go with what is most natural for the specific category, which may well be one or the other; I see no particular need or benefit for consistency here. For the two subcategories included in this big list that I am most interested in, Category:Women computer scientists and Category:Women mathematicians, I note that the two corresponding professional associations both use "women" rather than "female" (the Association for Women in Mathematics and several organizations listed at Women in computing#Organizations for women in computing respectively). And incidentally, this CfD is misnamed. In the categories that use "women" or "men", it is not an adjective; it is part of a compound noun. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:02, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Surely you see the difference between the constructions "women mathematicians" and "women in mathematics"? (Is it easier to hear if we talk about "men mathematicians" vs "men in mathematics"? Wouldn't you be more likely to say "Euler and Wiener were male mathematicians"- if you felt the need to make that point - rather than "Euler and Wiener were men mathematicians"?) I have no grammatical problem with the construction "women in mathematics" - that is correctly using the word "women" as a noun, not as an adjectival modifier. Tvoz/talk 20:12, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Support for Sports/Oppose all others: Sport is separated based on sex. A transperson who is male-to-female would compete as a male, not as their preferred gender of female. For all others, the issue appears to be one of gender identification of the person and women/men should not changed to female/male unless some good case by case explanation is provided as to why sex identification based on anatomy should trump gender identification. --LauraHale (talk) 21:33, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just to clarify are you supporting or opposing changing the non sports ones that use "Female"/"Male" to "Women"/"Men"? e.g. Category:Female lawyers Your bolded comments suggest oppose, your detailed comments suggest support. Timrollpickering (talk) 21:41, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Continue using the term most appropriate to the subject, whether "male/female" or "men/women" - This has been discussed before in various CFDs. The decisions in the past has been to use the terminology that is actually used -- for instance, "women writers" as opposed to "female writers". I haven't seen a compelling reason to abandon that reasoning. The only reason we have "women writers" is because "women writers" is a well-studied and well-used category, of interest to the writers themselves, their readers, academics who study them, and users of the encyclopedia. To go with "female writers" just because we decide to enforce consistency in terminology would seriously disserve the actual readers of the encyclopedia. To compare, consider WP:ENGVAR -- we do not force everyone to use English variants or American variants of spelling; we use the variant that is appropriate to the subject. The same logic applies. --Lquilter (talk) 23:22, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Continue"!!! Starting to do this would be nice! So why do we have Category:Female writers who wrote under male or gender-neutral pseudonyms? Johnbod (talk) 00:09, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you're getting at? By "continue", I meant that we currently use "female/male" in some places, "woman/man" in other places. We use the term that is most common in that particular field. That's what we "currently" do, and that's what I would suggest we continue to do. If you're interested in renaming [[:Category:Female writers who wrote under male or gender-neutral pseudonyms" to Category:Women writers who wrote under male or gender-neutral pseudonyms, that's a specific discrete proposal that would be based on the specific issues relevant to that category. There might be a good reason for using "female" in this one category, since "female" usually means "biologically female" and is thus distinct from "women" -- a distinction that could be helpful in a category dedicated to folks some of whom may arguably have been transgendered or male-identified. But that would all come up in a specific discussion about that specific category. It doesn't really have anything to do with the point, here, that we should not have all categories be "male/female" or "man/woman". --Lquilter (talk) 14:18, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The proposition that "we currently use "female/male" in some places, "woman/man" in other places. We use the term that is most common in that particular field" does not survive even a cursory review of the categories we have. They are an inconsistent mess because created by dozens of different people at different times. Johnbod (talk) 13:15, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I think often new category creators do a pretty decent job of capturing the best term. When they don't, these things come up for discussion. I've seen plenty of discussions about whether to use "women FOO" or "female FOO". --Lquilter (talk) 13:59, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• I created Category:Men nurses, but it was changed to Category:Male nurses with Men in nursing as the lead article. Note also that the parent category is named Category:Men by occupation not Male by occupation. Ottawahitech (talk) 03:37, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• All sports to male/women, the 2 silly "men" categories (if not deleted at the other discussion) to "male", keep musicians & singers as they are (mostly "female"), then come back in another discussion to see what's left. But total consistency should not be an aim. Johnbod (talk) 00:09, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose – As John Pack Lambert pointed out, there are very good reasons to use women in some cases, while using female in others. The "Man" categories are rubish and should be deleted. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 00:23, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't seen any actual reasons given for why "women" should be used as an adjective. Could you elucidate? Tvoz/talk 05:36, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Because people who use the encyclopedia use terms like "women writers" and "women boxers". And if we want to make the encyclopedia useful we use the language that people use. --Lquilter (talk) 14:44, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am asking what are the "very good reasons" for using "women in some cases, while using female in others". Would you use "men boxers"? And is it really more useful to use "women" rather than "female"? If so, why do we have a List of female architects but a Category: Women architects?Tvoz/talk 03:54, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You have pointed out the facts that (1) Wikipedia has inconsistent approaches from various editors in some situations, and (2) in some instances there is no clear popular preference for "female" or "women" over the other. Nobody disputes the existence of such scenarios. However, there are plenty of situations in which there are clear popular preferences for one over the other, and probably some times for other terms like "ladies" or "girls" too. I haven't studied it, but it seems like "women foo" tends to be more popular and common; about 2 to 1 over female in most instances. But "female foo" has its uses too ("female superheroes" over "women superheroes" for instance; "female bodybuilders" over "women bodybuilders"). ... As for "men boxers": It sounds awkward as hell to me, so I wouldn't use it. Why? Probably because I'm part of my culture and my ideas of what sounds "natural" are based on what everyone else says. But it doesn't really matter what "I" would use except as one example of the other 350-million native English-speakers. Which is why we do things like google search or a search in any academic database and look for the terminology that is commonly used. If the vast majority of people in the world choose to use non-parallel terms to discuss parallel concepts, then it's pretty clear that from a usability perspective, we should use the terms that most people use. I understand the psychological itch that causes in librarians, catalogers, and so forth, but usability and clarity really need to drive our decision-making. I mean, we could invent our own Wikipedia language that was perfectly orderly and parallel and so forth, but it would be completely useless because everybody else would still be using the crappy-old English that they're using. Wikipedia editors who want to name a category "men boxers" just because it's parallel to "women boxers", or rename women boxers to "female boxers", are wasting the time of editors and readers alike, because that's not the terminology that most people will be using. --Lquilter (talk) 16:58, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• User:Lquilter, I personally cringe at the thought of having to add an accomplished woman to a category named female-foo. For example I would probably refrain from adding Margaret Thatcher to Category:Female heads of government. Yes, I know there are female dogs, female flies, etc. but Category:Female accountants - yuck. XOttawahitech (talk) 15:21, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Support The term male/female is a derogatory term when used in the context of humans. All human male/female categories should be merged to the corresponding men/women cats. Ottawahitech (talk) 01:03, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Nomination is too big, women may be appropriate for some topics, while female for other topics. 117Avenue (talk) 08:12, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose The use of 'women' for females involved in sport is the normal usage in modern English. To my mind the proposition is flawed. The words 'women' and 'men' are not being used as adjectives in such contexts. They are nouns in apposition, cf 'my friend Joe'. Incidentally, I created the category Belgian women gymnasts within the category Belgian sportswomen because this was consistent with the way other sportswomen had been categorized. However, there is only one article in the category and it would not worry me if it were removed completely. LynwoodF (talk) 09:03, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I was alerted to this proposal from the Pornography/Sexology and Sexuality Project point-of-view, where all the relevant categories currently use the term Male or Female, which seems to be appropriate for those categories IMHO. I would imagine that one may occasionally run across an article for a prostitute/sex worker than wasn't a full-grown adult Man or Woman in those categories. Guy1890 (talk) 19:15, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support the two men-male changes, Oppose the rest. It is easy to look at two categories and determine which term is better. However for the larger sections that is not so easy to do. As Guy1890 mentions above, there are cases where each of the forms in use are the accepted norm. So this discussion is not likely to reach consensus since it is too broad to discuss only those categories, where a change would be justified. We may well find that there is a default version to use. However to do that, we will need to determine what the exceptions, if any, are. I think this nomination is past the point of being able to switch to what I think is the needed discussion. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:13, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per 117 Avenue, but can't see any categories which haven't already have visibility for women removed (which is what this proposal inevitably means) which would benefit. In ictu oculi (talk) 02:32, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 September 12#Categories:Women by occupation. Fram (talk) 07:00, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose due to too large a nomination. In some cases women is appropriate. In others female is appropriate. I would be ok with moving all sports categories to women however since it is well established that is what women's sports are called. -DJSasso (talk) 11:55, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per Djsasso. It really is too large a nomination. Let's handle this on a case by case basis. In some professions, there is no meaningful professional distinction between male and female practitioners. In others (like professional sports, say) there clearly is, while in yet others it's unclear, or there may be historical or sociological reasons to maintain a distinction for encyclopedic purposes even where there isn't a professional one. Ray^Talk 13:10, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment The fact that we have things like Category:American sportswomen would seem to suggest any total uniformity will be elusive.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:30, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment what a mess has been made as the camel's nose entered the tent with actors/actresses because, they are so different we're told, now we categorize accountants by gender - why bother having any gender neutral categories of people any more? Men born in 1985? Albanian women of Zimbabwean ancestry? and every other conceivable thing....Best to upmerge all to their gender neutral parent and delete the lot of them as an experiment gone bad a la the male monster created by a female horror writer. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 07:16, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Except we have had Category:Female accountants since sometime in 2011, and we did not create Category:Kuwaiti actresses and the other really early categories of that type until the late summer/fall of 2012, so this is an ahistorical explanation of how we got our current categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:52, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose per JohnPackLambert and per 117Avenue. I don't see the word "Women" as an adjective in this case, I see it rather as more likely that some people have chosen to use "Women writers" as a name of the category about women who are writers in stead of "Women who are writers", which wouldn't sound good. There are several good reasons why we should keep the categories for women. One reason is that in some countries there are very few women who are politicians or writers (and a number of other occupations) compared with men. When we have separate categories for women (and men), it is easier for people who are interested in this topic to find out how many women are politicians, writers etc. or at least how many articles about these women have been written on Wikipedia, the number of articles should give an indication of how many women are active politicians, writers, sportswomen etc. EileenSanda (talk) 10:22, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Shouldn't we review which are the most commonly used search phrases? To arbitrarily change the way things are categorized, based upon some form of logic, rather than what is the current real world search phrases would only confuse the user base.Wzrd1 (talk) 15:30, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment on why we have these categories. There are really three issues. 1-in some cases like politics, women involvement is seen as having its own history and meaning. 2-and this is the one that people seem to miss. In acting, modeling, singing and some other performing professions the gender of both women and men is central to most of what they do. 3-in some sports, women and men compete seperately so it really does not make sense to group them together at all. This leads to the fact that while we may not have men "men" categories, we have lots of categories like Category:Michigan Wolverines men's basketball players.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:56, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose consistency. How we name things should depend on externally-verifiable most-common or standard usage determined case by case. Neutrality requires us to set aside our own preferences and to rely on what sources say—neutrality is not about deciding internally that certain terms are good/bad so that we systematically enforce/expunge them. I'm wary of the increasing tendency to use MOS and other guidelines as a way to sneak in POV and OR (even when intentions are laudable). As for whether gendered categories should exist, of course they should if these categories reflect recognized categorization within the field of study. AFAIK, "female accountants" is not a notable topic. You couldn't write an article about it. But you could find RS to write an utterly fascinating article about Category:Ancient Greek women philosophers. To my mind, most legitimate and useful categories have or potentially have an article or well-developed section of an article that would fully illuminate the category's significance. This principle is also in keeping with the requirement that an article shouldn't be placed within a category unless it's clear in the body text why—and that qualifying content will be based on sources. Cynwolfe (talk) 14:01, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Specifically in regard to the proposed deletion of Category:Ancient Greek women philosophers, I would object primarily by offering the entry on "Women as Members of Philosophical Schools" from The Oxford Encyclopedia of Classical Greece and Rome, and ask that its CfD be severed from this mass deletion/renaming exercise and treated individually on its own merits. There's ample scholarship (available on request) that focuses quite specifically on the topic and thus supports the category. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:12, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Needlessly broad and looking for linguistic consistency where none exists. For basketball players "women" is normally used, but for swimmers "female" is normally used. What are the advantages of the proposed consistency? I can't see any that trump the advantage of providing categories based upon the way English speakers actually describe them. SFB 19:18, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I personally prefer male/female to men/women, but accept that usage in certain fields has set a precedent which should be followed on a case by case basis. As noted by many above, the discussion is too broad to achieve any form of satisfactory compromise. Thaf (talk) 09:21, 3 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support for consistency, as it makes it easier to search for categories (I suppose making redirects is also an option). The use of female/male, I think, is preferable--the terms 'women' and 'men' are generally used as nouns rather than adjectives. The Giant Purple Platypus (talk) 02:34, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support Female/Male with few exceptions, in most cases it would be more grammatically correct. Netrat (talk) 14:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Yes, most people think "women FOO" is an adjectival phrase; but it's also correct to think of it as a compound noun in many instances, as has been pointed out in other CFDs. The grammar argument is at the very least ambiguous. --Lquilter (talk) 18:55, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support changing all to female/male 189.125.226.63 (talk) 22:05, 6 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do you have a reason? This is not a vote. --Lquilter (talk) 01:52, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support changing to female/male. There are circumstances where "women" may be appropriate, but a general convention is advisable, and "female" is certainly more correct in most cases. Deb (talk) 13:52, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • If there are circumstances where "women" are appropriate, then why would you advocate changing them all? --Lquilter (talk) 01:52, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support changing to female/male. Woman and man are poor and nonstandard adjectives, as noted above. Male and female are used in sports, particularly in gymnastics and swimming, precisely because some female competetors are not legally adult in some jurisdictions. Female is used here to avoid the issue. Both "man" and "woman" carry connotations of adulthood and even legal majority in English, notwithstanding the derivation of the English word "woman" which once upon a time really did mean just "female human". Still, the language changes.

  The problem here (as usual) is that the feminists have accused the English language of being value/judgement-laden and have thus gotten hold of the word "woman" and want it to used everywhere that "girl" was previously used, as though "woman" now still means "human female." And here we are, on WP, trying to replace the one term with the other. I personally am not opposed to changing the language, but I do oppose changing it to suit one's prejudice, depending on circumstance. For example, you may be willing to say that somebody gave birth to a baby woman (just for political-correctness sake), but I doubt you'll find any feminist who is willing to say that somebody is accused of raping a 10 year-old woman. In that context, even for radical feminists, it's a 10 year-old girl. In any case, Wikipedia is really not the place to fight such wars. Female and male remain the least loaded terms. Which is why (by the way) U.S. police use these terms exclusively as descriptors of people, in their professional capacity. SBHarris 03:00, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment- while I respect your reasons for supporting a change to female/male, I feel that the use of a stereotypical generalisation of Feminism is unnecessary, especially your use of "The problem here (as usual)", which seems to imply that Gender neutrality in English is unjustifiable and that all feminists have, somehow, exactly the same ideology and are all "prejudiced". — Preceding unsigned comment added by The Giant Purple Platypus (talk • contribs) 11:59, 13 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Support standardization of female/male format with common sense exceptions and suggest WP:NCCAT be updated accordingly, although I would much prefer to see a better technological solution implemented in the future, e.g., filtering by Wikidata attribute (gender) via category indexes.   — C M B J   04:57, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose I oppose because in sport, the ladies teams are usually referred to as women's teams and competitions. ie the UEFA Women's Champions League and the England women's national rugby union team and the categories should reflect that. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 09:10, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support deleting some and changing the rest to female/male. I've made these two cases before: 1) We should only use gender-based categories when there is a significant rarity of contribution by one gender (for example, Category:Female players of American football). Actors, doctors, chefs, guitarists, etc. now have somewhat comparable female representation, so there's (in my opinion) no need to subcategorize by gender. Worse, it creates the "ghetto" problem, where all the women are in a subcategory (e.g., the oft-remarked upon Category:American women novelists) and all the men are in a main category (e.g., Category:American novelists. 2) If we must categorize by gender, we should use parallel adjectives. While "women" is arguably possible as an adjective, there's no way "men" is. The only parallel adjectives are "male" and "female," which are undeniably accurate. There are some people who claim some women find the use of "female" derogatory; I am unconvinced this is the majority view in the modern populace.--Mike Selinker (talk) 20:03, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose This is one of those items that should always be case by case. Sports often use Womens/Mens (or in the case of some tennis venues, Ladies/Gentleman ). But when handling musicians it is usually male/female drummers, singers, etc... And when handling 15 year old ice skaters are we going to call them women? I would guess mens/womens would be in use most often but to effectively put a blanket ban on one term over the other isn't the wiki way of doing things. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:36, 9 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support generally, same basic rationale as Mike Selinker's explanation. Needs a case-by-case examination, however—for example, people in Category:Women Test cricketers have played Women's Test cricket; renaming to Category:Female Test cricketers would imply they were female players of Test cricket, which is an entirely separate format. But then, Category:Female cricketers would be quite correct. Needs further consideration, but I agree that it is silly to use a noun adjunct where a perfectly good, established adjective exists. IgnorantArmies 13:15, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• • In the case of Women photographers, there seems to me to be a very good case for keeping the category as it is as "female photographers" is ambiguous as it can mean either women who are photographers or photographers of women. In any case, we are not talking about the use of women as an adjective but rather as a noun qualifier, extremely common in English usage (e.g. pig farm, holiday home, grammar discussion, girls school).--Ipigott (talk) 21:07, 15 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge together all gendered categories where practical. Many of these categories separate men and women for no obvious reasons. For example, it's not clear why male and female authors are in separate categories, and I see no reason to have that. Merge them all back together to gender neutral categories and we save ourselves a lot of pointless issues, IRWolfie- (talk) 09:33, 16 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There may well be by gender categories that are not justified, however the way to deal with that is to nominate it on a case by case basis, unless you think we should get rid of all these categories. However that will be very difficult since some are more by team or by sport than really by gender.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:45, 17 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• User:IRWolfie-, creating one gender category for for each reasonably-sized biography-type category is always justified. For categories where the minority are women, a women’s category is justified - in the few where men are the minority (as in Category: men nurses a men's category is justified. Just my $.02. XOttawahitech (talk) 14:59, 19 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Support using only female/male for all gendered / by sex categories, for consistency. As said, use of 'men' instead of 'male' as an adjective, in most if not all cases, is quite awkward sounding; whereas, for some cases, use of 'female' instead of 'women' sounds only slightly so. Moreover female/male allows for the inclusion of all ages, also as already said. Finally, User:MikeSelinker is right - some categories need to be merged into a genderless category. Only where either female and male participation is seperated, as in many sports, or where the inclusion of a particular sex is noteworthy, should there be separate gendered categories. Mayumashu (talk) 11:37, 21 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose foo comedians. I believe one of my first-ever !votes at Xfd was to support the use of the noun "comediennes" similar to our use of Category:Actresses. And so in this one case I think we should use this perfectly sound word, which is stated as an alternate name in Comedian. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:50, 23 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose a general rule, these categories should use whateve the most common or natural usage is when talking about that field. In some cases that may be 'men'/'women', in others it may be 'male'/'female'. I don't think there's anything to be gained here from trying to enforce consistency over a wide spectrum of very different categories. Robofish (talk) 17:05, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the discussion was: rename. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:06, 27 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose renaming Category:Wilson Administration personnel (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  
• Also propose renaming Category:Wilson administration cabinet members to Category:Woodrow Wilson administration cabinet members

Nominator's rationale: Potentially ambiguous. It might just be because I'm British, but this category (and its subcat Category:Wilson administration cabinet members) could potentially be taken as referring to the government of UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson rather than US President Woodrow Wilson. In the UK, 'X ministry' is the proper term to use, but 'X administration' is sometimes also seen, and Wilson Administration is a disambiguation page. (Wilson Ministry lists a third possible subject, the government of Western Australia led by Frank Wilson (politician).) We use full names to disambiguate these categories where necessary, as with Category:George W. Bush Administration personnel‎ or Category:Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration personnel‎; this is another one where I think full-name disambiguation is justified.Robofish (talk) 14:15, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename per nominator to avoid ambiguity. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:06, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename per nom. Calling the government of a PM his "administration", is an Americanism that I deplore, but I am hearing the usage these days, and we cannot swim against the tide. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:47, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some of that use is very deliberate to make the point the PM is acting like a US President (or at least like the image Brits have of a US President). Timrollpickering (talk) 17:22, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Umm, we are discussing an American president here, not a British Prime Minister.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:43, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename, more specific title for this is better in this particular situation. — Cirt (talk) 00:48, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename per nominator to avoid ambiguity. --Lquilter (talk) 17:16, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename for clarity. Timrollpickering (talk) 17:22, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename but should Administration be capitalised, eg Category:Woodrow Wilson Administration personnel and Category:Woodrow Wilson Administration cabinet members. We talk about the Woodrow Wilson Administration not the Woodrow Wilson administration as Administration is part of the name. Obama Administration subcategories seem to be capitilised too, although many earlier administrations are not; for “personnel” it is 12 Administration to 6 administration. Hugo999 (talk) 22:04, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename because this is soo ambiguous that at least one commentor thought we were discussing a British Prime Minister and not a US president.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:44, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the discussion was: keep.--Mike Selinker (talk) 01:23, 25 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Propose renaming Category:Departments of the University of Manchester but The University of Manchester has no Departments. The academic units are Schools (which are effectively large departments) and Institutes (which are multidisciplinary). I propose a name change to Category:Schools and Institutes of The University of Manchester. Note also the capitalisation as the definite article is part of the legal name as it appears in the university's charter. Billlion (talk) 13:00, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose The - per WP:THE and all the other categories in Category:University of Manchester use the lower case. No opinion (yet) on the rest. Timrollpickering (talk) 17:43, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose "Schools and Institutes" because "department" is a generic term that may include things whose name is "School of ...", "Faculty of ...", "Centre for ...", "Institute of...", "... Department" etc and that's the term used in the rest of that category tree. DexDor (talk) 18:36, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. The University which put up with me for a few years (looong time ago) had a 3-layered structure: Faculty (e.g. Arts & Letters) → School (e.g. Modern Languages) → Department (e.g. French).
  Other universities have different structures; for example UCC has Colleges → Schools → Departments (see the structure of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences). So while it might be desirable to look for a standard terminology, I don't think that adopting any of the various inhouse schemes is viable.
  So either we use the inhouse terminology of each university, or we use much generic terms such as "subdivisions of the University of Foo" or "units of the University of Foo". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:49, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose -- WP's category structure should reflect the way the university is organised, not seek to dictate it. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:50, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question. Peter, shouldn't that view lead you to support the proposed renaming? The current structure does not reflect the way the university is organised. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:35, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I was suggesting that "department" served as a generic term for all three layers, even though faculties and schools are in local terminology not departments. Peterkingiron (talk) 16:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, department is indeed a generic term and the proposal seems quite clunky. — Cirt (talk) 00:49, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Support I am unconvinced that department can be a generic term, when in many cases it is used for a specific thing, that in my experience tends to be well below the college level.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:00, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Department" is probably the most generic term in use in the UK. "School" within a university can mean anything from "alternate name for department" to "faculty" to "subject grouping that doesn't get the full status of a department" to "a particular subject with a special building" to many more. I'm not sure university specific terms would be terribly helpful - there's an annoying tendency for institutions to change their terminology every so often and we'd constantly be having to catch up with them all. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:44, 1 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the discussion was:  Relisted at 2013 MAY 27 CFD. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:04, 27 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Plant common names in New Zealand (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: Articles shouldn't be categorized by the form of their title. This has some similarity with another recent CFD. DexDor (talk) 05:45, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak rename and purge 24 of the 29 member articles are titled by Maori names (and several of the others of English etymology are not common names unique to New Zealand). Maybe rename the category something like Category:Maori common names for plants and remove names derived from English? I'm sure there are some English-derived plant common names unique to New Zealand, but I'm not sure that breaking common names down by country is very useful. All the articles (Maori or English) could be listed at Category:Plant common names. Plantdrew (talk) 04:17, 25 May 2013 (UTC)----[reply]

The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

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The result of the discussion was: listify then delete. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:01, 27 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame inductees (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: WP:OC#AWARD (being an award recipient is not normally a WP:DEFINING characteristic). For information: The main article does not contain a list of recipients, but suggests that there's about 10 times as many recipients as currently in the category. DexDor (talk) 05:25, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep (revised 2 May 2013 to Delete): if the main article did contain a list of recipients (over 200 inductees), would that serve acceptable? Per WP:CLN with 200+ entrants that would eliminate a navigation box as a viable option, thus leaving a list as the other logical option. My opinion is that both a list and a category could exist. There are numerous example of such categories as provided at Category:Sports hall of fame inductees, which by definition is not intended for itself to category individuals inducted into any sports hall of fame but rather lists and (sub)categories of dinstinct sports halls of fame. It appears the controvery is HOFs below the sport-type or national level halls of fame (e.g., Connecticut Huskies and Michigan Motorsports and this one) as not being WP:DEFINING. Djharrity (talk) 06:57, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: I will eventually Listify and link active Wikipedia entries at some point. For now, I agree with all commenters, please delete (I'm the one who created it) and I will listify at some point. For a point of order, do you want me to individually remove the Cat entries for each listing now and when complete, someone with admin rights can delete the category? 15:11, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

It's best not to remove any articles from the category (unless, of course, they don't meet the inclusion criteria) - wait for the CFD to complete and a bot to do it. DexDor (talk) 19:17, 2 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete None of the individuals / groups listed is defined by being a member of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. Alansohn (talk) 03:12, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Alansohn and per WP:OC#AWARD as non-defining. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:08, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• LIstify (if necessary) then delete as usual for minor awards. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:51, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• LIstify (if necessary) then delete, as this proposal by Peterkingiron (talk · contribs) sounds like a sensible and sound resolution to this issue, at least for now, could be revisited at a later point in time. — Cirt (talk) 00:51, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Listify and delete - It's not about the size or potential size of the category; it's about whether the award/recognition is a "defining attribute" of its subjects. Induction into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame serves as a recognition of the thing that made people notable -- their sportsmanship. It does not confer additional notability on them, and it doesn't define them. Even if someone, somewhere, were to study and publish a lot of information on the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame & its members, then the members still would not be notable and defined because of their induction into the ASHOF. If ASHOF became the Nobel Prize of sports awards and people clamored and invested their entire careers into getting into the ASHOF, and other people studied and wrote dissertations about who and how ASHOF members were selected, then I think we could start consider ASHOF as a plausible category. Until then, listify and delete. --Lquilter (talk) 14:41, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete I think we can safely say that no award given at the US state level is notable enough to warrant having a category for those who recived it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:47, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the discussion was: Delete. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:34, 7 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Propose deleting Category:Jenko Award laureates (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  

Nominator's rationale: WP:OC#AWARD (being an award recipient is not a WP:DEFINING characteristic). For information: there is a list at Jenko Award. DexDor (talk) 05:16, 27 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per nominator and per WP:OC#AWARD. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:09, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete -- The list at Jenko Award does the job much better than a category erver could. per WP:OC#AWARD. Peterkingiron (talk) 15:54, 28 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, in this particular situation the list page is preferable and holds good potential for further quality improvement projects. — Cirt (talk) 00:55, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - Per WP:OC#AWARD this is not a defining award. --Lquilter (talk) 14:22, 29 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete this violates our guidelines against most award categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:49, 30 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.