- 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. It was too long, but I did read it. The guidelines support deletion, and the arguments for overriding these by retaining it are not strong. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:56, 16 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Nominator's rationale: The tl;dr of deleting this category is that it violates multiple long standing, sound precedents, and ultimately is not a category that can be used for improvement of the encyclopedia in any way, violating WP:USERCAT. While I fully admit that knowing if a particular user doesn't speak English can be useful information, a grouping of such users via the category system is not useful, as it would never be needed to specifically seek out users who do not speak English for an encyclopedia-improving purpose. What is typically done in this scenario is to leave the userbox alone, but simply remove the category from the userbox.
The longer version for deleting this category is as follows: First, a brief history. This category was nominated for deletion in 2007 after the community decided that 0-level categories were not useful to the encyclopedia - it isn't useful to group people by something they do not do. This CfD was unanimous & well-participated, and the rationale behind deletion has not changed in the 9 years since then - user categories that categorize people by something they do not do are still useless and help encourage a culture of useless, encyclopedic categories that dilute the usefulness of the category system to actually be used to foster collaboration on improving articles or otherwise providing some benefit to the enyclopedia.
The original nomination above follows a large nomination that effectively put an end to 0-level categories, see here:
All was well until February 2015, at which point a user re-created the category without any discussion or new arguments as to why the old CfD was not still valid. Shortly thereafter, another user tagged the category for speedy deletion per WP:CSD#G4, which was rightly deleted as such. Approximately eight months later, this discussion was brought up at the village pump, requesting reversal of the old CfD (I would submit that this is an inappropriate venue, and this matter should have been brought to DRV so that more pairs of eyes could have commented). With minimal participation, another administrator (whom I asked to reverse their decision and refused, resulting in me bringing this here) decided to restore the category.
I believe the concerns brought up in the Village Pump post reflect a hypothetical use that 1) Has not and will not actually occur, 2) Can be achieved just as easily by the bot searching for the userbox template indicating a user does not speak English without weakening the user category system even if such a system were used, and 3) Was actually discussed prior as a possible use and dismissed (I cannot currently locate this discussion, although I remember a discussion on that or a similar hypothetical use previously and remember concluding that the userbox template would be sufficient. It may have been in one of the other 0-level category discussions or perhaps a talk page discussion). Ultimately in the proposed hypothetical usage of this category were to come to fruition that bots performed some sort of check to see if the user was a non-English speaker or not, that bot could look for the userbox template. The userbox template is much more likely to be used for non-English speakers anyway due to the ease of using the template system on a userpage. VegaDark (talk) 23:02, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Keep. For one thing, the G4 was inappropriate; G4 is for reposts, and this content (at recreation) is significantly different from this content (immediately before deletion at CFD); any admin who G4 deletes a page in that situation either needs to be warned for carelessness or needs to be sanctioned for intentional abuse of the tools. For another thing, DRV is for when there's some problem with the relevant XFD; there was no problem with the relevant CFD, as far as I could tell. Thirdly, you dismiss the primary concern with no good reason; with no evidence, there's no reason to listen to your 1) argument. Bots tend to be programmed to pay attention to categories, rather than to templates. Consider the bot's workflow if it's trained to pay attention to en-0: if it's looking for categories, it will load the category first and strikes all the members from its list of folks to visit, while if it's looking for the template, it will to go WhatLinksHere and find the template, which quite plausibly might be on more than one page in someone's userspace (lots of users put userboxes on a subpage that's then transcluded on the main userpage) and thus confuse the bot if the writer hasn't given it additional training. Maybe someone can find me an example, but I can't remember ever seeing an example of a bot doing anything with templates in userspace, aside from removing them when they've been deleted or otherwise doing work on the template itself — using a template as guidance (aside from ((nobots))) for editing that doesn't modify the use of that template is something I've never heard of, and even if it does happen, it's much less common (and thus much less likely to be depended on) by bot-writers. Nyttend (talk) 23:47, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Do you have any actual evidence that this category has been used for a bot for such a purpose, or is this still merely a hypothetical? It's been over a year since your argument for it to be restored. Furthermore I think you have a misunderstanding of WP:CSD#G4 if you think the deleting admin should be scolded for their deletion. The two diffs you provide almost certainly qualify as substantially similar - the underlying content being slightly different would be a huge way to game the system to avoid any deletion discussion if someone simply disagreed with a closure and re-created a category (or any page really, although particularly true for categories where it's hard to imagine the content in said category substantially changing the nature of the category itself) that had different content that didn't actually affect the underlying reasons for deletion. VegaDark (talk) 23:57, 18 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Keep The link to the conversation prior to restore is in fact the trigger for the earlier restore. It would have just as easily been recreated. The reason I think we should keep this, is first of all it is a user category. So the idea that articles should not be classified as to what they are not is not relevant. Also many entries are to be found in that category. It may be that users only appeared because they used the template. But they could also use the category directly. However if users think it is important enough to state incompetence in English in a template, then it is also fair enough to appear as a category. There is quite a big difference between stating the absence of English ability, and the absence of a statement on English ability. It is the latter that we do not need a category for. The fact that bots or message delivery agents could use it is not the only reason to have it, as after all humans can also make use of the category unassisted. Other languages -0 are not nearly so useful on en.wikipedia, because here the preferred communication language is English. I would suggest a modification to Category:User_en-0, that it is no categorised in Category:User_en which suggest that users can speak English. Some other intesting uses are people like User:Jj98 who use Category:User_en-0 and Category:User_en-1, which by the strict wording means that cannot read English but they can write it a bit. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:01, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- "However if users think it is important enough to state incompetence in English in a template, then it is also fair enough to appear as a category" - This has to be some of the worst logic I've heard cited for keeping a category in my 11 years on Wikipedia. Using this logic, no user category that had an associated template would ever be deleted. That flies in the face of WP:USERCAT and basically allows re-creation of every user category ever deleted so long as someone associates it with a template. This would be one of the worst policies we could possibly implement when it comes to user categories. "The fact that bots or message delivery agents could use it is not the only reason to have it, as after all humans can also make use of the category unassisted" - What reason would humans be using this category to specifically seek out non-English speakers? VegaDark (talk) 01:50, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Delete. The template is clearly useful, but I see no reason the caategory is. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 18:51, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Delete. I can't see any use for this category; as VegaDark says, why would anyone want to use this category to see a list of non-English speakers? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:00, 19 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- Delete per earlier discussion and arguments for keeping the category are not convincing. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:20, 26 November 2016 (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.