< July 2007	September 2007 >

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The result of the debate was delete all. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 00:34, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Being a member of a particular high school does not inherently foster contribution. The social networking aspect of it is not something to be desired by our user category system. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 22:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Note, this nomination includes the following subcategories:

Category:Wikipedians by high school, Category:European Baccalaureate Wikipedians, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Stuyvesant High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Burlington High School (Kansas), Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Charter School of Wilmington, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Lake Forest High School (Illinois), Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: King George V School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Cheltenham College, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Mountain View High School (Washington), Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Whitgift School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: École secondaire catholique Garneau, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Hamden Hall Country Day School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Live Oak High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Gymea Technology High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Bellaire High School (Bellaire, Texas). Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Innisdale Secondary School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Spaulding High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Gahr High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Guildford Grammar School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Affton High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Ben Davis High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Forest Hills High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Raleigh Charter High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Ramaz School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: King Edward VI Grammar School (Chelmsford), Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Rolling Meadows High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Cherokee High School, Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Marquette University High School, Category:Holland house, Category:Mildmay house, and Category:Tindal house

• Strong Delete - As those who've seen my comments in previous discussions involving these categories may remember, I oppose these alma mater categories. While college or university attended may possibly be notable (especially considering possible degrees), general education attendance doesn't seem useful to me, and seems to be more of "chat room" or even of the oft-exampled "myspace", in utility. - jc37 08:18, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - as above. Waste of a category, useless. Also, take note of the potential privacy concerns 9although i suppose it is one's choice to add themselves into a cat) -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 09:02, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete: Strongly encourages social networking. There's a vague argument by some about the notion of organizing people to support various articles or groups of articles by including oneself in a category, to make yourself a resource to others. This is a pretty weak argument on the face of it. We're all Wikipedians, and that's the only school that matters. This kind of myspace-cruft is anathema to our purposes here. Removal will annoy a number of users, but it's the right thing to do. --Durin 15:25, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - go to myspace or facebook for your social networking needs, this is Wikipedia. --ST47Talk·Desk 15:27, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all per Durin, essentially. The social networking/MySpace aspect is significantly greater than the limited opportunity for collaborative potential afforded by these largely single-user categories. The mere fact of attending a secondary school is little proof of an ability to contribute encyclopedically about it or an interest in it. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:31, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all as per Durin and ST47. There's not even much potential for collaboration in these categories; only one has more than 10 members, and a majority of them are single-editor categories (one of them is empty); all would facilitate cooperation on single articles, which can be accomplished on the school's talk page. Horologium t-c 19:22, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all excluding high schools that establish notability by fame.--WaltCip 20:17, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all - per above. Categorizing by high school attended does not help Wikipedia, unilike categorizing by college attended, which has much more potential to be collaborative.VegaDark (talk) 00:28, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename to Category:Wikipedians who understand blazon. Note that I am putting it in Category:Wikipedians interested in linguistics, because it has to go somewhere, but ultimately anyone can edit to change the parent category. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 11:38, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User blz (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcats

Suggest Merge Category:User blz, Category:User blz-1, Category:User blz-2, Category:User blz-3, and Category:User blz-5 to Category:Wikipedians interested in heraldry, a subcategory of Category:Wikipedians by interest.

Nominator's rationale: These categories are for users who speak Blazon, which is not a language so much as a jargon, relating to heraldry. It's a set of highly structured rules for describing heraldic coats of arms or flags, rather than an actual language. Additionally, "blz" is the ISO 639 classification for Balanktak, which is (yet another) Indonesian language which does not yet have a Wikipedia article. Suggest merging all of these cats into one category and moving it into Category:Wikipedians by interest, which is a more appropriate target than the languages section.

• Merge, as nom. Horologium t-c 00:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge, as nom. --Biblbroks's talk 17:15, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to Category:Wikipedians who speak Blazon Category:Wikipedians who understand Blazon per Blazon. (Or perhaps Wikipedians who understand Blazon.) This is more specific than just an interest in heraldry. - jc37 00:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC) [Modified target per discussion below.] - jc37 10:39, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  Comment I had suggested the broader scope to potentially increase the collaborative potential of the category. It is likely that all of the members of this group also share an interest in heraldry; however, there might be editors who are interested in heraldry without sharing the more narrow interest in blazon. There is no current category for heraldry in Wikipedia (I looked before I suggested creating a new category), so slightly widening the scope of the topic increases potential interest without making it too diffuse to be useful. Horologium t-c 00:30, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  Makes sense. My main concern is from recalling a mess we had when deleting the zodiac cats. We should try to avoid miscategorising users when renaming. And I can imagine an argument that understanding Blazon does not necessarily equal being interested in heraldry in general. - jc37 01:16, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I want to make sure that whatever the target cat is named, that it not include the word "speak", as it will open the door to move it back into the language cat. "Understand" is only a little better, for the same reason. I suggested "interested in" as that is the convention for all of the subcats in Category:Wikipedians by interest, which seems (to me) to be the logical place to move it. If you like Category:Wikipedians interested in Blazon, which sounds clunky to me, I'll support it, but my first choice remains the heraldry cat I suggested. Horologium t-c 20:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wholly agree that we shouldn't use "speak". I would prefer Wikipedians who understand... for the "almost language" cats, such as glyphs, writing systems, jargon, dialects, and such. I used to lean towards use, and even recently have wavered between use and understand, but understand seems the clearest and most precise. - jc37 09:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge and keep. "speak" doesn't bother me, as it is possible to speak the descriptions aloud, but any other term would do. DGG (talk) 04:05, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

---

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 05:28, 29 August 2007 (UTC) ----- relisting to try to get consensus on the new name[reply]

• Comment - Ok, as I said above, I prefer Category:Wikipedians who understand Blazon. I agree with the concern about using "speak", and I oppose the use of "heraldry", and also oppose "interested in". - jc37 12:39, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I can support Category:Wikipedians who understand Blazon, provided it is moved out of Category:Wikipedians by language. My suggestion would to be to move it into Category:Wikipedians interested in linguistics (a subcat of Category:Wikipedians by interest, my original suggestion), but it really doesn't belong in the languages section. Its vocabulary consists entirely of words from other languages (primarily French), and it is not possible to carry out a conversation using it, essentially failing it as a language; that is why I nominated it for a rename and move in the first place. Horologium t-c 13:17, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge all to Category:Wikipedians who understand Blazon per Jc37 and relocate to Category:Wikipedians interested in linguistics per Horologium. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:46, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - Relocating to Category:Wikipedians by language interest might be more appropriate, or even Category:Wikipedians by constructed language (or both). But where it goes is less important than the target name atm. In any case, I agree that it shouldn't be directly in Category:Wikipedians by language. - jc37 22:38, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 18:16, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose renaming Category:Wikipedians who support Crewe Alex to Category:Wikipedian Crewe Alexandra F.C. fans

Nominator's rationale: Per the convention of Category:Wikipedian football (soccer) team fans. – Black Falcon ^(Talk) 03:41, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 19:06, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedians who support pure wiki deletion (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Wikipedia is not a battleground and it is counterproductive to encourage the formation of formal factions around points of disagreement. This category does not foster collaboration and there is no reason someone would need to browse through it. Editors who disagree with the current deletion policy and process should present their arguments to the community at the appropriate place (Wikipedia talk:Deletion policy and Wikipedia talk:Deletion process).

Please note that this discussion is not about censoring dissent or anything of that sort. Editors are welcome to dissent all they want on their userpages and on appropriate discussion pages (the village pump, policy talk pages, user talk pages, and so on).

Please also note precedents for deleting similar categories here, here, here, here, here and here. There is also ample precedent for deleting any "support/oppose" and "for/against" categories (see e.g. here, here, here, here and here).

• Delete as nom and per precedent. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:42, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete It's basically a petition, not a category. There are better ways to do that. - Richfife 20:49, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Linked article is to a meta discussion that has been around for years, and will never become policy. Divisive. Horologium t-c 21:20, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - as per all three of the above. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 10:25, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Keep - This doesn't a support/oppose a current policy, and it's a semi-active discussion. (As opposed to the several discussions linked in the nom for examples.) I think using a category for an active discussion should be fine. It would be hard to argue how this doesn't facilitate collaboration, as we do collaborate on policies and such. The reason for the Weak keep however, is that the discussion is only semi-active, and could almost be tagged [[tl|historical)). - jc37 12:39, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I took another look at the article linked by the cat (Pure wiki deletion). The last edit to that page was in July 2006, so it's not really even semi-active at this point. (The last comment on the talk page was in April 2007). More relevant to this community, however, is the link at the top of the article page, to en:Wikipedia:Pure wiki deletion system, which is a Rejected Proposal. (Discussion there was much more active and recent, ending when the discussion was marked as rejected in June 2007.) Without getting into a debate on the merits (or lack thereof) of this proposal, it was rejected, and having a category of users who support a rejected proposal seems (to me) to be both pointless and unnecessarily divisive. The userbox is sufficient to express support of the issue. (One can construct an argument that it too is divisive, but this is not the appropriate forum to discuss deletion of the userbox.) Horologium t-c 14:09, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Changing to delete, since the page has been inactive for a few months. (I might dispute the "rejected" tag, but that would be about the page, not the category.) - jc37 22:34, 30 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was speedily deleted by User:After Midnight per CSD G4 (recreation of deleted material). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:18, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Users (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Delete, as duplicate of Category:Wikipedians. -- Prove It ^(talk) 15:13, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy Delete, as recreated deleted content. See Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 November 4#Category:User Category:Users. This category was deleted as all-encompassing and redundant to Category:Wikipedians. It was recreated yesterday. Horologium t-c 15:31, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 09:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedians not active on weekdays (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Nominator's rationale: I can't think a single reason on why someone could look for Wikipedias not being active on weekdays. If they want to see a specific person that is he/she active on weekdays, a quick look on the userpage is enough. No category is necessary. ~Iceshark7 08:38, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - This is simply a notice. Notes, or even template notes are fine, but not a category. - jc37 09:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as per nom and jc37. Horologium t-c 19:27, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Per above. If you're not available on weekdays, say so. No reason to join a group. - Richfife 20:50, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 06:01, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedians who use a Tablet PC - (per Tablet PC) Cool, you've used a touchscreen. Personally, I've used a light pen, mouse, a keyboard, and a myriad of other input devices. And we can't leave out all the various Writing implements. Categories for everything. : ) - jc37 09:11, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - as nominator. - jc37 09:11, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete unhelpful categorization. - Koweja 10:59, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as makes no difference to one's abilities or actions here what type of computer one uses, SqueakBox 19:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Delete. We went through a big dustup over the Mac categories (which were retained after some pruning); the PC cats (by processor type) are up for deletion right now. I hate to use WP:OTHERSTUFF because it's deprecated, but some sort of balance is in order. If this (and the AMD and Intel cats) are deleted, I would suggest deleting the whole parent Category:Wikipedians by personal computer, which would consist solely of the Mac and its subcats. Those cats could be moved to Category:Wikipedians by interest as Category:Wikipedians interested in Macintosh computers or something similar. There are some differences between a Tablet PC and other computers beyond the obvious interface issues; different operating systems comes to mind immediately. Horologium t-c 19:40, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  A clearer version of my proposal for the Mac cat: create a new category in Category:Wikipedians by interest entitled Category:Wikipedians interested in Macintosh computers, and make Category:Wikipedians who use Macintosh computers a subcategory of the new cat. Note that this will be moot if the AMD/Intel cats survive AFD. Horologium t-c 04:01, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  This is more in the line of using a tool. Compare to Wikipedians who:

  1. drive automobiles
  2. ride bicycles
  3. use shovels
  4. shoot guns
  5. eat with a spoon
  6. use a comb or brush
  7. wear shoes
  8. sit in chairs
  9. use ladders
  10. etc.

  These are generic items that potentially anyone might use. We may have articles on the objects, but such categories have the potential of being "all-inclusive" (especially in a post-industrial age world of mass production). And the usefulness for insight into research is dubious. Incidentally, such generic objects (as opposed to more specific objects) are also the most likely targets of an "interested in" category, since an action with the object in question doesn't provide much more of a unique notworthy experience than just being interested in the object in question. (As opposed to works of art/media in which experiencing them can be notable - such as a book, a painting, a sculpture, a video game, a radio programme, or whatever.) If we were allowing Wikipedian categories for anything with an article, then it might be justified, but the current concensus seems to be to minimise "user cats" to more specific, and less general, subjects/objects. As for Mac users, it's a specific brand of computer, rather than just a "generic" PC. We shouldn't have any of the myriad brands of IBM compatible PC clones, but individual, more specific computers such as the Macintosh would seem to make sense. (I am not opposed to the discussion being moved to the talk page, if wished.) - jc37 10:01, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  My concern is that we will end up with a similar situation to what occurred with the deletion of Category:Heterosexual Wikipedians, whereupon a rather POINTy nomination was made (by an editor who had been a member of the heterosexual cat) of Category:Gay Wikipedians, shortly followed by a deletion nomination for the entire parent cat, Category:Wikipedians by sexuality, which was deleted, although some of its children were pulled out first. My point is that we should not have a category with only one subcat in it, and the meta nature of Category:Wikipedians by personal computer prevents anyone from joining that category unless they are in a subcat. (In fact, the parent cat was created specifically to preclude such an occurance; you were the editor who suggested it, in Wikipedia:User categories for discussion/Archive/April 2007#Category:Wikipedians who use personal computers.) If nothing else, delete the parent cat, and move the Mac category up, although in any case, there will be repeated efforts to create a PC-based equivalent to the Mac category. Horologium t-c 15:12, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was moved to WP:CFD-Andrew c ^[talk] 01:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Files uploaded by User:Jeff G. (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Suggest Delete This category contains one page and one picture. I also do not believe it is appropriate to categorize articles/images based on who uploaded them. User are free to create a list in their user space.-Andrew c ^[talk] 01:00, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment This should be discussed at Wikipedia:Categories for Discussion, not here. This is for user categories, found under Category:Wikipedians. Horologium t-c 01:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was } moved to WP:CFD-Andrew c ^[talk] 01:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User galleries (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Suggest Delete This category contains one page and one subpage (nominated also for deletion above). This category is redundant with Category:User page galleries, a nd the one article in this category isn't even a "gallery" so no sense in merging.-Andrew c ^[talk] 01:00, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment This should be discussed at Wikipedia:Categories for Discussion, not here. This is for user categories, found under Category:Wikipedians. Horologium t-c 01:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete all. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 02:30, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User cg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcats

Category:User iš (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcat

Suggest Delete Category:User cg, Category:User cg-1, Category:User cg-2, Category:User cg-3, Category:User cg-4, Category:User cg-N, Category:User iš, and Category:User iš-N

Nominator's rationale: These separately created categories (which overlap) are for speakers of Montenegrin language, which is simply Serbian spoken in Montenegro (which recently divorced Serbia). There is no ISO 639 classification for Montenegrin, and (according to the Montenegrin language article) the official language of the country is Serbian. I would suggest deletion of these categories until some official recognition of the language is developed. (Preferably an ISO categorization, but right now even the government of Montenegro does not recognize Montenegrin as its own language.) "cg" and "iš" are not valid ISO 639 categorizations.

• Delete all as nom. Horologium t-c 00:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all per nom. At least the existence of ISO code for Montenegrin language should be the requirement for the category to be revived. --Biblbroks's talk 16:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all per nom. There's really not much to add I think :) -- Outspan [talk · contribs] 17:24, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 10:46, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User fjh (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Suggest rename Category:User fjh to Category:User hif

Nominator's rationale: This is a category for Fiji Hindi, a variant of Hindi spoken on Fiji. The category notes that fjh is not an ISO 639 classification. "hif" is the correct ISO 639-3 classification for this language.

• Rename, as nom. Horologium t-c 00:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename, as nom. --Biblbroks's talk 16:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename Cheers, JetLover ^(talk) 00:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename per nom to standardise with the remaining Babel cats, almost all of which use ISO 639 codes. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 10:52, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User ye (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcat

Suggest Delete Category:User ye and Category:User ye-3

Nominator's rationale: These two cats are for speakers of Yeshivish, which appears to be a category invented by a single writer in a single book. This is not an ISO-recognized language, although it appears to have a lot in common with Yinglish, which DOES have its own ISO 639-3 classification of "yib". (Ethnologue notes that Yinglish is a second language only, as all of its speakers also speak English. Just trying to head off the creation of Category:User yib-N.) I'd suggest a rename, but looking at the Talk:Yinglish and Talk:Yeshivish makes me think again. (The heated debate in there made me pull this cat out of the group nomination below, because I suspect it will generate a lot more discussion than those). I think it might be better to nuke this unrecognized cat, and leave open the possbility of creating some "yib" cats, possibly merging together the two articles under the "Yinglish" banner (although the Yeshivish article is far superior in quality, it doesn't have the international seal of approval of Yinglish).

• Delete as nom. Horologium t-c 00:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as nom. No official recognition, as in the case of Category:User cg and its subcats, is a reason strong enough. The creation of Category:User yib could sort things up in the future. --Biblbroks's talk 20:14, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep as a perfectly real and important dialect in NYC. The article in WP may be based on a single book, & the word may even have been invented, but the term & the dialect (or whatever) is now in widespread use. There are many more sources. There are also a good number of WPedians who could usefully describe themselves here. Yinglish is a great deal more general--a great many people speak it to some extent, most of whom are way too secular to even understand what Yeshivish is about. There is a serious need for collaboration in articles related to these subjects. I'd support keeping the levels--there are adepts who use it every day, and people who just understand a little. DGG (talk) 04:10, 26 August 2007 (UTC).[reply]
• Delete Weak delete. The usefulness of the Babel cats comes not from the ability to speak a language but from the ability to translate it (at least as far as collaboration on en.wikipedia goes). Since this is not an ISO-recognised language, I think we should avoid setting a precedent for allowing inclusion of any thousands of constructed languages. I'm hesitant to try to draw a connection between the ability to speak a language and an encyclopedically-relevant interest in the language. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:27, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Changed to delete after re-reading the nomination and seeing that Yeshivish is "not an ISO-recognized language". — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:56, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was depopulate for repurposing. Admin will depop, expecting that nominator or other users will take care of the repurposing/renaming/etc. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 05:18, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User als (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcats

(Note: These categories have not been flagged for deletion/merge/rename, because I was unable to determine the appropriate flag. Suggestions would be appreciated.)

Suggest depopulate and rename as Tosk Albanian, not Alemannic.

Nominator's rationale:This is a textbook example of why some type of standard should be applied to naming cats. "als" is the ISO 639-3 classification for Tosk Albanian, spoken in Albania (naturally). However, none of these cats have anything to do with Albanian. Instead, they are for Alemannic German, which has four separate ISO 639-3 classifications, of which it appears that all four have been mixed together and tossed into another language's spot. Since there are over 130 people in these seven categories (yes, there is a -0 cat), my suggestion would be to depopulate them, recreate them as Albanian Tosk categories (to prevent their recreation as Alemannic cats) and have the users create appropriate cats under the four Alemannic language groups (of which it is likely that one will never be used—it's a classification for an Venezuelan variant), and it's probable that most of them will want GSW (Schweizerdeutsch, or Swiss German). The category description specifically mentions all four variations of Alemannic, so it's not obvious which flavor each user wanted when they grabbed the userbox, and simply renaming the cats as "gsw" cats might put some people in the wrong cat. I also would suggest deletion of the asinine Category:User als-0, which somehow was missed in the earlier purge of -0 cats.

• Depopulate and rename as nom. Horologium t-c 00:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep until this below is resolved:
  • Comment How does one depopulate the category? Manually remove all the 100+ users from the category (by removing the userboxes from their userpages) or how? But more importantly: shouldn't the category be tagged with the ((cfr-user)) (Template:cfr-user) template? --Biblbroks's talk 20:30, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A bot can go in and remove all users from the category easily enough. The reason it's not tagged (as noted at the top of the nomination) is because I'm not sure how to tag these for my proposal. The cats are not being renamed, merged, or deleted, they're getting emptied and repurposed or recycled. The cats are not going away, they are just going to be used for something different than what they are being used for now. If you have a suggestion of what template to use for that, I'm open to suggestions. Horologium t-c 20:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So if I understand correctly all the users from the category would lose their babel userboxes for als and have none instead - no other supstitute like gsw? If the answer is yes, I will change my vote to Depopulate and rename as nom. --Biblbroks's talk 21:21, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This will not affect the userbox, only the category. The userbox deletion would have to be discussed at TfD, as it's a template. (No userboxes are removed through UCfD actions.) If this is approved, I will submit a TfD for the template (rather than a simple repurpose) because it's tied to the Alemmanic category. However, I shouldn't submit a TfD until this is approved; the actions need to be sequential. For all of the renames, I will go through and fix the userboxes associated with them by renames, but I haven't decided if I should submit the userboxes for deleted cats for deletion as well. I'm a lot more tolerant of nonsense on user pages, as long as it stays out of the categorization section. Horologium t-c 21:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - neutral to the discussion. When proposing a cat for CfD discussion, and unsure which tag to use, typically just default to the "cfd" one. In this case cfd-user. Navigation and alerting those who may be interested by the tagging is the more important aspect. - jc37 23:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have gone ahead and flagged all seven cats with ((cfd-user)). That should settle that issue. Horologium t-c 23:51, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment - Ok. And since the tagging occurred on the same day, I don't see a reason to relist either. - jc37 09:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Depopulate and rename as nom. It has been resolved. I hope that the delay, which I have created with bureaucratic issues, will help clear potential confusion with similar actions in the future. It helped me. :-) --Biblbroks's talk 17:48, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete all. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 10:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User jer (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcat

Category:User hess (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcats

Category:User portunhol (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Suggest Delete Category:User jer and Category:User jer-1

Nominator's rationale: These two categories are for speakers of Jèrriais, a dialect of French spoken on the island of Jersey in the English Channel. This is not an ISO-recognized language, and it has no official status anywhere. "jer" is the ISO 639 classification for Jere, a Nigerian language in the Benue-Congo languages family (part of the Kainji family, which is still redlinked).

Suggest Delete Category:User hess, Category:User hess-1, Category:User hess-2, Category:User hess-3, and Category:User hess-N.

Nominator's rationale: These four cats are for speakers of Hessian, a dialect of German spoken in the state of Hesse. This is not an ISO-recognized language, and it has no official status anywhere. The names of the cats are inconsistent with the parent category's naming conventions as well.

Suggest Delete Category:User portunhol

Nominator's rationale: This is for Portunhol, a mixed language of Portuguese and Spanish, spoken along the border of Brazil and Uruguay. This is not an ISO-recognized langauge, and it has no official status anywhere. As with the "hess" categories above, the category's name is inconsistent with the parent category's naming conventions.

• Delete all, as nom. Horologium t-c 00:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all, as nom. --Biblbroks's talk 20:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete none Redirect Hessian to Deutsche. Two redirections for Jer: en or fr. Two redirections for portunhol: es or Portuguese (pt?). BrewJay 01:08, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Hess Germanic languages fit into ISO-8859-1, much like Ebonics, and isn't the name of the province close enough? Brewhaha@edmc.net 17:06, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Hessian is not a recognized variant of German, much as (recently deleted) New Yorkese is not a recognized variant of English. There may be a few minor pronunciation differences, and a few words that are local in origin and usage, but it's the same language. There is no ISO recognition, and the convention in Category:Wikipedians by language is to limit the categories to recognized languages. There are several thousand ISO 639-3 classifications, including roughly 20 variations of German (see Ethnologue's report on Germany, which includes ISO 639-3 references to all the listed languages; "Hessian" is listed under "German".) Hessian has no official recognition or acknowledgment in Germany or anywhere else. The same holds true for Jèrriais and Portunhol, all of which use standard Latin characters (well, Hessian has ß, which is usually included in character sets), which addresses your first concern. Horologium t-c 17:21, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I see that deletion is still an error. The appropriate thing seems to be redirecting Hessian to German and forcing them to apply to the ISO for recognition. The choice for Jerrais and Jersey, though, is a fork. Either French or Anglais. I see no compelling reason not to accept this convention. A lot of people of these crosstalk languages will choose both.BrewJay 01:08, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all per nom. The usefulness of the language categories lies in the ability to translate information. When two dialects are mutually comprehensible, there is no need to have separate categories for both of them. Minor differences in speech in different provinces, districts, cities, or neighbourhoods are interesting for study, but do not need to be captured by individual user categories. Such overcategorisation only serves to reduce the usefulness and navigability of the general "Wikipedians by langugage" categorisation scheme. Moreover, since templates and categories have stringent and specific naming conventions, redirects are generally not necessary. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:43, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is legalese or law a dialect?[edit]

I've seen this question come up. (I've seen "law" under "fake languages", somewhere). No, it isn't a language of its own. It's "Latin", and Doctors might appreciate being in that same category with Lawyers, so if the category comes up again, then I think it should be redirected, because they deal with each other and sometimes they can converse in person with this stuff. I translate it to plain English where I can. Hear the word "Jargon" carefully. I think someone made that sound foreign to Ingglish. I would call the category "Latin Jargon", but it's a dead language that doesn't change, because people don't use it, unless they want a static, but portable name for something (like a precedent or a disease), AND I'm wary of creating categories under wikipedians by language. I'm glad there's a constructed language category. Hmmm. Nah. I'd hav to write and promote a dictionary. Webster had to take back some of his revisions. I don't. BrewJay 00:48, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete all. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 05:04, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User ke (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcats

Suggest Merge Category:User ke to Category:User grc, Category:User ke-1 to Category:User grc-1, Category:User ke-2 to Category:User grc-2, and Category:User ke-3 to Category:User grc-3.

Nominator's rationale: These categories are for speakers of Koine Greek, a slightly "younger" version of Ancient Greek. Ethnologue classifies it as a variant of Ancient Greek, which has the ISO 639-3 classification of "grc". "ke" is not a valid ISO classification. Suggest merging all of the ke cats into their equivalent grc cats. Alternatively, delete all of them.

• Merge or Delete, as nom. Horologium t-c 00:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge, as nom. --Biblbroks's talk 20:39, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete oppose merge, since that wasn't the creator's intent. The users involved can always add themselves to grc. - jc37 23:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete without meging per Jc37. It's always easier for a user to self-categorise than for others to remove a category, so we should err on the side of under-interpreting any possible similarities. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 04:14, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedians who use Clusty (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This category for users of a particular search engine does not foster collaboration any more than similar categories for Google and Yahoo!, both of which were deleted (discussions are here and here). Merely using a particular search engine implies neither an encyclopedically-relevant interest in the subject nor access to sources about it. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as nom and per precedent. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as per nom and precedent. Horologium t-c 00:22, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as per deletions re google etc, SqueakBox 17:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete both. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 04:18, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Having a particular processor in your computer does not foster your contribution in any way. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 17:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - I really wanted to say weak keep, but I really can't. Though there are many articles related to the two companies and their products, the use of the processors are too widespread through Wikipedian users (creating a nearly all-inclusive grouping with the two cats). - jc37 09:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak Delete with the proviso that deletion of these two categories and the Tablet PC category nominated above should trigger a deletion of the entire Category:Wikipedians by personal computer category, which will consist of one one category, for Macintosh users. That category, which survived a UCFD in June, should be moved over to Category:Wikipedians by interest. A new category could be created there, entitled Category:Wikipedians interested in Macintosh computers, and the existing category can be moved over as a subcategory of the new cat. No fuss, no muss, and everyone is happy. Horologium t-c 03:57, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. As already noted by Jc37, these categories are simply too broad to be of any real collaborative value. I also support deletion of entire Category:Wikipedians by personal computer, but do not agree with the proposal to rename a "Wikipedians who use" category into a "Wikipedians interested in" category. Except in a few rare cases (e.g. specialty items), I think that the connection between use and interest is a weak or non-existent one. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:13, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See my reasoning above at the Tablet PC Discussion. FWIW, the AMD category might be tailored enough to be appropriate in scope, although I think that might limit its effectiveness as a collaborative aid to the single AMD article. Horologium t-c 18:46, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete all. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:32, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User cu-N (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Category:User gmh-N (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Category:User got-M (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Category:User tlh-N (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Category:User wam-N (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Propose Delete the following five cats:

Category:User cu-N (Old Church Slavonic, dead for centuries; cat empty except for templates.)

Category:User gmh-N (Middle High German, dead for centuries; cat empty except for templates.)

Category:User got-M (Gothic, dead and misnamed to boot. One user in cat, who has 23 language userboxes on userpage.)

Category:User tlh-N (Klingon; 'nuff said.)

Category:User wam-N (Wampanoag, extinct for over a century. One user in cat, with 28 language userboxes on userpage.)

Nominator's rationale: These are more of the nonsensical -N categories (I think these are the last ones, but I haven't gone through all of the child cats in the languages thing yet.) They should all be eliminated. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all as nom. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment (Neutral to the discussion) - The rationale for Klingon is different than the other three (dead vs contructed), and probably should have its own nomination. - jc37 12:05, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was attempting to limit the number of new discussions I opened, considering the confusing array of side discussions caused by the freaky formatting of my previous (enormous) batches of nominations. Since all of these categories are -N (or -M in the one case) cats, I grouped them together. I can pull the Klingon one out and re-nominate it separately if required, but I really don't think it will be necessary. If another editor concurs with your suggestion, I'll do so. Horologium t-c 15:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all as nom. --Biblbroks's talk 20:45, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Klingon, Delete rest. The Klingon language culture has a specific user base associated with it, and I think it is important to keep them identified. Additionally, there used to be a Klingon-language Wikipedia. If an Wikipedia editor wants to translate any resource in Klingon into English (yes, I know, there are very few) OR confirm information about the language (whether or not there is a verb "to be"), they should be able to find users who can help them. samwaltz 18:35, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment While there may be a Klingon Wikipedia, it's not a Wikipedia project; it's on Wikia, which is off-project and therefore irrelevant to this discussion. (It was shut down here in 2005, and isn't particularly active at Wikia, with only 5 editors contributing 13 edits in the past month.) Further there are *no* native speakers of Klingon, at least not on Earth in 2007. The four users in this category (one of whom hasn't edited in over 18 months) can move to Category:User tlh-4 and join the seven users there if they have a burning need to keep a category on their page. Note that the deletion concerns only one of the five Klingon language categories; I'm not advocating nuking the entire set, only the ridiculous -N category. Horologium t-c 19:17, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, understood. Works for me. Delete 'em all. samwaltz 19:39, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 01:46, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User osm (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcats

Category:User mth (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcat

Propose rename the following cats:

Category:User osm and child cats Category:User osm-1, Category:User osm-2, Category:User osm-3, and Category:User osm-N to Category:User ota, Category:User ota-1, Category:User ota-2, Category:User ota-3, and Category:User ota-N. The users speak Ottoman Turkish. The ISO 639 classification for that language is "ota" ("osm" is not a valid ISO 639 classification).

Category:User mth and Category:User mth-N to Category:User mai and Category:mai-N. These cats are for users who speak Maithili, but "mth" is the classification for Munggui (no wiki article yet), an Indonesian language. "mai" is the classification for Maithili speakers.

Nominator's rationale: To standardize classifications. The Maithili cats are occupying the spot for another language. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename as nom. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename as nom. --Biblbroks's talk 20:47, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename as nom. I don't understand how the error could hav been made. I could understand otm, but then I was looking forward to having .can at the end of my domain name, and I got a chuckle out of .iq instead of .ik BrewJay 01:22, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:23, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User ith (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Propose Delete this cat.

Nominator's rationale: This category is for the constructed language Ithkuil, and is entirely populated by users with ((User ith-0)) on their userpages. Since the article says that nobody can speak the language (rolls eyes) and this is entirely populated with -0 users, I would suggest deleting it outright. Leave the userbox for those who want it (although I don't see the point behind any of the -0 userboxen). FWIW, there is no ISO classification for this language, and "ith" is not a valid ISO classification. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as nom. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - Misnamed, as noted in the nom. And since most of the other 0-level cats (and the wanting to learn more languages cat) have been deleted, this one should too. - jc37 23:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:22, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User ury (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Propose Delete this cat.

Nominator's rationale: The userbox reads Uryuomoco is a fictional language in the webcomic El Goonish Shive which actually is a complicated substitution cipher of regular English. There is no article for Uryuomoco, no discussion of the "language" in webcomic's article, and it's not a language but a cipher. "ury" is the ISO classification for another obscure Indonesian language called "Orya" (not Oriya), while "Uryuomoco" is non-notable fancruft. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as nom.Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:37, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:21, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User mvs (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Propose delete this cat.

Nominator's rationale: this empty cat (only userbox templates) is for users who speak Creek language (Mvskokee in that language). However, the ISO classification for Creek is "mus"; mvs is for the Papuan language Massep. Since there are no users, deleting the cat is the easiest solution. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as nom. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. It may also be worth the effort to move the templates to their appropriate name ("mus" instead of "mvs") to encourage proper recreation. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:38, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was merge. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 02:18, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User heb (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) and subcat

Propose Merge Category:User heb and Category:User heb-N to Category:User Hebr-5

Nominator's rationale:Category:User heb and Category:User heb-N are for users who fully understand the Hebrew Alphabet. Category:User Hebr-5 is for users who have full understanding of the Hebrew alphabet. Suggest merging the two heb categories into the Hebr-5 category, which is in Category:Wikipedians by writing system and follows the conventions of that category. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge both as nom. Horologium t-c 04:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge into Category:User Hebr-5. This is another case of the base template categorising into both the parent and the "native" categories. However, the wording of the userbox does not explicitly suggest a "native" understanding, so Hebr-5 is the best target, as suggested by the nom. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:20, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 16:21, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Communist Wikipedians (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Delete, see discussion of August 10th. -- Prove It ^(talk) 15:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per precedent. This is, in principle, identical. Wikipedia is not a political forum or a place to form ideological factions. Individual editors can still express their views without having to be classified in categories. As far as collaborative potential goes ... there's little. The likelihood that a random subscriber to a random ideology will have access to reliable sources about that ideology is, in my view, too small to make these categories useful. The connection between affiliation and interest, though probably slightly stronger, is still not readily apparent. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per precedent. This category was removed from the wikipedians by political ideologies cat in May by a user who noted that it was in two cats, one of which was a child of the other. a subsequent removal from the child category (probably from one of the UCFD noms) left it as an orphan cat, which explains why it was missed during the last deletion cycle. Horologium t-c 17:28, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Black Falcon. I think that every userbox representing extremist political factions should be deleted, not per se but because they often tend to be used in a way that emphasizes political belonging, and Wikipedia is not the right place for this. -- Outspan [talk · contribs] 17:20, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 19:13, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedians who support non-commercial use images (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Wikipedia is not a battleground and it is counterproductive to encourage the formation of formal factions around points of disagreement. This categories does not foster collaboration and there is no reason someone would need to browse through it. Editors who disagree with criterion I3 of the speedy deletion policy should present their arguments to the community at the appropriate place (Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion and Wikipedia talk:Non-free content).

Please note that this discussion is not about censoring dissent or anything of that sort. Editors are welcome to dissent all they want on their userpages and on appropriate discussion pages (the village pump, policy talk pages, user talk pages, and so on).

Please also note precedents for deleting similar categories here, here, here, here and here. There is also ample precedent for deleting any "support/oppose" and "for/against" categories (see e.g. here, here, here, here and here).

• Delete as nom and per precedent. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:22, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as highly contentious, SqueakBox 21:28, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep Changing the interpretation of the policies is always a possibility, and it is perfectly legitimate to advocate this in a reasonable and non-disruptive way, as long as one is willing to work by the existing rule. This even extends to core policy--even foundation policy can change--it has in the past.This is about the least disruptive way possible.-- merely placing oneself in a group that has the view. Considering the disruptive that does occur in WP, this is truly trivial. DGG (talk) 02:48, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as another divisive user category arguing about a core policy. The userbox is sufficient to convey the support of the issue. The first group of deletions cited by Black Falcon clearly demonstrates that this category should be removed. Discussion about the policy itself does not require a category for collaboration, as such discussions should take place at the pages cited in the nomination. Horologium t-c 15:13, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

The result of the debate was merge. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 19:11, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge Category:Wikipedians who use Adblock (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) into Category:Wikipedians who use Mozilla Firefox
• Merge Category:Wikipedians who use CookieSafe (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) into Category:Wikipedians who use Mozilla Firefox

These are categories for users of a single extension of Mozilla Firefox; Category:Mozilla extensions currently includes upward of 50 such extensions. I think these categories are much too narrow in scope to be useful for collaboration. Merely using a particular add-on neither suggests an above-average knowledge of nor an interest in the subject. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:48, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge as per nom. We don't need separate cats for extensions for a single browser. Horologium t-c 19:58, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, jc37 21:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment - The trouble with software is where to draw the dividing line between an individual piece of software and a "component". I think that we've determined in the past with game software that users of "plug-ins" should be merged with users of the main program. This looks like the same thing. - jc37 21:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• comment Browser extensions may be a different category, because they are very closely involved with the use of Wikipedia.DGG (talk) 02:50, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  How are the extensions of more use than just knowing the main program, in this case? - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 18:58, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose renaming Category:Wikipedian Texas Tech Fans to Category:Wikipedian Texas Tech fans

Nominator's rationale: To fix capitalisation. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:15, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Support - I created the page before I was familiar with the conventions on capitalization. →Wordbuilder 23:45, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete both, being a fan of a sports team does not foster contribution. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:40, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 00:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep Of course it contributes to collaboration--who else pays attention? DGG (talk) 01:36, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Do you support the nominator's original proposal to rename? Horologium t-c 15:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename as per nom. No strong feelings about retention, although it's less about a single team, as ^demon claims, and more of a fan of a university's entire sports program, which could be over a dozen separate teams. Horologium t-c 15:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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The result of the debate was merge. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 18:57, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose merging Category:Wikipedian Tar Heel Fans into Category:Wikipedian North Carolina Tar Heels fans

Nominator's rationale: Redundant categories. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:12, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete both, being a fan of a sports team does not foster contribution. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:39, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 00:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep sure it contributes to collaboration--Not that every one of them does, but that the people who can contribute will be in that group --who else pays attention? DGG (talk) 01:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Do you support the nominator's original proposal to merge the two redundant categories? Horologium t-c 15:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge as per nom. No strong feelings about retention, although it's less about a single team, as ^demon claims, and more of a fan of a university's entire sports program, which could be over a dozen separate teams. Horologium t-c 15:19, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename to Category:Wikipedian Ultimate Fighting Championship fans. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 18:57, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose renaming Category:Wikipedian UFC Fans to Category:Wikipedian UFC fans or Category:Wikipedian Ultimate Fighting Championship fans

Nominator's rationale: To fix capitalisation and, perhaps, replace the acronym with the full name. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 23:09, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. Being a fan of a fighting show does not mean one can contribute on it. We know very well the same logic applies for wrestling. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 21:55, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 00:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep sure it contributes to collaboration--Not that every one of them does, but that the people who can contribute will be in that group --who else pays attention? DGG (talk) 01:38, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete all. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 02:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are a number of fake (nonsense or joke) language categories still in existence on Wikipedia (we were not successful in the last purge, since some of them have names that appear at first blush to be legitimate); they should all be terminated. I have grouped them into a single nomination at the request of an admin, to reduce the number of closing actions that will need to be performed.

Category: User law and subcats[edit]

Propose Delete Category: User law, Category: User law-2 and Category: User law-3.

Nominator's rationale: These are joke categories, for users who speak "Legalese". "law" is the ISO 639-3 classification for Lauje, which is spoken by 44,000 people in Indonesia. The silly legalese categories should be deleted from Wikipedia, because they are occupying a space for a legitimate language. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename Yes, it shouldn't use an ISO code. But there are 38 wikipedians in those categories, and they should be asked if they think it important, and what name they prefer. If we have to be a surrogate for them, I'd guess that they do think it important, and if leg isn't an ISO code, it might do. Otherwise something longer than 3 letters might be necessary. DGG (talk) 01:42, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, actually, it's 19 users, not 38, and every single one of them has one of the two userboxen on their page. Once again, this is a case of appending an inappropriate category to a userbox. There were a lot of users with the asinine l337, Random Babbling, AIM-able and Newspeak categories as well, and I doubt more than a handful even noticed when those categories were killed. None of them ever showed up at DRV. Horologium t-c 02:41, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just a thought, but we probably shouldn't consider a "lack of action" to necessarily equate to "consensus". - jc37 11:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - "Legalese"? Knowing the bywords and catchphrases of a certain occupation typically doesn't mean that an actual "language" is involved. A userbox is fine, the category isn't. - jc37 11:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Horologium, Jc37, and ample precedent. For any users who are actually lawyers, there is Category:Wikipedian lawyers. For any users with an interest in law, there is Category:Wikipedians interested in law. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:15, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. Confusion with the existing ISO code should be considered a serious mistake: if it was meant to be a joke, it shouldn't have obstructed other 44,000 people on the planet. This could be used as a warning for the future creation of similar unfortunate jokes. If they defined themselves as Legalese speaking users, and as such more lawyerly inclined, they should be more careful with obliging with the already existing rules and/or standards. Anyway, if any of the users in these categories notices that there is a vote for deletion, he or she can simply rename the category him/herself. --Biblbroks's talk 17:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User das[edit]

Propose Delete.

Nominator's rationale: These category is for speakers of Dasprach, which is a constructed language that has apparently never had a Wikipedia article, and for which I received on 14 hits on Google, five of which were Wikipedia or mirrors. There is no ISO 639 classification for it, and "das" is the classification for Daho-Doo, which is spoken in West Africa. (It also doesn't have an article of its own, but it is referenced at Kru languages.) Should be deleted since it is misnamed and appears to be totally non-notable. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - See first Category:User das-4 and then User:Antman/Taatsch. This would appear to be a user created language. Perhaps we should ask User:Antman for clarification. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User zb[edit]

Propose Delete this cat.

Nominator's rationale: This category is for speakers of Zlatiborian speech, which is a non-existent language which has been deleted twice at VfD; the original discussion was Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Zlatiborian speech. ("zb" is not a valid ISO 639 classification.) I'll not nominate the userbox templates (all five of them) for deletion, although another bold editor might consider it, since the article they reference was deleted two years ago. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all, as nom. - Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as nom. --Biblbroks's talk 21:24, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename all. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 02:55, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are quite a few langauges in Category:Wikipedians by language which need to be renamed to align with their ISO 639-3 classifications. Since they should not be contentious (I am not asking to delete any of these, only rename them to match), I have consolidated them into a single nomination at the request of an admin, to reduce the number of closing actions that will need to be performed.

Category:User mnl and subcats[edit]

Propose Rename to Category:User dum. Apply same to Category:User mnl-3, and Category:User mnl-4.

Nominator's rationale: These categories are for speakers of Middle Dutch, which is assigned the ISO 639-3 classification of "dum". ("mnl" is the ISO 639-3 classification for the Pacific Island language of Tiala, which doesn't have an article.) Suggest renaming to conform to ISO 639 classification convention. Would also suggest pulling it out of Category:User nl, where it was hidden. It has its own ISO 639 classification, so it should be at the same level as Dutch. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User kb and subcat[edit]

Propose Rename to Category:User krc. Apply same to Category:User kb-N.

Nominator's rationale: These categories are for speakers of Karachay-Balkar, which is assigned the ISO 639-3 classification of "krc". ("kb" is not a valid ISO 639 classification.) Suggest renaming to conform to ISO 639 classification convention. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User cj[edit]

Propose Rename to Category:User chn.

Nominator's rationale: This category is for speakers of Chinook Jargon, which is assigned the ISO 639-3 classification of "chn". ("cj" is not a valid ISO 639 classification.) Suggest renaming to conform to ISO 639 classification convention. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User ma and subcats[edit]

Propose Rename to Category:User arz. Apply same to Category:User ma-1, Category:User ma-2, Category:User ma-3, Category:User ma-4, and Category:User ma-N.

Nominator's rationale: These categories are for speakers of Egyptian Arabic (Masri), which is assigned the ISO 639-3 classification of "arz". ("ma" is not a valid ISO 639 classification.) Suggest renaming to conform to ISO 639 classification convention. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose renaming. WP:Babel is meant to be an informal system for Wikipedia purposes. Almost all the languages listed use a descriptive 2-letter code. "Ma" is much more descriptive than a 3-letter code that starts with "ar", which would encompass more than 20 varieties. I see no need to complicate something simple and concise into something more ambiguous. In other words, no one would intuitively know that "arz" stands for Masri/Egyptian Arabic, whereas it's easier to see that "en" corresponds to English for example. — Zerida 02:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Actually, Category:Wikipedians by language contains approximately 100 categories with three-letter combinations, and the vast majority of them use the ISO 639-3 standard (The two letter combinations are almost all covered by ISO 639-1). The ones I have suggested to change are ones that either are improperly categorized under the code for another language or using a code that does not exist under the ISO classfication system. "ma" is not particularly intuitive when looking for a speaker of Egyptian Arabic (which is where "Masri" redirects). And while it is true that there are other classification systems in existence (as you point out in another rebuttal), I am not aware of any system that uses "ma" for Masri, or "lk" for Lakota, or "ly" for Libyan Arabic. The ISO 639 system is the recognized standard for linguistic classification (see ISO), which is used by SIL, and there is no compelling reason to have categories that do not match with the internationally acknowledged standard. Horologium t-c 03:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Actually, Category:Wikipedians by language contains approximately 100 categories Which points to the fact that the majority use 2- rather than 3-letter codes. 3-letter codes are usually substituted in cases where a 2-letter code is already in use, and further disambiguation is required. In this case, however, no further disambiguation is needed when there is a perfectly useable and pertinent code available. It would be required if "ar" were to be used, which is why it is not necessary. While 639 may be one of a number of international standards, it is not required for the purposes of WP:Babel in the way that, for example, IPA is the transcription standard on Wikipedia. Therefore, saying that they are "improperly categorized" is presupposing that this is how they must be categorized, which they don't. There is, however, precedent to keep things simple in an otherwise informal system made for user- rather than mainspace. — Zerida 04:11, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename per nom and per my comments in the section for "lk"/"lak" (Lakota). There are too many other languages that "ma" could be confused for. It's better to stick to one defined standard (in this case, ISO 639). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:13, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User ly and subcats[edit]

Propose Rename to Category:User ayl. Apply same to Category:User ly-1, Category:User ly-2, Category:User ly-3, Category:User ly-4, and Category:User ly-N.

Nominator's rationale: These categories are for speakers of Libyan Arabic, which is assigned the ISO 639-3 classification of "ayl". ("ly" is not a valid ISO 639 classification.) Suggest renaming to conform to ISO 639 classification convention. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename to conform to international standards, the best way to ensure consistency. -- Prove It ^(talk) 13:00, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose renaming per my comment above, and also the SIL three-letter coding system is not the only international standard. There are other systems. — Zerida 02:44, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment see my response above, which addresses the classification issue; it's not SIL's system, it's the ISO system that SIL uses. Horologium t-c 03:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Responded above. I mentioned SIL because that's where the codes in the language infoboxes would always link to [1]. — Zerida 04:15, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename per nom and per my comments in the section for "lk"/"lak" (Lakota). It's better to stick to one defined standard (in this case, ISO 639). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:13, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User lk and subcats[edit]

Propose Rename to Category:User lak. Apply same to Category:User lk-1, Category:User lk-2, and Category:User lk-3.

Nominator's rationale: These categories are for speakers of Lakota, which is assigned the ISO 639-3 classification of "lak". ("lk" is not a valid ISO 639 classification.) Suggest renaming to conform to ISO 639 classification convention. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename all six categories, as nominator. Horologium t-c 12:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose renaming per my comments in the above two categories. — Zerida 02:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment See my above response. Horologium t-c 03:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename all per nom. Despite Zerida's comments, I think that the best way to ensure ease of navigation is through standardisation. The use of multiple standards can only lead to confusion. For instance, I would have thought that "lk" had something to do with Sri Lanka (there's no Sri Lankan language, but .lk is the ccTLD of the country). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:13, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The same argument can be made for "arz" though; i.e., if I wasn't already familiar with this classification system (and most people aren't), I might think it had something to do with Azeri. — Zerida 19:33, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's true. But similarly "ma" could be confused with Macedonian, Malay, Manchurian, Mandarin, or any one of the several dozen languages that start with "Ma" listed at List of languages. That's why I agree with Horologium that standardisation is useful. It introduces clarity and leaves no room for dozens of different interpretations. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Not to mention Morocco. "ma" is the ccTLD for Morocco, which has its own version of Arabic (ary), which is not yet listed in Category:Wikipedians by language. Horologium t-c 23:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Most of the languages mentioned by Black Falcon have their own codes listed at WP:Babel#M and Category:Wikipedians by language. But all this says is that there will always be a multitude of possibilities. In other words, if there is room for confusion either way, it is not sufficient reason to change a code that has been working well for the last 2 years to something with which most people are not familiar. A better argument to me, however, would be changing it to something that is equally or more intuitive; for example, in the case of Egyptian Arabic, something like "ea" or "ega" makes sense, as that would help provide ease of navigation (as opposed to "arz"). In the case of Lakota, "lk" to "lak" is not a huge change, although I think sticking to 2-letter codes whenever possible is ideal, also to avoid clutter on the user templates. After all, people are probably more interested in the template than the category. — Zerida 00:02, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • You wrote: "there is room for confusion either way". Still, there is difference between adopting an official internationally-accepted standard and trying to make up our own codes based on what we think sounds intuitive. I think that the latter will only cause more confusion. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:32, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • Confusion for whom, the vast majority of users who have no knowledge of ISO 639? Also, 639 is an international standard, not necessarily internationally accepted. — Zerida 00:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
            • You're right. ISO 639 is internationally available, not necessarily accepted. Still, I think more people will be aware of it (or be able to easily find out about it) than a standard that we invent. In addition, if all of the categories follow ISO 639, the category system becomes predictable, whereas that predictability is lost if we interject our personal naming conventions into various parts of the system. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:56, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
              • Indeed, BF, you have maintained that switching to ISO would make it essentially easier to find, but I have yet to see evidence that this would be the case. On the other hand, I think it is quite clear that "arz" and "ayl" are not predictable for Egyptian and Libyan Arabic. It seems counterintuitive to switch to something more ambiguous -- the templates on the user pages don't link to SIL. And as I mentioned, ISO 639 is not an MoS guideline like WP:IPA. — Zerida 01:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
                • I'm not sure what kind of evidence you would like. My contention is that checking 2- or 3-letter codes against an established standard is easier than trying to determine the meanings of codes invented by various users. When I wrote that standardisation makes the system predictable, I didn't mean to imply "predictable at first glance". Rather, I meant that it would become easy to decipher the language codes given the existence of a codebook of sorts. Finally, ISO 639 may not be a WP:MOS guideline, but ISO codes appear on the infobox for every language article (see Template:Infobox Language). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 01:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
                  • I'm aware of that and have already mentioned it in one of my responses to Horologium. It's still counterintuitive since one would have to have foreknowledge of the ISO language codes, and know what code corresponds to which language. Most users, of course, don't know that "arz" stands for Egyptian Arabic, there is hardly a connection. This will make it more difficult to find, not the other way around. It is also still important to point out that ISO classification is not an MoS guideline, therefore its preference over another system cannot be made on that basis. Something like that would need wider community consensus, which IPA has. — Zerida 02:14, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
                    • Yes, I might not know off-hand that "arz" stands for Egyptian Arabic but, if the categories are standardised, at least I'll know where to look. If necessary, we can add a description to the category page stating that all codes correspond to ISO 639 codes, with links to the lists of ISO codes (e.g. List of ISO 639-1 codes). That way, I won't be confused into thinking that "ma" is one of the 40 or so languages starting with "Ma" listed at List of languages by name#M. To me, a consistent/standardised navigation system is inherently more intuitive and user-friendly than an inconsistent patchwork where every creator gets to make up a personal language code. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:38, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
            • The discussion is getting a bit circular, since we've already mentioned that for nearly every language with a certain code, there is a corresponding one with which it can easily be confused. Also, these templates are meant for speakers of the language, who are likely to search for codes that more closely correspond with the name of the language. Most ISO codes probably do, but many others don't. I would agree in principle with having a standard system, but as I said, the question of which one to use needs wider community consensus. I do not agree that ISO 639 is "inherently" intuitive -- I happen to find it quite obtuse at times, if the examples above are any indication. No one code will be perfect given the inevitable overlap, but "ma" is certainly more descriptive and less confusing than the 25 codes starting with "ar", and the 100+ codes starting with "a". At least, most of these actually have something to do with one or more of the names of the languages. At the end, we are talking about userspace here, which means users can always make up a template for personal rather than general use. I think this will likely be the case if we make it harder it find, so that would defeat the purpose of standardization. — Zerida 03:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
              • I guess we'll have to agree to disagree since this seems to be partly a matter of personal style. I find it more intuitive to work by a single, fixed standard than to attempt to connect made-up codes with actual languages based on similarities which not everyone may recognise. The advantage of a single standard is that it is fixed and objective; user-created codes are not. On your final point, editors can create any personal template they like (in userspace), but that nearly unlimited freedom does not extend to the category namespace. That is, they are free to create any template they like, but they are not free to append categories to all of them. So, your concern can be addressed by deleting and merging (i.e. standardising) any redundant categories. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 04:04, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
                • I'm OK with agreeing to disagree of course, but I should point out that I haven't been arguing we should not have a standard. It's a question of whether ISO is the right one. As far as the categories are concerned, they seem to have been merely an extension of the language user templates, since one is automatically added to the category if one adds the template on her/his userpage. Category:User en, for example, was created only after Template:User en was created. The categories themselves don't have to correspond to ISO, but maybe this could be a launch point to have a standardized system become part of MoS. — Zerida 04:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
                  • The only reason I support standardising per ISO 639 is that it seems to be the most commonly used on Wikipedia. Also, most of the other language categories seem to conform to it. What alternate standard do you have in mind? You do bring up an interesting point ... if the categories are to be renamed, it could be beneficial to also rename their corresponding templates. That would further the goal of standardisation and also reduce the potential for confusion. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 15:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
                    • From a purely linguistic value, I have few qualms about ISO 639, but my concern here is again the fact that most users are not familiar with it and there is already enough complaining about the use of IPA on Wikipedia (though the anti-IPA arguments are not usually reasonable IMO). This language order poll might be relevant to this discussion. Most respondents seem to be split between those who support ordering using a two-letter ISO code and those who prefer using the local name of the language for the alphabetizing scheme. In terms of user-friendliness, I would choose the latter and it appears that this is the de facto ordering system for InterWiki links. I do appreciate the merits of using an international standard, just don't know if it's necessary for userspace categories. — Zerida 02:01, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
                      • I can certainly understand your preference. I have one comment, though. After looking through Category:Wikipedians by language some more, it seems to me that the absolute majority of categories follow the ISO 639-1 codes (de, en, fr, fi, fy, lt) and that the majority of the remainder adhere to ISO 639-3. If so, the 6 categories nominated deviate from a rather well-established norm since, for the most part, categories do not seem to be named based on how they sound: Gileki has the code "glk" rather than "gil", Neapolitan has the code "nap" rather than "nea", and Gheg Albanian has the code "aln" rather than "ghe" or "gha" or "gal". And there are many more examples. Thus, although ISO may not be a MOS-mandated standard, it seems to enjoy de facto prominence (at least in language articles and user categorisation). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 03:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(outdent) There were a total of nine renames that I have found (I added two more tonight, and am debating how to handle the last), and a few more that are non-ISO for deletion (I'll add them tomorrow evening). That is out of 273 categories in Category:Wikipedians by language, which argues extremely strongly that the ISO classifications are the standard. Of course, the banner at the top of the Category:Wikipedians by language page reads Most of these are identified by short ISO 639 names, but we'll ignore that for now and just work with the numbers we have. Horologium t-c 04:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We would have to I suppose, since the issue centers mainly around those languages which don't have short ISO 639 names, hence the need for disambiguation. Of course, I wish there had been 639-3 codes that were not as ambiguous for these languages. The codes can also be contradictory at times -- one of your examples, Black Falcon, Neapolitan, has the code "nap" because it more closely corresponds to the native name of the language napulitano. On the other hand, Finnish, whose endonym is suomi, gets the English value "fi". In any event, since this is not an MoS style, maybe we should just leave it as "no consensus"? Otherwise, if userspace language categories are going to more strictly follow ISO classifications, it would be nice to have a more specific MoS guideline to work with. — Zerida 06:38, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't be opposed to incorporating ISO codes into the Manual of Style. However, I'm not sure that it's necessary to create or modify a guideline for only 9 categories. I do agree with you that the 639-3 codes are at times ambiguous but still feel that having a mixed (i.e. unstandardised) system would only be cause for more ambiguity and confusion. Since we all seem to agree that standardisation is beneficial, it's only a matter of choosing a particular standard. Given that over 95% of categories use ISO codes, I think renaming the deviant cases to conform to ISO will, if nothing else, be the least troublesome option. Moreover, if actual practice is any indication of consensus in this case (and it isn't in all cases), then ISO 639 has significant support. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:10, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete both. It appears that users have already been moved to the respective -4 categories. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 12:34, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

These two categories are for -N (native speakers) of languages that are not appropriate targets. I have consolidated them into a single nomination at the request of an admin to reduce the number of required closing actions.

Category:User ang-N[edit]

Propose Delete.

Nominator's rationale: This is a -N category for Old English, a language which has been dead for over 800 years. Anyone who speaks this language as a native language probably doesn't reflect in mirrors, and certainly wouldn't be contributing to Wikipedia. This (apparent) joke category should be deleted. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep there are 5 WPedians in the category, at least some quite active, and they should be asked. Possibly they'll tell us to go ahead & delete it, which would settle the matter. I've asked them.DGG (talk) 02:55, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment How about this CfD, which closed as "delete"? That's grounds for a speedy, if I recall correctly. Additionally, I don't think that any of the users actively intended to have the -N category appended, as all of them are using the "basic" (no number) userbox; there are no users who have the -N userbox on their page. Horologium t-c 03:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Wasn't much of a "debate", and Consensus can change, after all. Neither do I think that this is a "joke" category. However, that said... - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - I think the intention of the category's membership is that they are fluent in Old English, rather than native speakers thereof. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I have been speaking Anglo-Saxon since I can remember, having been taught it by my grandfather... I have more than an advanced grasp of the language, but I am not a 'native' per se... I used it for a lack of a ang-4 box. Best wishes, --It's-is-not-a-genitive 12:01, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename to Category:User ang-4, assuming that someone could create Template:User ang-4. If not, then no opinion. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:00, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I'm not averse to modifying ANY of the templates/userboxen that would be relevant to my nominations. It only takes a few seconds to change each; I could change all of my noms (assuming they are approved) in less than an hour. Changing the templates to match the categories is almost a given, although I admit I hadn't thought about it until now. I would suggest, however, that the category be depopulated prior to the name change, and have the handful of users in the cat select which of the remaining cats to move to (User ang-1, -2, -3, or -4). It's-is-not-a-genitive has already stated that he(?) wishes to belong to ang-4, which can be arranged as well. I will notify the seven users on their talk pages if this is approved. Horologium t-c 17:16, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep - I am a genuine native speaker of anglo-saxon and most celtic and old british languages. It certainly is not a dead language and there is no way on earth it is a dead language - there are (whether represented officially or not) at least several hundread speakers of old english here in England. (GowsiPowsi 01:08, 22 August 2007 (UTC))[reply]

• Comment I can only go by what Wikipedia and other sources say, and they all say that it is extinct, supplanted by Middle English in the 12th century. As to a "native speaker", unless you spoke the language on a daily basis, I doubt that you qualify as a native speaker, and for what it is worth, you list yourself as a native speaker of 20 languages on your userpage, which is ludicrous. You may have a good deal of knowledge of them; you might even be able to contribute to the project in at a near-native level in many of them, but there is absolutely no way that you can be a native speaker of all of them, especially at the ripe old age of 25. Horologium t-c 02:16, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Long live the language of the Anglo-Saxon, which has yet to be destoryed. Dbmoodb 14:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - It seems to me in reading the above comments that this is less about the language in question, and more about a form of nationalism, or some such. If that's the case, such support/oppose categories have been deleted as of late, and this would just be one more. That aside, I seem to recall that we merged the native cats of the programmer lang cats to level 4. I think that would likely be the best solution here, and for other such "dead" languages which survive for scholars and pleasant rememberance only. - jc37 23:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I fully agree. If we can get a consensus to change it to ang-4, I will have no problem. As I noted, I can easily modify the userbox to reflect the change, and we won't need to depopulate the cat, since it appears that a significant portion of the users have weighed in. Horologium t-c 00:15, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Change to ang-4 - fluency and being native in a language are two different things. People can certainly be fluent in it, but there are no native speakers of it. - Koweja 13:41, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment how can most people say there are no native speakers when you are American??

Considering there are some places in England that have been almost completely unchanged since the dark ages, there are native speakers of anglo-saxon.—Preceding unsigned comment added by GowsiPowsi (talk • contribs) 11:47, 23 August 2007

• Comment - Apparently the "base" language template (Template:User ang) was categorising users in both Category:User ang and Category:User ang-N, which is inappropriate. I removed the native inclusion from the template, which apparently emptied the category. The arguements above are moot, since none of the category's members were using a -N template for population (nor were any directly categorised by having the category directly on their user page). If someone would like to create a -N template and include in a -N category using it, then we can restart this discussion. Though I would suggest that a -4 of each be created instead to avoid such a debate (according to the current template, -4 is equivalent to "near-native"). In the meantime, this category may be deleted as empty. (Which I may do later, if noone beats me to it.) - jc37 07:24, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User tokipona-N[edit]

Propose Delete.

Nominator's rationale: This is a -N category for Tokipona, a constructed language first introduced in 2001. It's not going to be a native language for anyone over the age of 8 or so, and as a language of precisely 118 words, it is highly unlikely that anyone will ever be a native speaker of the language, including its creator. While I question the utility of the other cats, I am not proposing their deletion, especially considering the tumultuous history behind the main article for this language. As a side note, someone who is skilled with tweaking userbox templates might consider adding a link to the main article for all of the templates for this language, as there is none at present, only links to the category pages. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete Both, as nom. Horologium t-c 12:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Category:User tokipona-N per nom - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Move users into -4. as an artificial language, there are no native speakers, however people can be fluent in it, so they should be using Category:User tokipona-4 instead. - Koweja 13:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - See my comment above under ang-N for a similar situation. - jc37 07:24, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy Delete - as empty, per WP:CSD#C1. ~Iceshark7 08:49, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was Delete - I very nearly closed this as: Merge/Rename to Category:Wikipedians who speak Bunjevac, which would address all the concerns below, and still retain the cat for Wikipedian use. (I have to mention that it would have been nice if the related article had some references that weren't all in foreign languages, not to mention most of the article's talk page...) Anyway, I'm closing this as delete, mainly because both cats are entirely populated from the same userbox and each resulting category has only (the same) 2 members. - jc37 07:47, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Delete or Merge Category:User bu and Category:User bu-4, to Category:User sr or Category:User hr.

Nominator's rationale: These two cats are for speakers of Bunjevac language, a Latin-alphabet based dialect of Serbian or Croatian spoken in parts of Serbia and Croatia. There is no ISO 639 classification for it, and it holds no official status anywhere. The external link on the Bunjevac language page is to a wordpress-powered blog, so I'm not sure of how much stock should be put into the claims of the article. My first choice would be to delete this pair of cats, but a merge to either Serbian (User sr) or Croatian (User hr) would be acceptable. ("bu" is not a valid ISO 639 classification.) Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or Merge to Category:User sr or Category:User hr as nom. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per 'there is no ISO 639 classification for it, and it holds no official status anywhere'. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:16, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete No ISO code --Biblbroks's talk 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Coment Merging cannot be a legitimate proposal here, when one proposes merge to two or more alternatives. In this case I would count Horologium's vote as a delete. I must emphasize that there can hardly be a consensus on which of the two Serbian or Croatian would be the destination of the proposed merge. --Biblbroks's talk 20:58, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename. Recategorize as needed. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 13:10, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Rename Category:User sv-ros as Category:Wikipedians who play Rövarspråket, as a subcategory of either Category:Wikipedians interested in games or Category:Wikipedians interested in linguistics.

Nominator's rationale: This category is for people who play Rövarspråket, a Swedish language game. It sounds interesting enough, but it's not something that should be in the language category, particularly under Category:Wikipedians by constructed language, which is where it currently resides. Moving it to an appropriate parent category is easy enough, but it should be renamed to eliminate the possibility of it migrating back into the languages category, where it doesn't belong. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename and Move, as nom. My first choice for target cat would be Category:Wikipedians interested in games, as this is a game, but it doesn't fit neatly into any of the established subcats there. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename per nom. Make a subcat of Category:Wikipedians who play language games; which itself should be a subcat of Category:Wikipedians interested in games, and Category:Wikipedians interested in linguistics. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename to Category:Wikipedians who play Rövarspråket and move out of the spoken language super-category. - Koweja 13:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename both to Category:Wikipedians who understand Cockney rhyming slang. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 13:14, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Delete Category:User crs and Category:User crs-4.

Nominator's rationale: These categories are for speakers of Cockney rhyming slang, which is not a language or dialect as such, but rather jargon or slang (thus the name). It may not be intelligible to outsiders, but military jargon, "l337" slang or medical terminology are equally impenetrable, but not languages. There is no ISO 639 classification for it, and "crs" is the classification for Seselwa Creole French, which is spoken in the Seychelles. Should be deleted since it is misnamed and is displacing a valid, Wikipedia-listed language. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, as nom. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename to Category:Wikipedians who understand Cockney rhyming slang ("understand" could be "speak" or "use", or whatever); which should be a subcat of Category:Wikipedians who play language games (described in the nomination above this one). - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per Horologium. I'm not certain that "Cockney rhyming slang" qualifies as a language game. I'm also not convinced that such a category, regardless of where it's placed, would foster collaboration. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:54, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  Per the article Cockney rhyming slang, it's considered a word game. And it's listed on Language game. - jc37 23:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename per jc37. It's not a real language so it shouldn't be presented as one. - Koweja 13:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename all (but delete -N). After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 13:38, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Rename or Delete to Category:User eur. Subcats, if retained, should be renamed as Category:User eur-1, Category:User eur-2, Category:User eur-3, and Category:User eur-4. Category:er-N should be Deleted under any circumstances.

Nominator's rationale: These categories are for speakers of the constructed language Europanto, which was created as a joke by an EU bureaucrat. Shockingly, Ethnologue has an entry for it, and has assigned it the ISO 639-3 classification of "eur". ("er" is not a valid ISO 639 category.) My first instinct is to incinerate it, but I'm willing to accept any valid arguments advanced to retain it. However, it should be renamed to follow the ISO 639-3 naming convention, and the ludicrous -N category should be deleted, as it is not a native language for anyone. <Crossing fingers and hoping we don't end up with the linguistic analogue of the Flying Spaghetti Monster category debate.> Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or Rename, as nom. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename - Seems valid enough. (And thank you for pointing me to the article - an interesting read : ) - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Categories for joke languages need not exist. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 14:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename. It has an ISO 639-2 classification. Delete the silly "native" cat though. — Gwalla | Talk 17:57, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename if it has ISO class, it's fair game for a category, however it should use the ISO name. -N can be deleted as there are no native speakers. - Koweja 13:50, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was merge. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:33, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Merge to Category:User tcy.

Nominator's rationale: This category is for speakers of Tulu, which is assigned the ISO 639-3 classification of "tcy". ("tu" is not a valid ISO 639 classification.) The properly named category is already extant on Wikipedia, so it's a simple merge, as opposed to a rename.Suggest renaming to conform to ISO 639 classification convention. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge, as nom. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• merge as redundant and improperly named. - Koweja 13:51, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete all. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 13:48, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Delete or Merge Category:User ScE, Category:User en-gb-mcr, and Category:User en-gb-tyn to Category:User en-gb.

Nominator's rationale: This grab bag of regional UK dialects is totally unnecessary. Mancunian (which is a redirect to Manchester), Scouse, and Geordie is overkill. Merge them into the main en-gb category or delete them outright, but make them go away. Note that this nomination does NOT include the ISO 639-3 recognized sco (Scots), only the unrecognized local dialects for Manchester, Liverpool, and Newcastle. The Cockney Rhyming Slang cats are also a separate nomination, because of a naming issue with them. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or Merge to Category:User en-gb as nom. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge suggestion stricken, now support outright deletion only, as per jc37. Horologium t-c 20:08, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete per nom. I see no benefit to merging. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:19, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Delete, oppose merging. - While I suppose that they may be useful for directly related articles, or even indirect locational ones, this just doesn't seem like a good idea. jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Delete Category:User Mixed English.

Nominator's Rationale: This is yet another English subcategory that has no real function. To quote the userbox: These users have been influenced by too many dialects of English to use one orthography, vocabulary and grammar consistently. It's vaguely interesting, but not really notable. Like the EFFP, Lazy English and en-oed categories, it doesn't really facilitate collaboration, as it's another category that other users will not search if looking for assistance. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, as nom. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - The userbox is fine (it's an informative notice), the category isn't (except for statistical reasons, and for that, there is "what links here"). - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as a pointless category. - Koweja 13:53, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:46, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Delete Category:User en-oed.

Nominator's Rationale: This is yet another English subcategory that has no real function. To quote the userbox: These users prefer Oxford spelling of the English language. It's vaguely interesting, but not really notable. Like the EFFP, Lazy English and Mixed English categories, it doesn't really facilitate collaboration, as it's another category that other users will not search if looking for assistance. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, as nom. Horologium t-c 23:38, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - another in which a userbox notice is fine, but the category isn't. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as pointless categorization. - Koweja 13:53, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename and depopulate non-subcats. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 13:58, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedians interested in watching sports (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Wikipedia is not ESPN or Eurosport. A category for users interested in watching sports generally is far too broad to be useful in terms of fostering collaboration (putting aside questions over whether merely watching something implies an encyclopedic interest in it). In addition, none of the subcategories seem to have any direct relevance to an interest in watching sports. Please note that this nomination does not extend to any of the subcategories.

• Upmerge all subcategories, remove all userpages, and delete. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:32, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong keep - There are a myriad of articles related to the categories and subcats. Hard to see how this doesn't foster collaboration. (After reading the last line of the nomination, I agree that the category itself should be depopulated, but all the subcats kept.) - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  I just want to clarify one point: do you support upmerging the subcategories? It's not entirely clear where you want the subcats to remain. Thanks, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  After re-reading the category name, I see the confusion. Consider my comments to be appended to include: Rename to Category:Wikipedians who watch sports, since it would be more accurate (and comparable to Wikipedians who read x, Wikipedians who play x, etc.). - jc37 23:19, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  Wouldn't that category be effectively all-inclusive? I think few people never watch any sports. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  The category itself would be empty except for more specific sub-cats. Compare to Category:Wikipedians, Category:Wikipedians by religion, and all the other Wikipedians by x cats. If it didn't sound so awkward, I might have suggested renaming to Wikipedians by watched sport : ) - jc37 09:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 14:06, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:User languages-N (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Note: This nomination also includes Category:User languages-1 (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This is a parent category for categories of native speakers of individual languages, all of which are already categorised elsewhere. It was created in early 2006 to supplement Category:User languages by level, a categorisation scheme that was abandoned a few months later. Categories for other levels were either never created or eventually deleted.

• Delete as overcategorisation. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete both as per nom. I had wondered why these categories existed; my question has been answered. Horologium t-c 16:43, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was Delete - If there was an organised grouping of Wikipedians by car manufacturer (similar to Category:Wikipedians by video game)... But there isn't. No prejudice against the possibility of such a system in the future. - jc37 06:54, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Maruti Users (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This category for users who drive vehicles produced by Maruti Udyog does not foster collaboration. Merely driving a particular type of vehicle implies neither an interest in the subject nor an ability to contribute encyclopedic knowledge about it.

• Delete as nom and per the precedent of deleting Category:Wikipedians who drive cars and its subcategories. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:11, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as per nom. The parent category to which this was added was an odd choice, FWIW. Horologium t-c 13:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was speedy delete per CSD C1 (see diff) and CSD G7 (see User talk:Ryangibsonstewart#Albanian proofreader/translator categories). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:36, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Proofreaders al-en (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Nominator's rationale: This category uses the incorrect ISO 639 code for the Albanian language. I've already boldly created the proper category (Category:Proofreaders sq-en) with the appropriate template to prevent subpage issues. Just making sure there are no unforeseen objections. --- RockMFR 05:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• If I'm not mistaken this belongs at WP:UCFD. Carlossuarez46 18:49, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I decided to include it here since it these cats aren't part of the Category:Wikipedians tree. If you'd like, I can move it over there. --- RockMFR 22:48, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • If they are meant to have user pages in them, I think UCFD is the place. If it's meant to have mainspace articles (people notable for translating Albanian into English, or below vice versa seems unlikely, but I have been wrong before), we can continue it here. I'll let you (and any other passers by) decide that: For the record: whether here or there, I agree with the proposal, and that below. Carlossuarez46 05:35, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Admin note: same as below, moved from CfD.-Andrew c ^[talk] 17:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was speedy delete per CSD C1 (see diff) and CSD G7 (see User talk:Ryangibsonstewart#Albanian proofreader/translator categories). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:37, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Translators al-en (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Nominator's rationale: This category uses the incorrect ISO 639 code for the Albanian language. I've already boldly created the proper category (Category:Translators sq-en) with the appropriate template to prevent subpage issues. Just making sure there are no unforeseen objections. --- RockMFR 05:45, 11 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• If I'm not mistaken this belongs at WP:UCFD. Carlossuarez46 18:49, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Admin note: moved from CfD-Andrew c ^[talk] 17:17, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 14:25, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Delete Category:User EFFP.

Nominator's Rationale: This category is for editors whose "English is Far From Perfect". It's a variation of the LE category, but does not imply the carelessness of that category. Nonetheless, it's not useful for collaboration; there is no reason someone would look through a category for someone with substandard English skills for collaborative efforts. Horologium t-c 02:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, as nom. Horologium t-c 02:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, while there is indeed no reason someone would seek one of these individuals out for collaboration, i can how the category is useful for grouping together those whose edits need perhaps a higher degree of peer review than others. On the other hand, in such cases the people who would really need this category would rarely self-define. Could this category accept members via nomination and consensus? Or could this category be merged to one of the English language level cats? I would probably support that as well. Jdcooper 12:45, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, en-X categories serve this purpose. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. I don't think Jdcooper's proposed use is all that constructive. It would take a significant investment of time to monitor the quality of edits of a particular group of users, time which could probably be better spent elsewhere. The idea of accepting members via nominations seems rather bureaucratic for what amounts to correcting grammatical and spelling errors. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - Another in which the userbox is fine for an informative notice, and which the category is not. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete no reason to categorize. - Koweja 13:58, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete all. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:13, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Delete Category:User LE and its subcats Category:User LE-2, Category:User en-L-1, Category:User en-L-3, Category:User en-L-4, Category:User en-L-5, and Category:User en-L-X.

Nominator's rationale: These cats are "Lazy English" cats, for those who can't be bothered with the niceties of grammar such as spelling and punctuation. They do nothing to further collaboration, and indirectly encourage a lack of editing standards. Horologium t-c 02:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, as nom. Horologium t-c 02:00, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per nom. I thought all these fake language categories were cleaned up ages ago. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 17:44, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all - and yet another in which the userbox is fine, but the category is not. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete all. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 14:29, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Delete or Merge Category:User SoE, Category:User SoE-N, Category:User NE, Category:User NYC en, Category:User en-us-ca, Category:User AmE-CVS, Category:User en-ap-1, Category:User en-ap-2, Category:User en-ap-3, Category:User en-ap-4, Category:User en-ap-5, and Category:User en-ap-N to Category:User en-us.

Nominator's rationale: This grab bag of regional US dialects is totally unnecessary. New England, New York City, Californian English (two different cats!) and 6 separate cats for Appalachian English is overkill. Merge them into the main US category or delete them outright, but make them go away. Horologium t-c 01:51, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete or Merge to Category:User en-us, as nom. Horologium t-c 01:51, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Merge suggestion stricken, as per argument presented by jc37 and seconded by Black Falcon. No longer support merger, just deletion. Horologium t-c 20:05, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete (first choice) or merge (second choice) per nom. The usefulness of the Babel cats lies solely in the fact that they can assist translation. However, since the different variants of English are mutually comprehensible (especially in written form), separate categories and separate levels are not justified. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've stricken my suggestion to merge per Jc37's comment below. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:48, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep There are dialect uses and forms and these will help find people who can deal with them, even though full translation is not usually required. The argument given might be OK for a partial merge tofthe different number levels for each dialect. DGG (talk) 03:14, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Different dialects of American English are mutually comprehensible, especially in written form, and no translation is required. Given the similarity, I don't believe there is anything to "deal with". — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 03:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, and oppose merge, as it's not what the users intended, and would be superfluous. Delete for the same reasons as the British dialect cats above. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, English is English. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 11:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was upmerge all. Note that the 2 Aboriginal categories are unused and they can always be changed later. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 14:39, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose Merge Category:User en-au-1, Category:User en-au-2, Category:User en-au-3, Category:User en-au-4, Category:User en-au-5, Category:User en-au-A, Category:User au-N, and Category:User en-au-N to Category: User en-au.

Nominator's rationale: This category really doesn't need to be babelized. It's nothing more than a dialect of English (not an ISO-659 recognized one at that), and merging them into one category will be sufficient to note that the editor uses Australian English. There is a severe overduplication of categories (which I made easier to see by moving some of the cats around into one parent category. I'd like to delete the whole category outright, but I don't think such a proposal would be supported by the community as a whole. Horologium t-c 01:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge, as nom. Horologium t-c 01:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Category:User au-N should not be included here as it is a category for speakers of an Australian Aboriginal language. I note another category for the same purpose was removed. I agree about merging the others. --Bduke 04:50, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also see that Category:User en-au-A has a userbox on the category page that talks about "Aboriginal English" and I see that the one you removed from the nomination Category:User au is populated by a userbox that also populates one of the Australian English categories. This is a complete mess. I suggest that Category:User au-N and Category:User en-au-A be merged into Category:User au and when it is all done, we have a go at cleaning up the various userboxes. --Bduke 05:10, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete all, including Category:User au, except Category:User au-N. The usefulness of the Babel cats lies solely in the fact that they can assist translation. However, since the different variants of English are mutually comprehensible (especially in written form), separate categories and separate levels are not justified. Any categories for dialects of English ought to be deleted. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:30, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge per nom. Lankiveil 03:06, 18 August 2007 (UTC).[reply]
• Merge per nom. Separate country, comparable to US, UK, etc variant cats. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge per nom. We could still do with one cat, not for translation, but to assist in community-isms. Giggy ^Talk 07:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all excluding none. Nonexistent ISO code for any. --Biblbroks's talk 21:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all per Biblbroks ^demon^{[omg plz]} 11:47, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - Not that it matters, I suppose, but I'm wondering why this wasn't included with the other "national" dialects of English below. Accidental oversight? - jc37 09:42, 25 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was merge each group as nominated. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 03:28, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(These were originally nominated separately, but at the request of an admin, I have consolidated them into a single group to reduce the number of required closing actions. I have not included the Australian group, as its comments differ substantially from the rest of the cats.)

These cats are all "national" dialects of English, spoken by inhabitants of entire countries. None of them have ISO 639 classifications, because they are all essentially the same language. As noted in my rationales for each, I'd prefer to delete them outright, but do not believe that such a proposition has sufficient community support at this time. As such, I am simply suggesting merging them into a single category for each country.

Category: User en-gb subcats[edit]

Propose Merge Category:User en-gb-1, Category:User en-gb-2, Category:User en-gb-3, Category:User en-gb-4, Category:User en-gb-5 and Category:User en-gb-N to Category: User en-gb.

Nominator's rationale: This category really doesn't need to be babelized. It's nothing more than the mother form of English (not an ISO-659 recognized separate language), and merging them into one category will be sufficient to note that the editor uses British English. I'd like to delete the whole category outright, but I don't think such a proposal would be supported by the community as a whole. Horologium t-c 01:40, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge per nom. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge per nom. --Biblbroks's talk 21:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category: User en-Ire subcats[edit]

Propose Merge Category:User en-Ire-N and Category:User Irish English to Category: User en-Ire.

Nominator's rationale: This category really doesn't need to be babelized. It's nothing more than a dialect of English (not an ISO-659 recognized one at that), and merging them into one category will be sufficient to note that the editor uses Irish English. I'd like to delete the whole category outright, but I don't think such a proposal would be supported by the community as a whole. It might also be a good idea to rename the category as Category:User en-ie (spelling and capitalization) to match the convention used by the rest of the cats in the parent. Horologium t-c 01:36, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge per nom. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category: User en-ca subcats[edit]

Propose Merge Category:User en-ca-1, Category:User en-ca-2, Category:User en-ca-4, and Category:User en-ca-N to Category: User en-ca.

Nominator's rationale: This category really doesn't need to be babelized. It's nothing more than a dialect of English (not an ISO-659 recognized one at that), and merging them into one category will be sufficient to note that the editor uses Canadian English. I'd like to delete the whole category outright, but I don't think such a proposal would be supported by the community as a whole. Horologium t-c 01:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge per nom. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category: User en-sg subcats[edit]

Propose Merge Category:User en-sg-1, Category:User en-sg-2, Category:User en-sg-3, Category:User en-sg-4, and Category:User en-sg-N to Category: User en-sg.

Nominator's rationale: This category really doesn't need to be babelized. It's nothing more than a dialect of English (not an ISO-659 recognized one at that), and merging them into one category will be sufficient to note that the editor uses Singaporean English (Singlish). I'd like to delete the whole category outright, but I don't think such a proposal would be supported by the community as a whole. Horologium t-c 01:18, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category: User en-us subcats[edit]

Propose Merge Category:User en-us-1, Category:User en-us-2, Category:User en-us-3, Category:User en-us-4, Category:User en-us-5 and Category:User en-us-N to Category: User en-us.

Nominator's rationale: This category really doesn't need to be babelized. It's nothing more than a dialect of English (not an ISO-659 recognized one at that), and merging them into one category will be sufficient to note that the editor uses American English. I'd like to delete the whole category outright, but I don't think such a proposal would be supported by the community as a whole. Horologium t-c 01:15, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge all, as nom. Horologium t-c 01:15, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete (first choice) or merge (second choice) per nom. The usefulness of the Babel cats lies solely in the fact that they can assist translation. However, since the different variants of English are mutually comprehensible (especially in written form), separate categories and separate levels are not justified. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 17:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge per nom. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 04:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose renaming Category:Wikipedians who listen to Swing to Category:Wikipedians who listen to swing music

Nominator's rationale: To fix capitalisation and because "Wikipedians who listen to swing" just doesn't sound ... right. Meh. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:45, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename as per nominator. A swing is a child's toy whereas swing music is a valid genre, SqueakBox 19:21, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Rename per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (precision). - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 04:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose renaming Category:Wikipedians who listen to Doom Metal to Category:Wikipedians who listen to doom metal

Nominator's rationale: To fix capitalisation. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:30, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy Rename - per nom (caps). - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete all. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 03:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename Category:Wikipedians who play the game Xevious to Category:Wikipedians who play Xevious
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who play Black & White (computer game) to Category:Wikipedians who play Black & White
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who play the Tony Hawk's Underground Series to Category:Wikipedians who play the Tony Hawk's Underground series
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who play The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series to Category:Wikipedians who play the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series

• The first two should be renamed to standardise their titles. The latter two have issues with capitalisation. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:47, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note: Though I hadn't considered it at the time of my nomination, I do not object to deletion. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:45, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, playing a particular video game does not lend oneself to collaboration. I play Super Mario, doesn't mean I can write good Super Mario articles. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 12:39, 9 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, hardly endorsing collaborative writing. –sebi 10:57, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 10:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete,per Spebi. themcman1 _talk 13:07, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as cant see how it makes for a better encyclopedia, SqueakBox 19:22, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Each category is useful only for a single article; the sentiment can be expressed through a userbox. Horologium t-c 13:59, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Keep, though Speedy Rename per nom. We have articles on the above, and I would strongly disagree with the idea that experiencing a game means that you'd have nothing to contribute to an article about the game. You may know the creator's name, or when the game was released. This could help you with an online search for references about the game, and so on. Part of the point of "experience-based" user cats is exactly the enhanced ability for research and proofreading and so on. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was merge. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 03:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest merging Category:Wikipedians who read sci-fi to Category:Wikipedians who read science fiction

Nominator's rationale: The scope of the categories is identical and the title of the latter conforms to the convention used for naming similar categories (e.g. Category:Wikipedians who read alternate history fiction and Category:Wikipedians who read detective fiction). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 20:18, 8 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Seems logical, captain. Octane ^{[improve me]} 09.08.07 2035 (UTC)
• Support suggestion. –sebi 10:57, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, Delete, Delete. If you're going to get rid of all the Wikipedians by Fraternity/Sorority, you cannot possibly justify keeping Wikipedians who read sci-fi or anything else similar. WP:NOT#MYSPACE - Otto42 13:58, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. See WP:WAX. AgentPeppermint 15:01, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Nonsense. WP:WAX does not mean that WP:NOT#MYSPACE does not apply here as well, for the exact same reasons that it applied to the one I referenced. How exactly does this category existing for wikipedians endorse collaborative writing of an encyclopedia? - Otto42 17:06, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. WP:WAX and other similar arguments are excuses not to think or make a logical argument.--WaltCip 17:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete along with all other child categories of Category:Wikipedians interested in books. Reading a particular author or genre does not lend itself to contribution. Don't most American high school students read Poe? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:29, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

---

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 10:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep and merge Science-fiction is a broad genre and some would say a sub-culture of its own. Users who read science-fiction would be able to collaborate on a wide number of articles, not just book-related either (genre-wide). Collaborative potential is obvious.--Ramdrake 16:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • But shouldn't the two be merged? — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:28, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sorry, absolutely, changed my input accordingly.--Ramdrake 16:36, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge, as per nom. Do not support deletion of this cat. This is an appropriate category—clearly focused, yet not too narrow to frustrate collaboration. Horologium t-c 20:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge, definitely, as described. In response to ^demon's earlier comment, I have to say that most high school students do, in fact, read Poe. For most of them, however, reading Poe in class is their first and last encounter with that author. Few have already been reading Poe for several years, and few continue reading Poe afterwards, let alone remember any of it ten years later. Note that the categories in question, however, are not titled Wikipedians who have read <whatever>. They are titled Wikipedians who read <whatever>. They refer to an active interest. As such, they are likely to attract users who have or know of resources related to those authors and genres. — Bigwyrm _{watch me}^{wake me} 08:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to the longer form, per nom. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was rename all. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 03:27, 22 August 2007 (UTC) [reply]

• Rename Category:Black and white photographers to Category:Wikipedian black and white photographers
• Rename Category:Color photographers to Category:Wikipedian color photographers
• Rename Category:Sepia photographers to Category:Wikipedian sepia photographers

User categories should always include "User" or "Wikipedian" in their titles, lest they be confused with categories for articles. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 02:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename, per nom. themcman1 _talk 13:15, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename, as per nom. Another set of renames that should not be controversial. Horologium t-c 20:01, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy Rename per nom. - jc37 11:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 01:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedians who like red foxes (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

WP:NOT#MYSPACE. This is a category populated by a userbox that reads: "This user likes Red foxes." Merely liking a particular species does not imply either an encyclopedically-relevant interest in, above-average knowledge of, or access to sources about the subject. Consider also the fact that most people will have a liking to one or more creatures (I personally could easily list dozens of species and subspecies that I "like").

• Delete as nom and per precedent. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:46, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Who doesnt like red foxes? Well, chickes and other vermin I guess, SqueakBox 00:52, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Does not facilitate collaboration. The userbox is sufficient to note the appreciation. Horologium t-c 20:00, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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

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The result of the debate was delete all. The arguments to keep have not proven collaborative value. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 01:44, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedians by year of birth (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Note: This nomination also includes all subcategories:

Note: I have left a note with AMbot requesting that these 40 categories be tagged.

WP:NOT#MYSPACE and the category namespace is not appropriate for flushing out/supporting personal user profiles. These categories do not foster collaboration and are no more useful than the Wikipedians by generation and Wikipedians in their xxs categories that were recently deleted at CFD (a closure that was upheld at deletion review).

Given that Wikipedians come from so many national, religious, social, and other backgrounds, age cannot inform us about editors' interests. As far as access to sources, the connection is equally tenuous. Access to sources depends on so many other, more important factors. Take profession, for instance. A 70-year-old university professor is more likely to have access to an online journal than a tech-savvy 20-year-old who works in a fast food restaurant. A 20-year-old librarian is more likely to have access to the 1963 issue of a magazine than a 50-year-old construction worker. In addition to profession, there is also nationality, socioeconomic status, place of residence, and topical interest (which is unrelated to age).

A user category is only useful if someone might conceivably browse through it with the intent of contacting someone in the category to ask a question or suggest collaboration on a topic. These categories cannot be useful in that respect. How would you approach someone?

"Hello, you say that you were born in the 50s ... would you like to work on nuclear holocaust? I promise it'll be a blast."

"Dude, you were born in the 60s ... do you have access to any (sources on) cocaine?"

"Hey ... do you, as someone born in the 80s, want to collaborate on terrorism?"

"Yo, you were born in the 90s ... do you want to improve internet pornography?"

In short, I do not believe these categories hold any value, discounting that which may be artificially ascribed to them through stereotyping with regard to interest or what amounts to a hit-and-miss (mostly miss) attempt to connect age with access to sources.

• Delete all as nom. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 00:19, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Very Strong Keep All except Category:Wikipedians born in the 1990s and Category:Wikipedians born before 1950 which should be separated out so we have one for every year from 1907 onwards)) I'm a deletionist and this cool category IMO should absolutely be kept. Age is the mark of a person and while that may not fit comfortably with many of our our younger users I am putting it on my user page right now. But lets to keep it to adults, SqueakBox 00:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think deletionism has anything to do with it. I'm not a deletionist, but still I started this nomination. In any case, deletion of these categories will not suppress expressions of age; it will not result in the deletion of any userboxes or contextualised statements of age. People can readily express their age on their userpages ... what's the need for the categories? Why would anyone look for people of a specific age? — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 01:06, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Its my birthday so age is on the agenda and I would actually use it to look to see how old someone is ie I'd look at the user page not the category, and if it were used by enough people it could be a superb tool as IMO age counts The possibility of it working is enough reason to keep it. I mention my deletionist tendencies cos I have begun to go through bits of this list from time to time always voting delete at deletable categories and I think this has been my first keep! SqueakBox 01:13, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Happy birthday! As for the categories, that's part of my point ... one would look at a specific userpage to find out the age of a specific user. One wouldn't look through a category to find any person of a certain age. I think the idea of using the categories for statistical purposes (age counts) may have merit, but am wary of the reliability of any statistical results, given that inclusion in the category is voluntary and may not be representative of the actual Wikipedia population. Cheers, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 01:31, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Very Strong Delete per nom. Black Falcon is right, why would anyone want to browse for someone in an age group to be collaborative? ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:02, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Very Strong Keep. Sometimes we like to reach out to Wikipedians in a certain age group, recently senior citizens. This has proven useful to us in the past. This might not make a difference to youngsters, but those of us over 40 appreciate knowing that there's others our age on board. Cary Bass ^demandez 20:34, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Absolutely my thought, SqueakBox 19:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • When did you reach out to senior citizens? I am the only person in Category:Wikipedians born before 1950 and I'm not sure I want to be reached out to as a senior citizen, although I see no harm in these categories. I have no strong views on this proposal. --Bduke 23:36, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I modified my initial statement to say delete the before 1950's and replace with one for every year from 1907 onwards, the idea that people older than 57 are somehow odd in wikipedia let alone senior citizens gives a bad impression, SqueakBox 19:20, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I created that one after the generation categories were deleted. I recall there were some by decade going back to the 1930s, and again I was the only editor in the 1930s category. Categories by year will mostly be empty. I am changing my neutral view and moving to delete. They serve no real purpose. --Bduke 23:04, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep with note. Regardless of the usefulness of these categories, having someone's decade category deleted is going to demoralize the users who use this, and quite frankly we've lost enough good editors lately. Let them keep something. I know it's just an emotional appeal, but please just leave this one be? Part of the problem with "Wikipedians in their xxs" was that they'd have to change them often, this does not apply with these categories. ~Kylu (u|t) 20:48, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • The same (actually, a stronger version) could be said for articles. Someone who writes an article only to see it deleted will also be demoralised, but that alone is not a good reason to keep articles. The difference is that an article requires an investment of time and creative effort, whereas a user category takes seconds to create and is a minor thing that appears at the bottom of one's userpage. I have a hard time imagining that anyone has such a strong connection to a short string of characters on their userpage. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:17, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Aye, but in the articles, end-users are going to see them. They get replicated and examined and relied upon for information. User categories are inherently of no interest to the passing reader who merely wants information. I'm afraid I'm an inclusionist where userspace is concerned, and a deletionist where poorly made articles are. Go fig. ~Kylu (u|t) 17:26, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm not quite a userspace deletionist (I think I'm fairly selective in my nominations) but, in the end, I just don't see a purpose to these categories except to flush out user profiles. That type of use of non-userspace pages falls under WP:NOT#MYSPACE, since it does nothing that could not be done by a simple typed statement or userbox. A category is useful only if someone would need to browse through it. What reason is there to browse through these categories? An editor might want to know someone's age, but for that they would go to the userpage; they would not look for every person of a certain age. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep if you're going to delete this category, why have user categories at all? - Diceman 15:59, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, because other user categories (like the ones for profession, interest, place of residence, Wikipedia collaboration, and language ... that's about 2700 already) actually foster collaboration. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:09, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment This absolutely helps to foster collaboration, IMO, SqueakBox 19:25, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • How do these categories foster collaboration? What relationship does age have with knowledge of a subject, interest in a subject, or access to sources about a subject? — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:48, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as they are not helpful and they may encourage age discrimination. MessedRocker (talk) 18:11, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Against who? Younger people by older people? Older people by younger people? Seems a weak argument to me, SqueakBox 19:25, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy delete (and listify if you must). This is not the purpose of categories. The length of this discussion is quite depressing given the obviousness of the issue. -- Cat ^chi? 18:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
  • On a second thought this does not harm anyone (no one can argue that it is disruptive) and I do not see any real problem with it. One mans garbage is another's treasure I suppose. -- Cat ^chi? 18:43, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
    • It's not actively disruptive, but I would argue that it causes some harm in terms of encouraging the MySpace-style use of categories. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 21:04, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all per nomination. No collaborative value. "Not harming anyone" is no reason to keep something like this around. --Kbdank71 19:03, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all. We don't need this kind of useless rubbish in category space. --Tony Sidaway 19:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Commnet Why is knowing how old someone is rubbish? (especially when we have so many user cats that really are rubbish), SqueakBox 19:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • In some contexts, knowing somebody's age may be important. A barman needs to know your age, as does a shop keeper if you ask to buy cigarettes, If you use public transport, being able to prove you are under 16 or over 60 may save you money. But I don't find your arguments or Cary's convincing. Kylu makes a plea to keep the categories in case deleting them drives good Wikipedians away, but really if they're that keen on telling everybody how old they are they can put their birthdates on their user pages. --Tony Sidaway 19:36, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Not useful to categorize like this. Black Falcon is absolutely right. --- RockMFR 21:24, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep In my 19 months as a Wikipedian, I participated in only a handful of CfDs, but came to the conclusion that these 40 categories are in need of a fresh approach. As in the case of all Wikipedian categories, they are voluntary—all 463 Wikipedians who added themselves to these categories did so because they obviously wanted to categorize themselves in this manner and in these particular categories. I have never canvassed and am not about to start now, but I wouldn't be surprised if, upon learning of this CfD (with the noted exception of Bduke) the Wikipedians who willingly, voluntarily and deliberately placed themselves in one of these categories, would provide 462 "keep" votes. There are "serious" or "important" categories (Category:Wikipedian mathematicians) and ones that are less so (immediately above this one, Category:Wikipedians who like red foxes), but years of birth (and death [although, obviously, not applicable here]) are not trivia or "MySpace". Of the 16 categories which denote the absence of birth or death information, almost all have have been repurposed to talk pages with the noted exception of Category:Year of birth missing and Category:Year of death missing. The consensus was that these categories elucidated "defining" knowledge about an individual and therefore belonged on article pages. In the case of the categories currently on the chopping block, "only" 463 out of hundreds of thousands of possible Wikipedians chose to add their names, but why should they be deprived of that choice? If a Wikipedian is curious about or wishes to know another Wikipedian born in the same year, is he or she supposed to check countless user pages for an indication of age? Only the fraction of Wikipedians who allow such information to be known, enter their age/year/exact date of birth on their user pages. Finally, since Bduke is alone in the, as he described it, "likely to be sparsely populated" category which he created two-and-a-half weeks ago, and now feels has no further use, I will, with quite proper chronology, add myself to his Category:Wikipedians born before 1950 for the, apparently, brief time that the category has to exist. —Roman Spinner (talk) 07:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think you may be overstating the issue somewhat. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the people who "voluntarily and deliberately placed themselves in one of these categories" did so only because it was available and don't particularly care about the fate of a few characters of text on their userpage. You moreover note that year of birth is a defining feature; however, regardless of whether it is defining or trivial, does the category still not serve the purpose of complementing user profiles? ... A profile which could just as easily be substituted with a few typed words? It is this aspect, rather than the triviality or importance of birth information, that led to my "MySpace" claim. The sole purpose of these categories is to supplement user profiles; they do not categorise and organise articles and do not foster collaboration. I believe that editors should have wide latitude as to what they can do in userspace; however, if the community is to yield to individual preferences outside of userspace, where does it stop? What argument could you bring in to act against the "choice" of those users who like red foxes, who support Mitt Romney, or who like any random person, object or idea? If such MySpace-y categories are not to be retained, I think we ought to follow the objective criterion of collaborative merit rather than attempting to (subjectively) dictate to users which of their expressed attributes are "defining" or "important" and which are not. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 15:39, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • We can appreciate that under the provisions of WP:DEMOCRACY, consensus is sought through logic of argument and persuasion, rather than raw vote count. The first aspect, however, which catches the eye in these discussions are the bold keep and delete votes. By this standard alone, the numbers become an important consideration in the deletion debates. The "objective criterion of collabortative merit" should, indeed, be the overriding factor. It is, of course, far more likely that the 541 users in Category:Wikipedian mathematicians (a category which has lasted 27 months) would collaborate on a project than the 32 users in Category:Wikipedians who like red foxes (a category which has been around for only 4½ months). However, notice would certainly have been taken had at least 10 or 20 of them cast their votes for the retention of their category, but none did. Those fox lovers must have learned about the category's existence during the past 4½ months and will now learn about its demise when it is deleted from their user pages (it is also possible, but unlikely, given that they specifically self-identified as such, that they know about the CfD, but simply don't care). Similarly, as Bduke pointed out, the early year categories are very sparsely populated, especially pre-1960. In fact, nearly 70% of the 463 users in the categories within Category:Wikipedians by year of birth were born in 1980 or after. Moreover, not a single one of the 38 users in Category:Wikipedians born in 1987 (a category which has lasted for 20½ months [since December 12005]) or of the 42 users in Category:Wikipedians born in 1988 (created 18½ months ago) has come forward to defend their categories. In fact, as of this writing, SqueakBox is the only affected user, whose name appears in any of the "year" categories, to cast a "keep" vote. There are, of course obvious reasons for deleting user categories expressing personal hate beliefs and criminal tendencies and, likewise, for keeping one's personal details private. Yet, although a considerable number of users have nonetheless added names, dates, addresses and photographs to their user pages, a category along the lines of Category:Wikipedians whose names and dates are on their user pages would probably be deleted as too reminiscent of MySpace. Ultimately, I still feel these 40 categories should remain because their parent Category:Wikipedians by year of birth is one of only two categories (Category:Wikipedians by ethnicity and nationality is the other) in the larger Category:Wikipedians by birth. No other category, including Category:Wikipedians by user page provides any information about the year of birth or age distribution of users. In fact, looking at the all-encompassing Category:Wikipedians, there is no danger of any MySpace-like categories being allowed to remain for long or, at least, no longer than a few months. We are, in fact, telling users that no personal categories (especially "trivial" ones which usually start with "Wikipedians who like" or political ["Wikipedians who support"]) will be allowed to remain alongside the "established" descriptive categories already in Category:Wikipedians. We should, of course, maintain standards and avoid subjectivity, but one's year of birth, if willingly submitted is, by any objective criterion, a unique and yes, "defining" factor, which should be judged by its uniqueness rather than by being grouped with any other descriptions or attributes. —Roman Spinner (talk) 09:13, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I will reply separately to the points you make:
        • You wrote: "By this standard alone, the numbers become an important consideration in the deletion debates." Not necessarily. The bolded opinions serve the function of ensuring that an individual editor's viewpoint is clearly expressed, but their mere presence does not require them to be actually counted. I regularly close AfD discussions without conducting a precise count of the tally of 'keep's and 'delete's.
        • You wrote: "Those fox lovers must have learned about the category's existence during the past 4½ months and will now learn about its demise when it is deleted from their user pages". More likely, they learned about the existence of the userbox which populates that category (I'm not sure how long it's been around), and will never even notice the deletion of the category.
        • You wrote: "Category:Wikipedians by year of birth is one of only two categories (Category:Wikipedians by ethnicity and nationality is the other) in the larger Category:Wikipedians by birth". Regardless of the outcome of this debate, I intend to nominate Category:Wikipedians by birth for deletion, as I do not agree that "ethnicity" should be placed under it (this has to deal in large part with scholarly disagreements about how ethnic identities are obtained).
        • You wrote: "one's year of birth, if willingly submitted is, by any objective criterion, a unique and yes, 'defining' factor". Even though I would prefer to leave to individuals the judgment of what is or is not a defining attribute for them, I think most will agree that year of birth is a defining characteristic of a person. However, why is it relevant to an encyclopedia? The category namespace is not the appropriate venue for creating user profiles, even if those profiles include "defining" factors. Such a use is the very thing covered under WP:NOT#MYSPACE.
      • You wrote at the beginning that "The 'objective criterion of collabortative merit' should, indeed, be the overriding factor". However, your comment does not further address this point. How do these categories foster collaboration? How is year of birth connected with interest in a subject, knowledge of a subject, or access to sources about a subject? That, and not the population of the categories or their length of existence, determines their usefulness. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:35, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - per WP:BEANS. While I am a strong proponent of WP:AGF, I think that these categories are just waiting to be abused by those wanting to misrepresent something about themselves, in this case "age". I'm intentionally not citing past such examples, or further rationales for the same reason : ) - If kept, still delete the individual years, retaining only the decades. - jc37 21:21, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was Speedy Rename Category:Wikipedians who are Triathletes to Category:Wikipedian triathletes - jc37 21:05, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose renaming Category:Wikipedians who are Triathletes to Category:Wikipedian triathletes

Nominator's rationale: A more efficient formulation (and to fix capitalisation). — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 22:33, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rename as per nom. Could have been a speedy, totally uncontroversial and follows cat naming conventions. Horologium t-c 16:41, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 19:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Wikipedians for anonymous editing (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Note: This nomination also includes Category:Wikipedians against anonymous editing (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs).

Wikipedia is not a battleground and it is counterproductive to encourage the formation of formal factions around points of disagreement. These categories do not foster collaboration and there is no reason someone would need to browse through them. Editors who agree or disagree with a certain practice, policy, or guideline should present their arguments to the community at the appropriate place (usually the process/policy/guideline talk page).

Please note that this discussion is not about censoring dissent or anything of that sort. Editors are welcome to dissent all they want on their userpages and on appropriate discussion pages (the village pump, policy talk pages, user talk pages, and so on).

Please also note precedents for deleting similar categories here, here, here and here. There is also ample precedent for deleting any "support/oppose" and "for/against" categories (see e.g. here, here, here, here and here).

• Delete as nom and per precedent. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 19:34, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as nom. --Bduke 23:39, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per there, there, there and there.--WaltCip 00:17, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - divisive user category. This is just as bad as "users against anonymous editing". --Haemo 01:44, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Both. Divisive categories have no place on Wikipedia when they deal with policy. Horologium t-c 16:39, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.194.67.220 (talk) 01:42:28, August 19, 2007 (UTC)

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The result of the debate was merge #1, rename#2, delete others. No prejudice against renaming others if/as they get used. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 19:31, 19 August 2007 (UTC) [reply]

• Merge Category:Wikipedians who live in Oslo into Category:Wikipedians in Oslo
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Bakersfield to Category:Wikipedians in Bakersfield
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Daytona Beach to Category:Wikipedians in Daytona Beach
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Narva to Category:Wikipedians in Narva
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Plovdiv to Category:Wikipedians in Plovdiv
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Sofia to Category:Wikipedians in Sofia
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Tartu to Category:Wikipedians in Tartu
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Tempe to Category:Wikipedians in Tempe
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Varna to Category:Wikipedians in Varna
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Vila Real to Category:Wikipedians in Vila Real
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Vilnius to Category:Wikipedians in Vilnius
• Rename Category:Wikipedians who live in Wenatchee to Category:Wikipedians in Wenatchee

• Merge / Rename per the convention of Category:Wikipedians by location. None of these categories, except the ones for Bakersfield and Oslo, contain actual users, so it may be worth considering their deletion. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 18:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename Bakersfield and Oslo, Delete the rest, as per nom. If recreated, cats should use proper name; closing admin might consider salting current forms to encourage proper cat name. Horologium t-c 16:37, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was Rename. After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 19:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Propose renaming Category:Wikipedians with Cancer to Category:Wikipedians with cancer

Nominator's rationale: To fix capitalisation. In the past month, this category was nominated for deletion, deleted, and restored at DRV; if it is to stay, let's at least fix the title. — Black Falcon ^(Talk) 16:15, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename, as per nom. I was one who argued for retaining the cat, but the rename is both sensible and non-controversial. Horologium t-c 16:34, 18 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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The result of the debate was Earthlings declare independence. Solar System in turmoil. Have a great day, Black Falcon ^(Talk) 15:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Citizens of Milky Way (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This "cute category" does not enforce a means of collaboration, and is all-inclusive. While highly populated, it serves no ultimate purpose. --WaltCip 02:29, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• Someone just queried me as to whether my rationale "highly populated, it serves no ultimate purpose" addressed the category, or the galaxy itself. I'll leave you Wikiphilosophers to make your own decision on that.

• Agreed, slightly too inclusive. Delete.--Ramdrake 11:59, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. I think it's kinda cute, but yeah, too inclusive. GreenJoe 18:09, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - "Wikipedians who are human". Very pointless MySpace-ism. --Haemo 23:30, 12 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete, obvious. ^demon^{[omg plz]} 13:33, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Besides, if I'm a "citizen," why is it I'm never invited to vote? Milkfish 14:26, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete this nonsense category. Horologium t-c 15:39, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete as meaningless drivel, SqueakBox 17:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. Several million wikipedians could go into this category, and that's too many for a category; it's like having Category:Articles on almost every article. Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 18:53, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
• Speedy delete, this one is obvious, no need to wait. —ptk✰fgs 20:06, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SNOW, anyone?--Ramdrake 19:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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