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January 25

Category:Alpine countries

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: result. The Bushranger One ping only 02:42, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: This category currently (incorrectly) puts the article about France under Category:Central Europe and (because it contains country categories) incorrectly puts the articles such as Brittany under Category:Alps. Categorizing countries by a mountain range that (in some cases) is only a small part of the country has some of the same problems that categories such as "Mediterranean countries" had (CFD). For info: There is a list at Alpine states. DexDor (talk) 21:04, 25 January 2014 (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:Saddam Hussein family

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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:53, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rational, rename per Tulfah family. Charles Essie (talk) 18:15, 25 January 2014 (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:Separation barriers

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 to merge as nominated. There are various potential ways forward suggested. The final one, which covers a wider restructuring, could probably be handled best by editorial work elsewhere, eventually returning to CfD for cleanup. -Splash - tk 22:22, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Sorry, let me try this again. This virtually unpopulated intermediate category serves no useful function -- other than WP:OC#SHAREDNAMES -- that I can see between the eponymous Israeli construction and other geopolitical or security walls and fences that appear in the various parent categories. (Including Category:Obstacles, nominated below.) Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:48, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • It doesn't; the Separation barrier article is about the concept, not specifically about Israeli barrier(s) so shouldn't be moved into that category. DexDor (talk) 22:13, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The article selectively cites examples of where walls/fences have been called a "separation barrier," to advance idea that this is a distinct entity. I guess I'm not so convinced that I think Category:Separation barriers should even exist. Now, others might disagree and start applying it to other cited examples in that article, such as the Saudi–Yemen barrier, etc. But no one has, to date. The Israeli example is the category's sole example, currently. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 22:24, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • That article is rather muddled (see WP:REFERS), but it does appear that (for example) Belfast's peace walls are within the scope of the topic that it's trying to cover. DexDor (talk) 23:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oh, I didn't see that one. Interesting, too, that the Irish example is categorized under Category:Border barriers, despite the fact that the wall divides neighbourhoods and is no more a recognized "border" than Israel's, it seems to me. Anyway, some things would seem to need to be done, here, and we have this and the "obstacles" one below, as starters. And of course judged separately, on their respective merits. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 23:08, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Per my comments below, the bottom line is what the sources say in the relevant articles, not what WP:OR interpretations editors may choose to put on various articles. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 17:24, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A couple editors have kept our eyes on this to remove more such WP:OR examples. at this diff and this diff I have used one The Guardian reporter's one-time use of "separation barrier" about the growing use of walls/barriers/etc worldwide in its proper context, reverting a recent effort to define the whole article by it. Also removed a section on an Indian "separation barrier", since the source called it a "separation wall".
Creating Category:Israeli separation barriers would remove the temptations to change the article's thrust with dubious sourcing and to make this a WP:OR super-category.Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 04:35, 2 February 2014 (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:Progress templates

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 deletion. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 23:09, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Completely superseded by Category:Wikipedia progress templates. I already moved all of the templates in this to the other category. Not even sure why this was created. APerson (talk!) 14:54, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is it possible that you don't recall that you had created it on January 14? Anyway, now that it's been emptied by you, I've placed a ((db-author)) tag on it, with explanation. If I understand correctly, this should be fairly simple to resolve, soon. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 19:53, 25 January 2014 (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:Guided missiles by conflict

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 ALL as per nomination. -Splash - tk 21:45, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Propose renaming
Nominator's rationale: We don't generally categorize mass-produced items by which conflicts they have been used in (example CFD) as for some types it could lead to them being in dozens/hundreds of categories (and some may not be used in any conflict). Thus, these categories, which each just contain a category for the Cold War, should be renamed. It will then be possible to add corresponding subcats for the post-Cold War period. DexDor (talk) 14:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If you think the entire scheme (up to Category:Military equipment by period?) should be deleted then please explain what the "insuperable problems" are in a separate discussion. DexDor (talk) 06:35, 5 February 2014 (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:Examples of misuse of statistics

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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:32, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: This category appears to be being used to categorize articles in which there is some mention of the misuse of statistics (e.g. the Bicycle helmet article was in this category). For articles that are about misuse of statistics (i.e. for which it's a WP:DEFINING characteristic) there's Category:Misuse of statistics. DexDor (talk) 13:55, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think what you are suggesting is a set category - the title of which would/should be "Misuses of statistics" (this is currently the only "Examples of ..." category in the whole of enwiki). However there aren't so many articles in Category:Misuse of statistics that a separate category is needed and if there were it would be better to have subcats for misuse of statistics in particular fields (politics/commerce/science etc). DexDor (talk) 06:22, 26 January 2014 (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:Obstacles

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. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:10, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: 4 (of 6) parent categories of this category are about road transport, but none of the pages in the category are about road transport - one is a redirect to an aviation article, one is about any obstacle (that page probably should be a disambiguation page or a redirect to Wiktionary), and two are about geopolitical separation barriers (not roads). The articles are in other (more suitable) categories. DexDor (talk) 13:44, 25 January 2014 (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:French military firefighters

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. Note that the second category's content is already in Category:Romanian firefighter personnel, a subcategory of Category:Firefighters, so it was only merged to the second target. The Bushranger One ping only 02:47, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: WP:SMALLCAT - These categories each have just one member and it is very unlikely that we're going to get a lot of people notable for being French/Romanian military firefighters. There is no "Military firefighters by country" categorization scheme for this to be part of. DexDor (talk) 13:36, 25 January 2014 (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:Children of Holocaust survivors

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. I am going to keep my closure note relatively simple (for a change!). Clearly the weight of the debate is toward keeping. For me to nevertheless delete, the keeps would have to be seriously ill-founded in fact, policy, consistency, rebuttal, etc. But they obviously are not. Or, the deletes could have such a strong policy-based thread that it is nevertheless reasonable to import a wide-community consensus from the policy/policies into this debate and outweigh the keep side. That is not the case. On the other hand, the deleters' significant salient points relating to non-defining characteristic and non-inherited notability are very fairly argued, but not deconstructed enough to lead to a straight 'keep' outcome. We therefore have a case where the community has not sufficiently converged on a consensual outcome as to the disposition of this category, and we default to taking no action from this debate. -Splash - tk 00:33, 6 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: This category is categorizing people by a life experience of one/both of their parents - which is not something we normally do in WP. The main way we categorize people in WP is by what makes them notable (e.g. using a nationality-occupation category). We also categorize by some standard biographical characteristics (e.g. year of birth) - generally characteristics that place every person in one, and only one, category. This category is neither a reason-for-notability category nor a standard biographical characteristic category. This is the only "Children of ... survivors" category and we don't, AFAICS, have similar categories for children of survivors of pandemic/earthquake/war/terrorism. There are other "Children of <type of parent>" categories, but AFAICS those are all for where the parent is a monarch, president, pope etc - i.e. an occupation that makes the parent so notable that their children may inherit some notability. It may be argued that someone's parent(s) being Holocaust survivor(s) influenced the person (the subject of the WP article) - that may be of sufficient importance to be mentioned in the article text, but IMO it's not so important that it's a WP:DEFINING characteristic (and an exception from how we normally categorize); we don't, for example, categorize people by the religion or social status of their parents. For info: I've checked a sample of articles in this category and most don't mention this characteristic in the lead and all were in more appropriate categories. This category could be listified. Note: This category was previously discussed in 2011 resulting in a rename. DexDor (talk) 08:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You often make these sorts of points, which to me suggest a misunderstanding of "defining". Defining is a characteristic that 3rd party sources regularly describe a person as having. Defining is *not* 1) Something that is important to that person 2) Something that person is a member of a club for 3) Something that articles have been written about 4) Something that had an important impact on that person's life. The vast majority of "Children of holocaust survivors" are not notable and have no articles here, and those who *do* have articles here are notable almost always for other reasons; as such, when those people are described in the media, the fact that one or both of their parents survived the holocaust is, more often than not, not mentioned. And I know you hate this argument, but OTHERSTUFFCOULDPOTENTIALLYEXIST - like [1], which is an organization devoted to child survivors of the Holocaust, but it wouldn't make sense to defend Category:Child holocaust survivors based on this group any more than it makes sense to defend "Children of Holocaust survivors" based on the existence of books and media about them. While no-one will dispute that books and films and so on have been written about children of holocaust survivors, again, this is not enough to justify a category - it is likely quite more than enough to write an article (if one doesn't exist already). What's still missing is whether the subjects who are in this category are regularly described as such, and from the searches I've done, it doesn't seem to be the case.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 05:23, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Struck fame above. wasn't my intent to suggest they were cashing in, obviously.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 05:01, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yes, that's rather the point. The sheer variety of the membership and the relatively small numbers where there is any mention that the holocaust figures in their lives tends to argue that the categorization is of something that isn't significant enough. You could make the same argument about children of any parents who have been through a traumatic experience, but the proof is in the pudding. Right now my reading is that there is this assumption that the holocaust is so much more important and traumatic and determining that it must affect the next generation and perhaps those after. But right now what I see is that Art Spiegelman is the anomaly in the group, not the norm. Mangoe (talk) 17:56, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Did you look at the lengthy list of publications linked to by Alansohn? I can understand a delete vote based on Wikipedia guidelines but to state that Art Spiegelman is somehow an "anomaly" seems to me to be willfully blind to examples provided here. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:02, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, no, no, you are completely missing the point. There is obviously room for a category of "children of holocaust survivors who write about it", but that's not this category. What we have here is a category of people whose lives may or may not make some reference to their parent's experiences—but when I look at the articles, I see mostly "not". Mangoe (talk) 18:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
DrMies, as I pointed out above, there is a huge difference between "life-defining characteristic" and "defining for the purposes of wikipedia (I'm sure you realize we live in a bubble here... :) ). Examples of other life-defining characteristics include people who are married, people who are divorced, people who are orphans, people who lose one or more of their children to terrible childhood illnesses, people who are given up for adoption and live with a nasty foster family, people whose grandparents were slaves, people whose parents died on the Titanic, people who lost family members in 9/11, people whose family was wiped out in the Tsunami, and so on. An infinite number of things happen to people that greatly impact their lives, and I would never argue that having parents who went through the holocaust was anything short of life-changing, but the fact that we have organizations and membership groups and academic literature around orphans, etc does not mean that we should create a category of Category:Orphans; for the same reason all of the membership orgs for children/descendants of holocaust survivors does not mean that the notable people we talk about in wikipedia are DEFINED by this. Wolf Blitzer is a great example - in how many articles about Wolf does it mention that he is the son of holocaust survivors? It doesn't even make his official bio: [2]. Another example is Evelyn Lauder, who accomplished a great many things - in this official bio/obit her parent's escape from the Nazis was not mentioned: [3] (and indeed, she herself, having been born in 1936 in Austria, could technically be termed a holocaust survivor herself) The other examples you give, e.g. year/location of birth are basic biographical data and are more or less exceptions to the DEFINING rule, since we do them for everyone no matter what sources say.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:42, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Drmies: you say that "the article needs to make a verifiable case that someone's life is in part guided by having been the child (or descendant) of a Holocaust survivor". However, many things may have some role in guiding a person's life, and the criteria are much tighter than "in part guided by", as set out at WP:DEFINING. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:58, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • BrownHairedGirl, and Obi, I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm probably less than transparent. My point goes toward the other end. I do not believe that "Dutch" in "Category:Dutch scientist" is automatically a defining characteristic. If someone is "born" Jewish, whatever that means these days, but is not a practicing Jew, we don't categorize them as such. We don't categorize "heterosexual", rightly or wrongly, because I suppose we still take it for granted--whereas one's heterosexuality (if that's what one has) is more defining than many, many other things, like whether one was born in 1977 or 1978. I would argue for tighter guidelines across the board, which in turn allows me to say "keep the category for those articles where it can be argued to have made an impact on what makes them notable in the first place for encyclopedic purposes"--or something like that. But Obi and I have covered this ground before, I think. Still, this "relevant" thing is what I'm sticking to. So that would probably mean pruning the list and stricter verification and talk page discussion, which is probably not what a lot of editors want. Drmies (talk) 22:52, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is some inconsistency that you're hitting upon - not all categories are equal, and some are just placed regardless of what sources say - like nationality, date of birth, location of birth, etc. Yes, there are scientists, and there are Danish scientists; people may say Nils Bohr is a famous physicist but they won't always say he was a famous Danish physicist - but we basically give an exception to the "defining" rules to by-nationality subdivisions - e.g. if you're nationality X, and you do job Y, you can be put in category XY even if no-one ever really describes you in that way. Similarly, we do that for ethnicity - if you're jewish or african american, and you play football or write novels, you get placed in {ethnicity} {job} even if no-one really defines you in that way - it suffices that sufficient members of your GROUP are defined in that way for the category to survive. (Side response: if you are born Jewish but not practicing, there is a well-developed tree of Category:People of Jewish descent, fwiw). Sexuality is different; we don't categorize heterosexuals, but we *could* categorize them if there was a profession where being heterosexual was itself defining or out of the norm; for example I could imagine something like Category:Heterosexual actors in gay porn films although I'd rather not... That's why, for example, we have Category:Male nurses but not Category:Female nurses and so on, and it's why we don't have Category:White novelists but we do have Category:African-American novelists. The main area where your "relevancy" argument comes in is for jobs and religious/political affiliations - people have many jobs over their lifetime, but most aren't defining - which is why all actors are not in the Category:Restaurant staff category, so for jobs we definitely do have a sort of "relevancy" test. The same applies for religion - many people are Catholic, but most people aren't so-categorized - it really comes down to how often they are described as Catholic in RS, so your relevancy test comes in there as well. The same would go for various opinions - many people are anti-communism or anti-fascism, but few are really defined as being anti-communists. Finally, I think you're using "defining" in the sense of "it defines who you are as a person", which is not the standard here.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:09, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Let's take another example: Bernice Eisenstein, who wrote a book about being the child of holocaust survivors. We have a redirect for her, but an article could probably be written. Now, above you seem to suggest, keep the category, but purge of everyone except those for whom this is truly relevant. This is a little problematic, in my view, as most such set-categories should be fully populated, because they're not about jobs or political views or so on, which have shades of defining-ness, it's instead a basic biographic category - in this case, someone clearly is, or isn't the child of a holocaust survivor, so if it's kept its rather hard to keep people out. But anyway, is Bernice defined by being the child of holocaust survivors? I would argue, no. What she is defined by is the fact that she is an author, a poet, and that she has produced a Category:Works about the Holocaust. Now, we don't have a category for Category:Memoirists of the holocaust but perhaps one should be created - we do have Category:Historians_of_the_Holocaust, and there is obviously a large body of work beyond history where the central theme is the holocaust, done by survivors, descendants of survivors, and even people who have no direct connection - so that *could* be a workable category for some of these people - e.g. Category:People who produced works about the holocaust - we have Category:Personal_accounts_of_the_Holocaust, so perhaps this could be divided into one category for personal accounts of the holocaust, and another category for people who wrote such accounts, there is a whole tree of Category:Writers_by_subject_area into which this could fit.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:24, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
A simple search found these three, Varaz_Samuelian, Rabo_Karabekian, Arthur_Pinajian, all children whose parents survived the Armenian genocide - there are many google results, and works/books/groups about such children as well: [4]. At some point, we have to be consistent, so if this category is kept, we'd likely have to create Children of Armenian genocide survivors, and Children of Rwandan genocide survivors, and Children whose parents survived Pol Pot's death camps, etc. We have to be careful to avoid systemic bias as well, because many such descriptions/etc may not be in english or other european languages. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:39, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That does not strike me as problematic: if biographers think the parent's 'survival of ___' is something to be regularly mentioned in their children's bio, then that's fine -- it's also, as you suggest, going to be limited to a few sets of cataclysms. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:06, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I agree. While there has been some important research in the news of late about mass killings outside the scope of Nazi death camps, it was the institutionalized, industrialized nature of the Holocaust that is unique. Entire communities were uprooted and transported across great distances. It was an event that reached across national borders, in all parts of the Nazi-controlled world. People were processed in a way that we not seen before or since. So I for one am not in agreement that this means we must then create other such children of survivor categories. I am not the child of a Holocaust survivor nor do I know what it means to be an Armenian, Rwandan, etc. But there is such a strong body of work about the child of Holocaust survivor experience. Could we not ensure via a category description that it is only be added to bio articles when there is evidence that it is a notable association? Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:16, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In the Rwandan genocide, they were able to kill off more people, faster, than the Germans, using mostly machetes and clubs - it's a rather terrible fact that they were more efficient at killing than the Nazis (it didn't last as long, so fewer people overall were killed). This source says it was the most efficient mass killing since Hiroshima [5]. No-one disputes that the Holocaust was unique and horrible, but so were other genocides, even in this century. Admittedly, there is not the same amount of books/material/testimony about the Armenian genocide, or the Rwandan, or Cambodia, etc, but sources nonetheless exist in spades for all of these, and there are groupings of survivors and groupings of children of survivors, so per NPOV we should create cats for them all if we have sources describing people as children of "survivor of horrible thing" - if this category is kept.
As to your final point, that's the argument I'm having with Drmies and EQ; what would it mean to remove someone from this? What is a "notable association"? Suppose you have person X, who in their biography, explains that their parents escaped from Poland in 1939 after being stuck in the ghetto, while the rest of their family stayed behind and was killed, so they are really children of holocaust survivors and carry those memories. But, in the rest of their life, they don't mention it, they don't join conferences, they don't write further about it - they just note it for the record, a few other RS note it, and life goes on. I maintain it would be irredeemably cruel to remove this category from the bottom of their page, because it means a wikipedia editor is saying "Well, Jim, I know your parents barely made it out alive, but you didn't do enough during your life to merit this category. Sorry". Being a child of a holocaust survivor is not a job or a profession or even a belief. It is a simple binary fact, true or false.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:23, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Drmies's argument is that the characteristic is "not more ... trivial ... than Category:People born in Ohio or Category:1978 births", but, as Obi has explained above (and is mentioned in the nom) there are two types of categories - (1) those categories to directly help readers/editors find articles (e.g. nationality-occupation categories), (2) categories used by bots (and maybe by category intersection). The first type of category usually has no more than a few hundred members (any more and it is usually split). The second type can have thousands of members (e.g. Category:1978 births has more than 10,000 members). Each article can only be in a few categories of the second type (e.g. a person can only have one year of birth). Categories of the first type should be restricted to the things that make people notable (usually their occupation) - otherwise every one of hundreds of facts in an article (e.g. that someone was an orphan) could be categorized (see essay WP:DNWAUC). DexDor (talk) 07:32, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think I may have an explanation for EQ's argument above and why this is not like poets. In practice, we seem to be all inclusive on categories when membership is passive - eg where you can't actively do anything to become more of Z. Thus, someone born and raised in 1988 in Chicago as the daughter of a president can't *do* anything to make those statements about them more true- X born 1988, X from Chicago, X is African-American, X is the daughter of a president. However, X can actively pursue different things - become a poet, or a race car driver, or a politician, or a fervent anti-communist, and these things if done enough will become defining for that person. In a sense, we give everyone a free pass on things they can't change anyway, and I can't think of any biographical categories that we decline to add when someone doesn't have a choice in the matter. Thus EQs statement that categories are not meant to be all inclusive is simply wrong - some set categories, indeed most, are intended to be all inclusive, because addition to a category is the equivalent of assertion of a fact - eg X is a poet may be more or less true depending in the societal threshhold for dubbing someone a poet, but someone is never going to be *less* of a child of holocaust victims. If this cat remains, it would be absurd to remove people, as that's essentially saying "well, I know your grandparents were killed at auschwitz and your mother barely survived, but not enough RS have mentioned it therefore we're removing you from the category. It's absurd, as the person in question can't do anything to make the statement 'X is the child of holocaust survivors' more or less true. I'm stunned that you'd actually want editors to have such a debate. No- either the category is deleted, or completely filled with every notable child we have sourcing for. No middle ground would be reasonable nor fair to these people.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 12:29, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What a muddle we have here. I'm stunned that you'd actually want editors to have such a debate. It's not debating the facts of a person's life, it's about category inclusion. I'm surprised (but not stunned) that you're arguing that non-inclusion of an article in a certain category is essentially the same as denying the actual person has a certain characteristic. This seems the opposite of what you would usually argue. You questioned the appropriateness of categorizing Wolf Blitzer in a category such as this and no one should assume you were in any way commenting on the actual experience of his parents. The inclusion of articles in Category:Holocaust survivors is by individual assessment. This doesn't make it deficient or non-useful as a category.
The idea that involuntary characteristics, by themselves, make us treat categories as exhaustively inclusive doesn't work, either. Most sub-cats in Category:People by medical or psychological condition and the Crime Victim cats are not inclusive, they have notable and unquestioned examples. We're not saying any subject not included has never been the victim of crimes, or that any possible subject not included in here must have parents that weren't missionary enough. Not all categories are comprehensive: For some "sensitive" categories, it is better to think of the category as a set of representative and unquestioned examples...__ E L A Q U E A T E 15:20, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As you may recall from category-gate, inclusion or exclusion in a category has taken on political dimensions and non-inclusion in a category is indeed equivalent to making a statement of fact about someone's life (eg X isn't in American novelists therefore X isn't a real American novelist) What criteria would editors use to say Wolf is not enough of a child of survivors to merit inclusion? It's not workable, as Wolf can't do anything to merit inclusion in this category - he was or wasn't born in year X, and his parents did or didn't escape the Holocaust. It's binary, and there isn't room for debate. The question is, is this characteristic in general defining, and for the vast majority of notable people in this category, we haven't found it to be so. As for Holocaust survivors and other victim categories, again these are different than the other more basic biographical cats as they are about something that happened to you vs something that you simply are. That said I don't think anyone would dispute inclusion in any arbitrary crime category for people who were provably victims of that crime , we simply don't classify on all crimes since some are considered common and not defining - eg we don't have people who were robbed I don't think, but we do have people who were killed. The example of Wolf was intended to demonstrate that this cat isn't defining for him, as a high profile person about whom much is written but his official bio leaves this fact out - it was not intended to say he shouldn't be in this cat if it's kept - indeed if kept it should be filled up to the brim for everyone where we have sources. Now one other wrinkle is what is the definition of holocaust survivor - the common image is of people who were in the death camps but made it out alive, but there were plenty of people who escaped Europe, so that's a bit trickier - if your parents moved the family to New York in 1929 does that make them holocaust survivors? Anyway that's a different topic to be discussed elsewhere.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:47, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't see the distinction you're making between a person that had no choice about being the victim of a crime, a person who had no choice about the parents they ended up with, and a person who has cancer. Some notable people are noted for having a characteristic and we categorize by it, and we don't always include everybody. Wolf Blitzer, as an example, has arguments for inclusion whether it's comprehensive or non-comprehensive, as it's a characteristic that has been repeatedly reported about him by reliable sources, whether as a notable cause for becoming interested in international news or as a characteristic of special significance when he interviews the David Dukes of the world, "official bio" notwithstanding. Your category-gate one seems like a red herring, as that doesn't look like it was trying to settle if Any person who wrote a novel should always be included as a noted novelist but rather how are they sub-categorized when they are included. It's probably best to leave that example aside. It's the same with your "robbed and killed" categories, as the difference between the two is one of gravity, not how individual articles are included. I don't think anyone would dispute inclusion in any arbitrary crime category for people who were provably victims of that crime. This statement strains credulity a bit, but I'll just suggest that when someone is non-notably (but provably) a victim of a crime (or subject to an involuntary but arguably-only-existential condition, narrowly defined) we sometimes don't categorize them as such and the world does not cave in. It's not an all-or-nothing scenario and certainly not an insurmountable barrier to having the category. I suspect this category would become more populated if kept, but not beyond its specificity and uncommonness. And you should certainly add all of the people you can find consensus for, don't think I'm suggesting otherwise. __ E L A Q U E A T E 18:03, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
EQ says: "I still don't see the distinction you're making between a person that had no choice about being the victim of a crime, a person who had no choice about the parents they ended up with, and a person who has cancer." I'm not making a distinction. In all those cases, the categories should be filled up fully with whoever qualifies. We don't always apply the WP:DEFINING test to category membership, in many cases in fact we do not - for people it really comes down to, in my experience, things where the person has agency - for those we use WP:DEFINING.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:59, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Obi's attempt to separate categorization characteristics into active and passive characteristics (i.e. whether it was the persons choice) is, IMO, unhelpful. For example, we categorize people by cause (and date) of death - some causes (e.g. murder, natural disaster) would (using Obi's definitions) be passive, some (e.g. suicide) would be active and some (e.g. dying whilst taking part in a high risk activity) may be somewhere in between. If we categorize people by the cause of their death then we shouldn't have different rules for different causes of death depending on how much choice the person had in their death. There is however, a distinction to be made between those categories that every biography article should have a standard set of (e.g. year of birth) and the reason-for-notability characteristics (where the number depends on how many fields the person has achieved notability in). DexDor (talk) 20:38, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think you misunderstand. I was trying to elaborate why certain categories, e.g. basic biographical ones, should be filled up fully, and they are, in practice: date of birth, where X is from, nationality, gender, and any relevant family relationships (e.g. son of a King, daughter of a president). These are passive characteristics, and we would never *remove* someone who is born in 1988 from the 1988 category (nor would we remove someone who died in 2013 from the "Died in 2013" category. Your death example is bad, because that's a basic biographic category - everyone dies, and everyone who is dead should be categorized by their means of death, if we have a category for the cause (we don't always). The point is, for most "passive" categories, wherein the person doesn't really have a choice in the matter, inclusion is a simple question of a single RS; if a single RS says that person X is blind, then we can place them in Category:Blind people - we don't need every source to mention that detail - in a way it's an exception to WP:DEFINING, on an individual level. OTOH, if a single source says person X wrote a great poem in high school and is a wonderful poet, we would not add them to the Category:Poets accordingly - it takes more. Looking at actual practice, jobs, religious beliefs, and political beliefs are all subject to WP:DEFINING; but descent/ethnicity, sexuality (if we have RS establishing that you are LGBT), year of birth/death, means of death, where you're from, and the few rare "child of" categories are all put as a matter of course and it would be extremely bizarre for someone to be removed from any of those cats. I personally think the reason is "passive" vs "active" membership, that's the best explanation I could find, but there may be another.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:35, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, religions is not generally subjected to defining issues. As long as you can find reliable sources that shows that the individual in question has publicly identified as part of a religion they can be put in religion categories. Christine M. Durham is a Latter-day Saint, and so categorized, but whether it has any connection to her notability is hard to say. Although, considering the way politics and society actually function in Utah, if she had been a non-Mormon justice in Utah that would be noted.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:50, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Also, go to Library of Congress catalog. Not only is there a "Children of Holocaust survivors" subject heading, there are 95 sub-headings, with 254 hits total. These include "Fiction" (32), "Psychology" (25), and "Mental health" (8), as well as "Biography" subcats for "United States" (15), "Israel" (7), "France" (6), and single titles for Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, New Zealand, Poland, and Romania. So yeah, the Library of Congress seems to think -- and the number of titles shows -- that "Children of Holocaust survivors" is in some way defining. --Calton | Talk 23:05, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Just because it has spawned a collection of literature does not mean it is defining to the people involved enough to justify the category. We have to draw lines, even the survivors of the holocaust is questionable as a distinct group, but children of survivors puts together too many unlike people to be workable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:33, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Just because" isn't an argument, it's vigorous hand-waving designed to cover the lack of one -- kind of like your evidence-free opinion about how the category is not "workable". Your -- and the other stamp collectors's -- inability to jam the world into neat, hermetically sealed subject boxes does a disservice to readers, who are the actual users and beneficiaries of a categorization system. Once again, a reminder: Categories are supposed to serve readers; it's not supposed to be that Wikipedia serves categories. --Calton | Talk 21:59, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I am not a stamp collector and would appreciate if you stopped falsely calling me that. Your attempts to marginalize people with false labels are just out of line.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:34, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The difference is that the circumstances relates to a specific, relatively recent historical event, not a continually recurrent event across cultures, such as divorce, for example. Considering that Wikipedia is a resource that people use for research, such a category would appear to meet the relevant criteria, such as notability.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 19:38, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • US Holocaust museum: "The Museum honors as survivors any persons, Jewish or non-Jewish, who were displaced, persecuted, or discriminated against due to the racial, religious, ethnic, social, and political policies of the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In addition to former inmates of concentration camps, ghettos, and prisons, this definition includes, among others, people who were refugees or were in hiding." [6]
  • Social Security Agency: "Member of a group of people who were systematically persecuted and exterminated by the Nazis: EXAMPLES: Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, Blacks, Asian or Pacific Islanders]; Misstated his/her age to avoid: Persecution by the Nazis, or Confinement in Nazi concentration camps, or Extermination in Nazi concentration camps, or Other threats to life by the Nazis.[7]
  • Kinder Transport Association: "A Holocaust survivor is a person who was displaced, persecuted, and/or discriminated against by the racial, religious, ethnic, and political policies of the Nazis and their allies. The Kindertransport children are child Holocaust survivors. " [8]
  • Yad Vashem: "Philosophically one might say that all Jews alive by the end of 1945 survived the Nazi genocidal intention, yet this is too broad to be useful, as it lacks the distinction between those who suffered the tyrannical Nazi boot on their neck, and those who would have, had the war against Nazism been lost. At Yad Vashem we define Shoah survivors as Jews who lived for any amount of time under Nazi domination, direct or indirect, and survived it. This includes French, Bulgarian and Romanian Jews who spent the entire war under anti-Jewish terror regimes but were not all deported, as well as Jews who forcefully left Germany in the 1930s. From a larger perspective, some think of other destitute Jewish refugees who escaped their countries in front of the invading German army, including those who spent years and sometimes died deep in the Soviet Union, also as Holocaust survivors. No historical definition can be completely satisfactory. " [9]. Note that Yad Vashem does not consider non-Jews, victims or survivors, to be victims of "Shoah"; rather they are considered victims of Nazi-ism: "At Yad Vashem, we define Shoah victims as Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis or their accomplices during the years of Nazi power, i.e. 1933-1945. Many non-Jews were also murdered at the same time, but they are counted as victims of Nazism, not as Shoah victims"
  • This recent article points out the discrepancy that differing definitions can bring: [10] - a difference of 400,000 people who are considered survivors by one methodology but not survivors by another.
  • Given the various contested definitions of survivor, Wikipedia should likely adopt a broader version (e.g. including non-Jews), so something like the first definition seems reasonable to me. That said, as Gaijin points out, that means that Poles, Gypsies, Blacks, and many other groups in occupied Europe would be considered holocaust survivors by wikipedia, and thus their children would be considered members of this category. I think it's far too broad to make a useful category, and as mentioned before, this is not defining - most reliable sources, when they discuss these people, do not mention what their parents went through.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:35, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • For what it is worth most of the "blacks" involved are mixed-race children of Malian, Senegalese or other West African (primarily from French West Africa) fathers, and German mothers. Although, I have to admit I only know of specific German attempts to wide-out this population that had originated in the Rhineland. If they went after West African immigrants or their full or mixed-race children in France itself for example I do not know. I would say we need to go with the broad definition, but does someone whose father was put in a concentration camp because he was a Communist really have something in common with someone whose mother was thrown in a concentration camp because her parent were Jews, even though she was baptized as Catholic at birth? Considering that the Nazis sought to wipe out all Roma just as much as they sought to wipe out all Jews, excluding Roma would be problematic. Considering that the Nazis killed about as many non-Jewish citizens of Poland as they killed Jewish citizens of Poland, the inclusion criteria for Poles needs to be willing to include at least all those who were sent to prison camps.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:09, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a terminology problem with the category? If it is to be broad in the manner described above, would something like "Children of victims of Nazi ethnic cleansing", or something along those lines be more accurate? Maybe a broad category with subcategories?--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 10:03, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
a tighter category could be Children of people who survived Nazi concentration camps, which would limit the list and focus it. As it currently stands, young children who were sent to England on Kindertransport early in the war and then had children 20 or 30 years later, their children would be eligible for inclusion in this category, because holocaust survivor is actually a pretty broad class. As JPL points out, Poles suffered greatly at the hands of the. Nazis but does that mean children of all Poles who survived should be members of this category?--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:41, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I would accept that Category:Children of people who survived Nazi concentration camps would be a better name. Does anyone know, if we changed it to that name, would anyone currently in the category still be there. There is another oddity of this category though. If someone was 25 in 1930, and emigrated from Germany to the US, and they had Jewish parents who remained in Germany and survived until after 1945, they go in this category. However their connection to the Holocaust seems to be very different than someone who was not born until after WWII, and was raised by one or both parents who were holocaust survivors. The placement of this category as a sub-cat of Category:Children, seems to emphasize the being rasied by holocaust survivors aspect, but there are lots of children of holocaust survivors who only became such in adulthood.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Obiwankenobi / Johnpacklambert Before this goes horribly wrong for both the two of you and for Wikipedia as a whole, I will emphasize that the issues that the two of you are trying to push here go to undermining the entire structure of Category:Holocaust survivors, not merely the Category:Children of Holocaust survivors under discussion here. The attempts to put female authors into Category:American women novelists still left all of the women within the Category:American novelists structure, while your approach here would entirely eliminate any connection to any Holocaust-related category for a huge swath of the people now included. However stupid and flatfooted Wikipedia looked with regard to women writers and their supporters, we will look far more out-of-touch with the most basic sense of reality and decency by pursuing this bizarre line of reasoning that the lack of a universally accepted definition means that "it's far too broad to make a useful category, and as mentioned before, this is not defining". Building on the definitions supplied above, a Holocaust survivor should be defined as someone who 1) meets the definitions developed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or the Social Security Administration or Yad Vashem or the Kindertransport Association; or 2) defines themselves as a Holocaust survivor as evidenced in reliable and verifiable source; or 3) is described as a Holocaust survivor in reliable and verifiable sources. Expanding from there, the definition of Category:Children of Holocaust survivors is someone who has a parent who was a Holocaust survivor. I'm not sure how many books one needs to write to be considered as belonging in Category:American novelists, nor do I know if anyone has defined how long a book needs to be to be considered a novel; I can assure you that there is no generally accepted, hard-and-fast definition that is universally accepted to define a "novelist" for Wikipedia categorization purposes. If we can't come to an agreed-upon definition of Holocaust survivor, the inevitable deletion of Category:Children of Holocaust survivors and Category:Holocaust survivors that would be demanded by the approach that the two of you have been taking will make the brouhaha over women novelists look like a little girl's doll tea party compared to the inevitable firestorm of criticism and ridicule we will face once either or both of these categories is deleted. Even the way this is being discussed here severely strains the credibility of this entire process. Be prepared to step away from the abyss or come up with truly fantastic reasons for why these categories are not defining, with reasoning that will convince all participants here and those reading in the mainstream press that we are dealing appropriately and sensitively with this issue. Just some thoughts to consider before this goes horribly wrong for everyone involved. Alansohn (talk) 06:33, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Alan, we appreciate the (misplaced) concern, but you've gone a bit too far this time. Just relax, take it easy, no-one is proposing to delete the Holocaust survivors category. I was simply pointing out that in the broadest definition, holocaust survivors would include large portions of the populations of Nazi-occupied Europe, and being a child of one of those people is not defining. You have yet to produce any evidence to the contrary. I'd suggest you start with frequency counts, analyzing the people in this category and how often the subject of their parents is brought up when discussing them. I think you'll find the answer to be "rarely". I'd also point out that your histrionics over whether or not holocaust survivor is a debated term, are, frankly, lame. A simple google search demonstrates that many reliable sources have covered the challenges inherent in defining who is a holocaust survivor, so your attack on JPL was completely misplaced, uncalled for, and unfair. I suggest you drop the stick and walk slowly away, your continued contributions here are not helping advance a rational discussion.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:00, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The lead of the article on the Holocaust would seem to problematize the assertion that the definition is settled or the term used uniformly by everyone writing on the topic. If that is the case, then using the category in a manner that includes everyone that anyone classifies along those lines would seem to present issues related to policies such as WP:WEIGHT, WP:DUE/WP:UNDUE, etc. Simply put, there are categories of victims that don't even fall under "ethnicity", whereas I had been under the impression that the Holocaust referred only to the victimization of Jews by the Nazis.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 11:13, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's the problem Carol... If someone were to create "Children of survivors of the 1994 Rwanda genocide" or "Children of survivors of North Korean prison camps" or xxx, even if we could find organizations and so on devoted to these people, the categories would likely be deleted; if such categories *aren't* deleted, then per NPOV we should create a lot of them, to cover most of the major events of the past centuries - Armenian genocide is another one where "child of survivor" is regularly used. Here we have a scholarly article looking at parental styles of parents who survived the Khmer rouge atrocities: [11]. Ultimately, I think expanding this scheme to other events would simply lead to category clutter, and these things simply aren't defining for the people in question, no evidence has demonstrated that people in this category are regularly referred to as "child of holocaust survivors", in fact in most RS it's not mentioned at all. Thus, I think the best solution is deletion.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:12, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
First, this Wikipedia search of "child of Holocaust survivors" actually does return 20+ uses by itself, some duplicative, but which suggest even with those strict criteria it should be accepted. Usually I do prefer such stricter standards, so that "parents were Holocaust victims" is at least in a gray area. My main point is that all categories should have same criteria be it only "child of" or "parents were" or be it at least 4 category members or at least 10 category members. I'd hate to see a "child of Holodomor survivors" (or whatever) category with 10 BLPs using that phrase removed because a bunch of editors thought it diminished the importance of this category. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 21:25, 4 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed In light of the fact that it has come to my attention that the scope of the category would appear to be too broad or somewhat indeterminate, the usefulness of the category as an expedient search query for research purposes seems to have been called into question. If the category is to be useful, it would appear that taxonomically there should be more than one level of category, perhaps with something like "Victims of Nazi persecution" as the superordinate category, with the "Holocaust" being defined in the more narrow sense as a subcategory, along with subcategories for other victims. If some schema like that is unacceptable, then given the definitional issues related to "Holocaust"/"Holocaust survivor" the category would seem to be problematic from a policy perspective. --Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 05:52, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The lead of the Wikipedia article is itself somewhat confusing, as per the following excerpts

    The Holocaust...was the mass murder or genocide of approximately six million Jews during World War II

    Some scholars argue that the mass murder of the Romani and people with disabilities should be included in the definition, and some use the common noun "holocaust" to describe other Nazi mass murders, including those of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet civilians, and homosexuals.

    Maybe the lead of the Holocaust article should be edited to reflect the use of the above supplied definitions proposed (in use?) for the category of Holocaust survivor.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 16:19, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The hits for the google search you link to would for the most part seem to be to links not corresponding to RS, on the one hand, and insofar as Wikipedia should be considered as a type of database with respect to categories to be queried, one would think that there needs to be a fairly close correspondence between the content of RS and the definition of categories.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 09:02, 5 February 2014 (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:Introduced amphibians of Hawaii

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: LISTIFY and DELETE. -Splash - tk 22:13, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Propose deleting Category:Introduced amphibians of Hawaii (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
  • Propose deleting Category:Introduced reptiles of Hawaii
  • Propose deleting Category:Introduced birds of Hawaii
  • Propose deleting Category:Introduced mammals of Hawaii
Nominator's rationale: That an animal species (e.g. Cane toad or House Finch) has been introduced to somewhere is not a WP:DEFINING characteristic of that species. One article (Japanese White-eye in Hawaii) should be (and is) in "invasive" categories. DexDor (talk) 07:36, 25 January 2014 (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:Pseudohistorians

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 to delete. Probably the 'misuse' issue is best handled by pruning in this case. It is harder to handle the 'your pseudohistory is my history' problem, but perhaps this indicates in the direction of a considered rename if criteria for a suitable name can be established. In any case, neither problem warrants outright deletion in consideration of the weight balance of the debate. -Splash - tk 21:54, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

propose deleting: Category:Pseudohistorians

Rationale: I looked at a number of articles in this category and almost none that I found have any mention of pseudohistory. Instead this category seems to be used as an attack category for writers with theories that are outside the current dogma. I think inclusion here is essentially subjective, as all it would take is a single "mainstream" historian saying 'that book is bogus pseudohistory' to merit categorization here. Our own article admits that pseudohistory is a pejorative term, and we should avoid labeling people with pejorative categories. I can't think of a rename that would work here; a list of 'People whose historical theories are not accepted by mainstream academics' or something could work but this doesn't work as a category.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 04:26, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What would the inclusion criteria be though? Historians whose work has been critiqued by other historians? Historians who wikipedia editors have decided are full of bunk? I think you'd struggle to find the name pseudohistorian applied to most people in this category. I think this is tricky, because we need to be neutral. As JPL points out, yesterday's historian can become today's pseudohistorian. Many of the "classic" historians (or scientists in any field, social or otherwise) have produced theories that now seem dates and antiquated. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:59, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, Murray is a good example of the problem: she never worked professionally as a historian in the first place, but the line between anthropology and history is pretty blurry. Someone like Charles Berlitz, who wrote popular books on paranormal subjects with a lot of bad history in them, also defies categorization as a "historian", pseudo- or otherwise, on different grounds. On the other hand characterizing Gavin Menzies as a pseudo-historian (in either sense) is a fair statement. And it seems to me to make sense to group them all together as people whose fame/notoriety was based on their promulgation of spurious historical claims. And I would agree that we should exclude those proponents of mainstream historical ideas which fell out of favor, but from what I see those sorts aren't being included. Thus I see a category here, but the more I consider this the more strongly I am convinced that it needs a better name. Mangoe (talk) 16:59, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Recent trends embrace a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach, yielding hybrid types of "knowledge" when done right, but that a fairly rare occurrence, an another topic. I would suggest that user's finding the category inaccurately applied raise the issue on the article talk page and follow standard dispute resolution procedures.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 17:27, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is, any inclusion in this category would likely be subjective - e.g. up to the editor's opinions. We already have people saying "Well, X clearly belongs, but Y's theories were discredited but that doesn't make them pseudohistorians". Yes obviously contents can be disputed on a per-name basis, but in order the category to remain, we need inclusion criteria. So, what are they? People whose writings have regularly been described by RS as pseudohistory? People who have published theories that are at the fringe of current academic thinking? I think a rename is in order as well, if it's kept, to something capturing the fringe nature of these theories. This is all good meat for an article but problematic for categorization, esp of living people. For example, one could easily put Bill O'Reilly or Sarah Palin in here for their many books and theories which stretch the limits of widely accepted truth.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 19:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
How many RS have to call you a pseudohistorian before you qualify for membership here? One? Ten? What if one source says you are, and the other says you aren't? How do we decide? In an article, we can deal with this by covering both sides, but for a contentious/defaming category like this, it's a zero sum game - the person ends up in the cat, or doesn't. That's the problem.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:47, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Here's an example: [13] - peer reviewed journal, which calls Clifford Geertz a practitioner of pseudo-history; Geertz is a respected professor and "the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States". But some people think some of his theories are full of sh*t. Should we add him to the category because a RS said so? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:53, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Theory is not history. Like I said above, some people try to interpret events in a forced manner through the application of a theory, which may or may not be correct, and the result is not always viable as knowledge in the field of history. It may be valid in the field of social theory, for example, as a failed theory that has led to further developments in theory. Geertz is a cultural anthropologist, not a historian. It would be relevant to the field of intellectual theory as it represents an important contribution that (mis)informed peoples understanding of a certain phenomenon in a schematic manner until it was proven errant. That said, I don't think that one errant theory explicated in terms of a historical paradigm would qualify Geertz for inclusion, because his theory and proposal were just errant, not assertions made on false premises and in denial of countervailing arguments. When he made his proposals, they made sense to some people for quite some time, but it wasn't the sort of knowledge like, say, British Israelism, which is based on false premises and supported by spurious pseudo-knowledge proposed in various fields, while its adherents assert that it is true history despite all the academic refutations.
Doug is correct, professional historians use the term to describe purveyors of history that is based on false premises. --Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 13:10, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
RS calling Herodotus a pseudo-historian here: [14]. It's like rule 34 - take a popular, well-known historian, and I can find you a RS that calls some part of their work pseudo-history. He has now joined the category, with the others...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 23:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That is a somewhat specious argument, as the validity of a category isn't negated simply because it is somewhat difficult to apply. The application of the category is largely a question of WP:COMPETENCE, and if there is such a thing as a categories notice board, then specific cases could be addressed there.
Professional historians use the term to describe people whose propositions mimic history in form only, and is otherwise based on false premises. There are many subjects as a whole that are considered to be psuedohistory because they are based on false premises, such as British Israelism, for example. I would suggest that people read the article historical method, philosophy of history, etc. Wikipedia editors do not have the clout to override the statements of academic historians published in reliable sources; moreover, if they use the terms pseudohitory and pseudohistorian, then those should obviously be viable categories.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 13:10, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, its not a matter of WP:COMPETENCE. It's a matter of subjectivity which leads to a divergence of views about the application of this prejudicial term, and policy requires that we do not use use such prejudicial language without attributing it. The reasons I have advanced above are the same as those which led to the deletion of Category:Terrorists or Category:Homophobes.
If there is a WP:COMPETENCE issue here, it may lie in the reluctance of some editors to study the relevant policies. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:05, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that there are too many uncontroversial instances of pseudohistory to ascribe "subjectiveness" to assigning such an attribute. Once again, British Israelism and other such thoroughly refuted "histories" clearly fall under the category and the exponents of that pseudohistory are pseudohistorians. There are too many people trying to use Wikipedia to promote such false doctrines as actual history, so I think that the existence of the category is important.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 17:42, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Ubikwit: With any such topic, there are usually a number of cases which are uncontroversial; sometimes it is a large number. However, hard cases make bad law. The problem is the large number of borderline cases, which cause time-wasting disputes and leads to edit wars between good-faith editors.
I quite agree that some people try to promote false history, and that assessmment of their work should be asserted and attributed with due prominence in the article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:36, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Again, Wikipedia:SUSCEPTIBLE. All articles have the same amount of protection against any type of vandalism, in whatever form it takes. I'm sure the same people who would police other changes in an article would notice the addition of a category. It's not an extra job. And you might want to take a look at the NPOV rules yourself. NPOV is quite clear that it should not be used to give pseudoscience undue weight and that classifying things rejected by the scientific community as a fringe theory or pseudoscience is actually demanded, not discouraged, by NPOV.__ E L A Q U E A T E 23:59, 29 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Elaqueate, this discussion is not about categorising theories; it is about categorising people. It is also not about science, but about a humanities discipline, which uses different methodologies.
WP:WEIGHT requires that the text of the article fairly represents all significant viewpoints, and if someone is an intellectual fraud that should be spelt out in the lede of the article. You want the category system to provide a warning abut the article's contents, but that is not what categories are for, and it's a function they are very poor at because the category list is right at the bottom of the article. Look at Zecharia Sitchin: the lede is very clear about how discredited his work is. If the aim is to warn readers that Sitchin's work is thoroughly unreliable, then the lede does that job very well, while the huge criticism section sets out the problems in detail. The lack of a category would in no way undermine the very clear thrust of the article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:30, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The pseudoscience/fringe theory guidelines are contained in the same policies. It includes more than science, it includes things like historical revisionism. I could have said pseudoscholarship of course, but all my points stand. There are many categories that list the specific people who somehow promote bad theories, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, various crimes; I don't see this as a barrier to having a category of this type. I don't want the category to provide the warning, I want the article to educate per policy, including warning of fringe if needed per NPOV, and I want the category to navigating similar topics. A lack of a category would make it harder to find articles, including ones with warnings we find valuable, neutral, and sourced. I never said any category should take the place of what's in the article. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:38, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I read that, and it still seems to me that the logical course would be to have the category--useful for people doing research here on Wikipedia--and direct disputes as to the characterization of a given topic as belonging to the category or not, and not against the category itself. The category does not represent a subjective judgment, but a reflection as to whether a given set of statements meets the academic criteria to be considered as belonging to the discipline of "history" or not, and further as to whether something that is presented as history qualifies as being "pseudohistory" or not. Academics use the terms because history is a rigorously defined discipline, and the fact that it is considered to present authoritative accounts of events, etc., is the reason that some dubious people try to appropriate the category to present false information in a form that mimics history without fulfilling the rigorous criteria. And therefore, it is important that Wikipedia reflects the use as found in academia here.--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 16:06, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I read it too. WP:LABEL says that, in articles, there should be in-text attribution. Organizing material based on the article text is treated differently in policy. We sometimes use pejorative labels in Article Titles, disambiguatory links, etc. when they have in-text attribution in the article they direct to. H:CAT advises that A category name can be any string that would be a legitimate page title. Wikipedia:POVTITLE says that Resolving such debates depends on whether the article title is a name derived from reliable sources or a descriptive title created by Wikipedia editors. Article titles do not need in-line attribution; they need to direct to in-article in-line attribution derived from reliable sources. Category names are under Article title guidelines, which don't involve in-line citation, (but certainly must point to where it can be found).
And terrorists aren't the only example here. A category containing a label that can be considered pejorative such as Pseudoscientist (as an example, not saying history is equivalent to science) was upheld at CFD 2006 August 12 and CFD 2007 June 2 and Category:Confidence tricksters was upheld at CFD 2010 June 12. This doesn't include the many categories that contain possibly pejorative terms that haven't faced challenges at all.__ E L A Q U E A T E 16:39, 1 February 2014 (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:Uruguayan women jurists

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. The Bushranger One ping only 02:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Merge. The categorization by gender is innecesary in this area of knowledge. Zerabat (talk) 02:40, 25 January 2014 (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:Terms for males

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. Probably best is to follow something along the lines of DexDor's suggestion to improve the categorisation of the articles such that these categories become naturally unnnecessary. -Splash - tk 22:01, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Propose deleting:
Nominator's rationale: The articles in these categories are about substantive topics, not about terminology. Note that the sibling Category:Terms for females was deleted at CFD 2013 September 16.
Editors may want to listify these categories before deletion. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:34, 25 January 2014 (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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