- 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. – Fayenatic London 22:42, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Nominator's rationale: This is essentially a case of WP:SHAREDNAME. The various meanings of "state" can be found at State, which is a disambiguation page. This category is essentially mixing and matching the various meanings of that term within the "law and politics" header. "State" can mean a sovereign country; or a country subdivision; or a country that belongs to an intergovernmental organization, whether it is sovereign or not; and several other things. It's not a useful term to categorize by because it is ambiguous; the category page should be a category disambiguation page. The contents are adequately categorized otherwise, so there is no need to merge anywhere. Good Ol’factory (talk) 06:38, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
* Alternative: rename to Category:Federated states since all current content seems to be about federated states. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:33, 25 October 2015 (UTC) (stricken after discussion below)[reply]
- Rename to Category:Federated states, per Federated state and above. Otherwise, something would be missing from Category:Types of country subdivisions : ) - `jc37
- Four of the five articles in the category are not specifically about federated states—but OK, if we want to convert the category in this way. It will require some clean up. Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:58, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree. But as it currently stands, it is as you said in the nom. But if we follow the Catmain of federated states, then it's just some (hopefully) simple cleanup. All that said, I don't mind keep-ing as a parent cat, if Category:Federated states is created as a subcat to diffuse to. But with the varying definition of "States" in political science, it probably would be better as a cat redirect. - jc37 19:09, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Support redefining and clean up of categories as above. Coverage of federated states is clearly warranted. SFB 20:40, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Delete shared name; nothing to show that states, provinces, governorates, or other first level subdivisions differ substantially from one another and that all those denoted "states" share something which those denoted "provinces, etc." don't. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 00:58, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- They share the fact that the federal government can't unilaterally decide to overtake (part of) the federate states' power. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:29, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- At second sight I'm starting to doubt whether you may be right after all. While a federate state may be legally different from a province of a unified state, it would rather make sense to have a legal topic category (if sufficient content is available, which is doubtful) rather than a geographical set category (as currently is the case). Marcocapelle (talk) 22:40, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- If this category was converted into Category:Federated states, all the category would contain is the article Federated state, and then a bunch of subcategories of various first-level administrative country subdivisions, including the ones currently in it, but also other "federated states" that don't use the name "state", such as Category:Provinces and territories of Canada, Category:Governorates of Iraq, Category:Regions of Ethiopia, and many others. As the article indicates, federated states do not have to literally use the word "state" in its name or descriptor. Perhaps the category should cross-link to Category:Federal countries. Frankly, I'm having a hard time seeing how this new category will be beneficial, but it certainly could be done. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:40, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Change vote and support nomination, initially I was thinking that it might be a good idea to have a container category for federates states of various countries, but then it would merely become a container category for some countries' subdivisions based on a trivial characteristic of these subdivisions (at least trivial from a geographical perspective). Marcocapelle (talk) 06:58, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- In principle, Delete -- However, I do wonder whether we do not need a category for the top-level country subdivision, which in some countries are states; in Germany lander; in France departments; in others, provinces; in yet others a vernacular term, which gets translated into English in different ways. There may thus be a case for a merge to something. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:22, 1 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Delete The denominating of subdivisions of a country as states does not always imply the same division of power between center and periphery. At the same time there are several countries that do not use the term state where it might well apply.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:06, 18 November 2015 (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.