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January 16

Category:Gaeltacht places

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: merge both to Category:Gaeltacht places. There was a consensus that these categories are inappropriate, but no consensus on whether the two Gaeltachtaí belong in Category:Gaeltacht places. By merging the categories, that issue can be discussed on the talk pages of the relevant articles (i.e. Permanent North American Gaeltacht and Gaeltacht Quarter, Belfast). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:33, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Propose deleting Category:Gaeltacht places in North America and Category:Gaeltacht places in County Antrim
Nominator's rationale per SMALL. Each cat has only 1 article and it's not going to grow. It's debatable as to whether either of then is even a genuine gaeltacht as they have no native speakers. Laurel Lodged (talk) 22:32, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
REply -- Category:Gaeltacht places is a legitimate category in relation to Ireland: see Gaeltacht places, accordingly the right answer is to merge these as small categories into the parent. The question of whether they belong there is a differnet one. Peterkingiron (talk) 12:51, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We do not categorize places by language spoken there, so I think we should just delete.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:00, 19 January 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.

Category:States and territories disestablished in 979

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. There appears to be a developing view that this an other similar categories should be upmerged to the decade categories. However, there is a lack of clarity on what merge targets should be used, and since several similar categories have been mentioned in this discussion it seems better to close this discussion and allow one followup nomination to deal with all the categories discussed here.
So this closure is made without prejudice to an immediate followup group nomination. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:57, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: The only article, Northern Han, is already in the parent category Category:979 disestablishments, so it's rather redundant that we have two separate categories. Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 21:52, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Category:Songs written by Josh Schwartz

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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:13, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: Delete. There is no matching article for this category. There is a Josh Schwartz who is nothing to do with this category, as the categories say "for more information see Joshua M. Schwartz" which is a redlink. Notified creator. Richhoncho (talk) 19:04, 16 January 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.

Category:Yui (singer)

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: delete, without prejudice to-creation when there is more content to e categorised. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:37, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: Delete. Per numerous precedents and WP:OC#Eponymous. With articles all appropriately categorized by content (albums and songs) and easily linkable from one another through the main article, no need for an eponymous category here. StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 18:57, 16 January 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.

Category:Erina Mano

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: delete. The Bushranger One ping only 12:29, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Delete. Only one article which I added to an appropriate songs category. Easily linkable from it to the topic article. WP:OC#Eponymous. StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 18:51, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The nominator created a category for songs by Erina Mano and decided to delete the main category. The category has interlanguage links and is therefore useful not only for the English Wikipedia, but for Wikipedias in other language as well (for organizing creation of articles about Erina Mano in different languages). The Japanese category contains the shows she hosted, etc. The songs category currently contains only one song, no interlanguage links and is not needed. --Moscow Connection (talk) 19:05, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Category:978 establishments in Italy

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: upmerge to Category:978 establishments. I don't see enough agreement that the articles should also be upmerged to Category:10th-century establishments in Italy here to feel comfortable including that as part of this close, but I see no problem with adding these articles to that cat at any point if there's no objection to it. delldot ∇. 20:09, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Category:Artist authors

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: relisted to CFD 2013 February 1. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:24, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: I was going to speedy nominate this to become "Artist writers," but this is a weird hybrid category, and might be better if just deleted. It's "for professional artists in the Visual arts who also wrote books that were other than collections of their artworks." It seems enough to categorize them both as artists and as writers, but I don't see the value in categorizing them as both simultaneously. If this doesn't get deleted, it should be renamed to Category:Artist writers or something else without "author" in the title.-- Mike Selinker (talk) 18:31, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is unfortunate that moving to "writers" will create that ambiguity. Category:Calligraphers is of course very different. Johnbod (talk) 01:25, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Would a hyphen help, like singer-songwriter? As you point out, the category seems intended for those whose creative career encompasses both letters and fine art, not an artist who happens to write a little. I've been mulling over the aversion expressed at the word author above, and find I don't understand it. I'm not sure "author-artist" or "artist-author" wouldn't be better. Just thinking it through, though. Cynwolfe (talk) 18:46, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
All authors seem to be writers now, in categoryland. I think it is just for consistency, hence the original speedy. No occasional reviewers etc should be here, & I don't think any are, but I'm not sure how to exclude them in the name, though a note will help. Those who just write about their own art are excluded in a note. Johnbod (talk) 04:39, 22 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Category:Nishapur Quarter

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: relisted at CfD 2013 February 3. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:39, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: Delete. We should not be categorizing populated places by their former countries' subdivisions. All the articles in this are properly classified in their current countries/subdivisions, etc. If an article were created describing the extent of Nishapur Quarter it would fully explain what its borders were and what places were included, but categorizing like this would lead to a huge mess where many places would have so many categories of not only their former countries, but every incarnation of subdivisions that such country went through. Category:Populated places in Wessex anyone? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 18:10, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Which articles, assuming you looked at the category, are subdivisions? None, actually. Moreover, there is no one-to-one correspondence in any event. If it were being used like Category:Louisiana Purchase or Category:Louisiana Territory and Missouri Territory are, fine; but we don't have articles that would go in such a re-purposed category. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 23:43, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Category:Shanghai culture etc.

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: rename. If it's desired to change from "in" to "of" for the Category:Chinese culture by province tree, that can be nominated seperately. The Bushranger One ping only 12:30, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 January 4#Category:Jiangsu culture Makecat 14:20, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Empty A-class categories

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. (NAC) Armbrust The Homunculus 22:51, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale. There are 1,886 categories (plus an unknown number of subcategories) in Category:A-Class articles. However, there are only 1,104 distinct A-class articles in total (number from here), most of them related to Military History (this project is the only one that uses A-class on a regular basis, AFAIK). I am not proposing to abandon A-class, I have no problem with projects that actually use this, but to have more than 1,000 categories created and kept around for absolutely nothing at all is not really useful. Take e.g a look at Category:A-Class India articles, which contains no articles but twenty subcategories: 8 of these are empty, 10 contain 5 empty subcategories each, one contains 8 subcats (5 empty, and three with each 5 empty subcats again), and one with 40 subcats, 5 empty ones and 35 ones with each 5 subcats, all of them empty. This means that for India, we have over 200 subcats, and not a single article...
I have not tagged all these cats, as that would be a massive and largely useless task. I'll drop a note at every page you feel is useful to get a thorough discussion though (I'll start with the village pump). Fram (talk) 13:13, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - This submission show that the editor/admin doesn't understand the complexities of WikiProject categorizatoin and how these categories work or how they are used by the WikiProjects and the WikiProject's templates. A-Class is recognized on many projects, WPMILHIST is just the only one that has an active review process. Additionally the Editor/Admins recent contributions here marking several hundred "empty" categories for deletion also show that. Not only would deleting many of these create more work, because they would need to be periodically recreated upon use, they are used to identify problem areas and are often empty because the projects are using them, they would cause the WikiProject Template to generate red links on the documentation unnecessarily. With that said I do agree that some of these are not needed and could be eliminated because the associated project has already been deleted, merged with another or for other reasons. But a wholesale purge of empty categories is not the right way to do it. Kumioko (talk) 16:57, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wrong, there are only a couple of operational A-Class processes in use, that does not mean these categories are not supported nor does it mean they do not apply. WikiProject United States as well as the 100+ supported projects "support" the A-Class category. Many of the others support it as well. Its a big step to go from GA class to FA and A is a helpful intermediary. I agree that some can be eliminated, but a wholesale purge is not the right way to go about it. Furthermore a lot of the US Supported projects would have some if I hadn't given up supporting the project. There are still a lot of articles that need to be tagged for the projects. Someone may take up where I left off before I gave up on the idea.Kumioko (talk) 16:28, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
you haven't shown how they harm the encyclopedia in any way, and there have been a number of arugments for keeping. KillerChihuahua 12:40, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
They don't harm the encyclopedia any more than any other empty category: frustrating readers who think that when they have a bluelink, they will get a result; bloating maintenance tasks; hiding the true extent of A-class; giving the impression to new projects that they too need these useless categories; and so on. Wouldn't it be preferable, honest, correct, if Category:Articles by quality gave a relistic number, instead of what is there now? As for the number of arguments for keeping, I normally look at the quality of arguments, not at the number. I haven't seen a single even slightly convincing argument why e.g. the 6-year old 200 empty category tree for India should be kept. (In the meantime, I have noticed that the projects Videogames and Chemistry also seem to use A-class, bringing the projects that actively use this to 5 instead of 3). Fram (talk) 13:05, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Huh? Your comment is the only place where that name appears on the page. Nyttend (talk) 16:46, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
For those unable to add two and two to get four: KillerChihuahua. -Nathan Johnson (talk) 22:18, 17 January 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.

Category:Quarters in Istanbul

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: relisted at CfD 2013 February 3. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:43, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: Doublet of the long established and structured Category:Neighbourhoods of Istanbul. If necessary, we can rename this one as Quarters of Istanbul. Alex2006 (talk) 09:59, 16 January 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.

Category:Heavy D & the Boyz albums

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: merge. The Bushranger One ping only 12:31, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Main article is a redirect and the Boyz were just a backing group for D. —Justin (koavf)TCM 09:28, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Category:Marianne Faithfull

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: delete. The Bushranger One ping only 12:32, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Too little content, the two subcats are linked —Justin (koavf)TCM 08:44, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Category:Horror stories

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: delete. The Bushranger One ping only 12:33, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: New category with no pages, except a redirect. Novels should be placed in Category:Horror novels, short stories in Category:Horror short stories, and films in Category:Horror films. Satellizer talk contribs 08:10, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Category:Stations, terminals and stops

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.--Mike Selinker (talk) 04:12, 4 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Delete or merge if the articles don't already have a good parent. I'm not convinced that this is a proper grouping. What do Category:Public transport and Category:Intermodal transport have in common? This groups airfields with the description of a type of bus stop. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:26, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Category:Album covers by author

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: rename. The Bushranger One ping only 12:33, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: "Author" is tremendously confusing, and we've been converting it to "writer" whenever possible. Obviously, this can't be "artist" given the confusion with "musical artist," so "visual artist" seems a good compromise.-- Mike Selinker (talk) 07:15, 16 January 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.

Category:Yuki Saito (actress)

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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:47, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator's rationale: Delete. Typically, an eponymous category has a little more content than what's here. Albums and songs categories can link to one another through a hatnote and the discography can be placed in one or both of those. WP:OC#Eponymous. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 06:50, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. This is getting really obnoxious. I'm in the middle of creating articles for the category (of which there are now 5, which is plenty for a category), and you run around moving articles and requesting the main category be deleted. Your deletion request has no basis in policy or guideline given the content currently in the category (most of which has been created in the last two or three days). There are several other articles which are going to be created, and this category and it's subcats are there to contain them to give another way to find all of them easily. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:56, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If it's nothing more than album and song articles then there is no need for this category per WP:OC#EPONYMOUS. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 16:05, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, but you're reading too much into that. This kind of category is not unusual; Take a look at Category:Wikipedia categories named after Japanese musicians and you'll see quite a number of them. Categories are not the same as hatnotes and lists, and they simply provide an alternate way to easily group similar or related articles. That's what is happening in this case, so your argument falls flat. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 17:02, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A number of those look as if they should be deleted as well. I've nominated a couple more that have minimal content. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 19:01, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you're going to count images or media files, every single music artist with an article should have an eponymous category. We should categorize based on content not topic until it becomes reasonable to do so. If there is sufficient material (articles) to populate an eponymous category, then the category can be created. You don't create the category first. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 01:31, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't necessarily true when the articles are being created quickly. And all categories are based on a specific topic, so your comment makes no sense. The only reason I've included the images is because they are fair use images and it makes it easy to keep track of them in one place. I'm disturbed by your aggressive stance on this: you refuse to accept any argument from anyone else on this regardless of the solidness of the argument, and you (as pointed out already) nominated the category for deletion barely 1.5 hours after it was created. Without notifying me of the nomination. Without any discussion or inquiry. WP:BITE much? Even though I've been on enwp for over seven years, and I've rarely encountered such hostility. The guidelines are there for a purpose, but they are definitely not carved in stone. WP:OC#Eponymous doesn't apply in this case, for all the reasons already given to you by me and others. The encyclopedia would be much better served by not wasting our time with pointless discussions such as this one and instead focusing on useful discussions and contributions which may actually improve the encyclopedia. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:57, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are hundreds of subcats of image files: see Category:Album covers by recording artist or Category:Images of musicians. The original (valid) argument against eponymous categories was that they acted as a magnet for a sprawl of tangentially related articles. Here we have 3 tightly defined uncontroversial subcats, neatly included by a logical parent, no sprawl and no problem. Oculi (talk) 15:37, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Keep There is a related article that can't be added to either the albums or the singles category. --Moscow Connection (talk) 00:07, 29 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One article is not enough to justify an eponymous category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:29, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. I don't know how many are enough. What I see is that it's very unconvenient that her singles and albums categories won't be connected. We can add the other category in "See also", but wouldn't it just be easier for readers if the category stayed? --Moscow Connection (talk) 12:26, 3 February 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.

Category:Indigenous Territories

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: rename to Category:Indigenous Territories (Brazil). The Bushranger One ping only 12:35, 27 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Propose renaming Category:Indigenous Territories to Category:Indigenous Territories of Brazil
Nominator's rationale: Greater specificity as to what the category is referring to. Eastlaw talk ⁄ contribs 05:45, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep As far as I know, there are no other legal entities called "Indigenous Territories" that could be a source of confusion (if I'm wrong on this will happily switch my !vote). Also, the associated article is called Indigenous Territory. joe•roetc 09:19, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The page "Indigenous Territory" which the category belongs to also refers to Brazil. If the category is moved, that page would need to be moved too. Satellizer talk contribs 09:53, 16 January 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.

Category:American male actors

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 by weight of argument, multiple recent precedents, existence of complementary category for female actors, and the international hierarchy. If the female category had been called "American female actors", some of the arguments against this one would fall away; the fact that Category:American actresses follows the internationally still-common term "actresses" should make no difference to whether this one is kept. – Fayenatic London 09:32, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Per gender neutral guidelines. We already have Category:American actors and plenty of subcategories. Tinton5 (talk) 03:02, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is simply not true. Glenda Jackson has been calling herself an actor since the 1970s, as have many other female actors. Oculi (talk) 18:56, 17 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Let's say "actor" is the common name. Why is that an argument for deletion and not renaming? Alansohn (talk) 03:29, 18 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the 1980's I remember the SAG pushing for use of the gender neutral term "actron" instead of 'actor' or 'actress'; but I don't remember ever hearing the term since the 1980s -- 12:48, 21 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.65.128.43 (talk)
First, the procedural reasons:
  1. This category was kept at Cfd 2012 Nov 22 (closed on January 1, only 15 days before this nom), along with its parent Category:Male actors by nationality, and sibling categories for Irish, English and Danish actors. It is an abuse of process to nominate a category for deletion so soon after it has been kept at a previous discussion; see WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT.
  2. This category has been nominated without any of its sibling categories, but the nominator offers no rationale for deleting American actors while keeping the Irish, English and Danish, Canadian, Russian and Soviet categories. Cherry-picking categories in this way risks inconsistent decisions, and disrupts consensus-formation by duplicating discussions across several locations.
  3. There was also a long discussion discussion at the Village Pump on the categorisation of actresses. That discussion showed a clear consensus in favour of categorising actors by gender, and that discussion should also be taken into account in the closure of this discussion.
Substantively, I will re-post my comments from Cfd 2012 Nov 22:
Gender is a defining characteristic of an actor, because actors overwhelmingly portray characters of their own gender. This not only imposes a divide in the types of role they can play, but also regulates their eligibility for particular roles. Other than in a few exceptional and experimental productions, women don't get to play Hamlet or Macbeth, and men don't get to play Ophelia ... so gender is the central defining characteristic which determines what roles an actor can be considered for. Sherlock Holmes can be fat or thin, tall or short, and played by an Irish or American or Australian or British actor ... but the List of actors who have played Sherlock Holmes consists of 74 men and not one woman. This does not just apply to parts in established plays such as the work of Shakespeare; it is also inherent in much new drama. A script based on a heterosexual relationship, such as the popular genre of romantic comedy, unavoidably requires a man for one role and a woman for the other. Even less overtly gender-based scripts, such as that of Groundhog Day, would require very substantial reworking if the gender of the lead character was changed. Similar, cross-gender films such as Tootsie or Some Like It Hot are based on one specific gender impersonating another; neither of those two films would have made sense with a woman in the lead role.
Gender is less significant in minor parts, whose status may be radically altered without significantly changing the plot, but actors aspiring to major parts will in most cases be looking at roles where the gender of the actor was determined before casting begun.
Mike notes above that "most productions have male and female actors doing the same job alongside each other", which is only partially true. Male and female actors do work alongside each other, and both portray people, but with only very rare exceptions, men portray men and women portray women. A male surgeon and a female surgeon can swap jobs without issue; so long as they are both competent, they should be interchangeable. But the woman playing Ophelia cannot portray King Claudius unless the director wants to radically change the emphasis of the play.
This gender divide in career paths and roles is recognised throughout the profession, both by theatrical agents and by the gender divide in nearly every major award. For examples of theatrical agencies, see Amber, Elinor Hilton, A&J, Shepperd Fox, MBA, Nelson Browne, McLean Williams. They offer selection by a range of attributes, but all of them divide their talent lists by gender.
For examples of gendered awards, the Critics' Choice Television Award, the Academy Awards, the Emmys, the Golden Globe Award, the Screen Actors Guild Award, the Satellite Award, the Dora Mavor Moore Award, the Drama Desk Award; all have separate prizes for best actor and best actress, with the gender divide being carried across a wide of categories. In fact, so far I have not identified any major acting award which doesn't split by gender.
Categorising actors by gender therefore matches the gendered reality of a rigidly gendered profession. As such it meets all the criteria set out in the long-standing guideline at WP:Cat gender, where the basic principle is that "A gender-specific category could be implemented where gender has a specific relation to the topic". With slight variations in wording, that principle has been the stable core of the guideline for more that 6 years, and has been applied to all sorts of topics.
These principles have led us to keep some categories such as Category:Women in politics, because politics is a historically male occupation in which women remain a minority in nearly all countries; but it has led us to delete others such Category:Female philatelists.
Those categories which we have kept fall into two groups: a) topics where the role of one gender is matter of exceptional interest, whereas the role of the other gender is not (such as politicians); b) topics which are divided by gender, where we have gendered categories for both sides. So far, most of the topics where we both have male and female categories relate to sports categories where men and women compete separately (such as male and female tennis players), but we do have a close parallel with male and female singers, where the two genders also perform alongside each other but are not interchangeable. As Jc37 noted back in 2006, it's hard to see the justification for splitting one but not the other. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:38, 25 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Merriam Webster's definition does not mention gender, and cites as its first example "my sister went to drama school to become an actor". (No, they don't mention her changing gender as part of the course).
  2. Example 2: The Screen Actors Guild Awards have separate wards for "male actors" and "female actors"
  3. Webster's 1913 Dictionary does not restrict the word to men
  4. The Guradian newspaer's style guide says " we use actor or comedian for women as well as men"
  5. In memoriam @ the oscars 2012: men and women are both described as "actors".
So even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (host of the most prestigious film-acting awards on the planet) is using the term actor as a gender-neutral term. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:48, 3 February 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.

Portland Timbers

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: Speedy rename/merge C2C. Timrollpickering (talk) 01:41, 19 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: To match Parent articles Portland Timbers (1975–1982), Portland Timbers (1985–1990), Portland Timbers (2001–2010) and Portland Timbers. – Michael (talk) 01:39, 16 January 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.