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Closing Cfds

Hi. I'm not an admin, but would like to lessen your burdens by closing out unambiguous decisions. I'm technically adept, but inexperienced in this area and would love someone talking me along a couple of cases until I get the hang of it. I'm on IRC most of the time so it'd be easier than exchanging messages back and forth. Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 01:07, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Helping out on the backlog

The backlog on these CFD's has gotten very large. I recently became an administrator and would like to help on it but need some help from other administrators whom are more knowledgable of how this process works. Thank you.--Jersey Devil 22:04, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Redundant wording

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Users without accounts and users with new accounts says:

Users without accounts may nominate and comment on proceedings. If they lack edit history, comments and votes from anonymous without accounts and users with new accounts may be discounted. See Wikipedia:Sock puppetry and Wikipedia:Suffrage for details.

And then a couple paragraphs later Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Special notes says:

Anonymous users may nominate and comment on proceedings, just as in Articles for Deletion (AfD). Votes from anonymous or new users may be discounted if they lack edit history. See Wikipedia:Suffrage and Wikipedia:Sock puppetry for details.

Since it's best to have it as short as possible to increase the likelihood that the stuff will actually get read, I propose that we merge the relevant parts of these sections and remove the redundant wording. Objections? delldot | talk 21:03, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Request review of edits possibly related to a CfD

This is a little bit out of the ordinary, but I'm not sure where else to request further opinions on this. Can people watching this page review the following:

Note that currently, the way categories are viewed on Wikipedia, only the subcategories can be shown. It is not possible to see the articles in a subcategory without clicking through to it. The indexes I produced manually are not updatable, but they are alphabetical. The CategoryTree system can't handle categories with more than 200 articles, and you have to manually click many times to explode the category structure into a list of articles, and it does show duplication. Category Intersection will probably make all this moot, but can I ask what is best done about this? In paticular:

Thanks. Carcharoth 23:14, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

In this case Carcharoth has improved the presentation of the category - the structure remains in place as agreed in the cfd and extra value has been added. I am in favour of improvements. roundhouse 16:57, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Unfinished business, half-done job by category movers

Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 November 21,

The result of the debate was merge Category:New Zealand Māori and Category:Māori people to Category:New Zealand Māori people. the wub "?!" 11:05, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

So why did you leave behind a cartegory redirect to a now redlinked page at Category:Maori people? It should now be a category redirect to the new page. Gene Nygaard 23:02, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Because I'm human and occasionally make mistakes. the wub "?!" 19:03, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

A page for each discussion

Why does CFD only have a page for each day. The discussions are typically longer than at AFD when people nominate a whole group and I find it really hard to follow these discussions. If the discussions were moved to a subpage you would be able to watch it on your watchlist. --Maitch 22:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Is it possible to do both? I'm thinking that most CFD's are not controversial, and there is little or no dissent. For these, it is easier to see them all in one place. Perhaps, we could break off any CFD once it passes a certain threshold, such as more than 10 comments, and less than 80% going one way or the other? Or perhaps, just break it off whenever anyone thinks it should be broken off. -- Samuel Wantman 04:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this some more, and in light of some of the discussions further up the page. The process at CFD is getting very time consuming (and sometimes frustrating). Perhaps it could be simplified. Here's what I'm thinking:

While we are at it, I'd like to see the structure of CfD improved so that there is more discussion and less "voting". Perhaps we could use a template like this:

====Category:Anti-Semitic people====

--- etc...

Anyone would be able to add to this template, but the discussion should be limited to discussing which precedent applies, or whether policy should be modified and why. Perhaps each discussion should have a moderator/facilitator. There could be a committee of people who are moderators. The moderators should not take part in the discussion, but they could remove comments that are outside of the framework, duplicate other comments, or go off topic. In most cases facilitation is not needed, but in cases where there is not a clear consensus it would probably help. -- Samuel Wantman 08:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

ZOMG what a backlog!

Hi people, I'm a relatively experienced admin, and I happened to close a few of CfD's recently (e.g. this, which took me over an hour to untangle) and I noticed the backlog. However, not being very experienced with CfDs, I learned the bitter side that it takes a lot of time to move or merge a category, thus the backlog is humongous. I'd like to put a helping hand here ocasionally though.

I'm asking, is there a dedicated bot for this kind of job? Simply put, when I close a CfD, I'd just like to fill in a (supposedly protected, so that non-admins can't make a mess) bot-task page and know that the job would be done during the day. However, I can't make heads and tails of Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Working -- are the bots smart enough to figure out what is required from there? Or... ? Duja► 14:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

yeah CFD/W is all you have to do. List the cats in the proper format IE category:XXXX to category:YYYY and list them under the date of the CFD and the bots can handle the rest. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 21:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Don't forget to close the discussion and remove the CfD text from the category if it is a Keep or No Consensus close. There are some templates available for leaving the result on the talk page. Vegaswikian 22:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Navigation

With the length of the current list, I find it more and more difficult/time consuming for my strong-enough PC to scroll up and down in the list. This very much discourages study of the items in the list. I think it would be better to not present the entire list as a choice, but to present each day separately. This is what is presented after I edit any one item on the list. I don't want to have to edit an item just to get this format! Thanks Hmains 18:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

At the very least it would be useful to provide links to, let's say, the past 7 day's logs up near the top of the page. Activity seems to be on the increase at CFD—as the weeks and months go by the daily logs seem to increase in size and in activity. From time to time (like Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 25 and the actors by series discussion) even the daily log becomes almost unmanageable, so I dread to think how it must be for those who try to navigate on the main CfD page.
Xdamrtalk 19:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Take a look at #A_page_for_each_discussion above. I propose that we split CFD in half. Categories would first be posted in Wikipedia:Proposed category changes which would be a much simpler process. If any change does not have near unanimous support, it would get moved to CfD, and each discussion would be on a separate page. -- Samuel Wantman 20:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
That's an interesting proposal, something which will need to be seriously looked at if Cfd activity continues to rise. I'd be interested in how this would mesh with the other Xfd processes; commonality is important, we don't want Cfd to be completely unlike the rest.
In the short term though, perhaps it is advisable to follow the example of Afd and remove the 5 day debate listings from the Cfd main page. Simply link to the logs instead?
Xdamrtalk 21:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
It is WP:PROD for categories. Since categories are not just deleted, but merged and renamed it would be PROCC (the CC being "Category Changes"). Same sort of idea, same sort of process. -- Samuel Wantman 06:56, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Given that daily logs are increasing in size, and 5 day's worth of debates are pretty huge, is there any reason that as a fairly immediate step we shouldn't just link to the daily logs from the main CfD page rather than list the debates in their entirety (per the example of CfD)? Anything that reduces the utility of the main page clearly can't be too good an idea, can it?
Xdamrtalk 19:44, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

An improvement to the large nominations process- maybe?

Large group nominations frequently run into problems when some editors have objections over specific categories in the list. In some cases, this causes a keep vote, even when there may be no specific objections given. I'd like to propose that we change the process slightly so that the nominations without specific objections can move forward with a simple keep or delete outcome. Categories for which there are specific objections would be split out and fully discussed. This is from suggestions in a recent CfD made by Dugwiki and Samuel Wantman.

Basically, if you want a specific category kept, then strike through <s></s> the nomination for that one category and create a separate discussion including the original nomination and your reason for keeping. The category must also be renominated to point to the new discussion. If no follow on discussion is created, then any admin can unstrike that item.

This would make it easier to follow some of the large nominations and allow specific category issues to be discussed without bogging down the basic nomination. Any category not brought up for a separate discussion would be judged based on what now would be a simpler Keep or Delete consensus. Vegaswikian 06:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Template:Listify

Per the closing of Category:Actors_by_series, I've decided to be bold and create a template if the result of a CFD is to delete after a suitable list has been created. There is one parameter for the template, which is the link to the discussion. For the Actors_by_series categories the template looks like this:

It was created by adding this:

((listify|link=2007_January_25#Category:Actors_by_series))

There should probably be a category for all the decisions that result in "Listify". Any suggestions for the name of the category? It can be added to the template. -- Samuel Wantman 08:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Category:Categories to be listified or Category:Categories that should be lists? Her Pegship (tis herself) 16:03, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

What about the obvious(?) choice—Category:Categories to be listified and deleted?
Xdamrtalk 18:01, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Just a quick note to let you all know that I've altered the template so that all tagged categories are listed within Category:Categories to be listified then deleted per David Kernow's suggestion. I haven't actually created the category though, do we agree with the name?

Xdamrtalk 17:12, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I created the category as proposed by David. -- Samuel Wantman 20:21, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

A few unfinished items...

--Samuel Wantman 08:27, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

We could create another template, perhaps ((csd-listify)) so when the list is ready, anyone could change the tag from:

((listify|link=2007_January_25#Category:Actors_by_series))

to

((csd-listify|link=2007_January_25#Category:Actors_by_series))

Then, an admin or bot could browse through the category we create to hold all these CSD candidates and delete them. This does seem to be in a gray area of our speedy deletion critieria. The decision to delete has come from a CFD discussion, but it might be delayed by quite some time. I don't see a problem with that, but I am not bold enough to create a speedy deletion process on my own, without some discussion. Any opinions, suggestions, whatever? -- Samuel Wantman 00:39, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


I would actually support a new speedy deletion criterion, along the lines of 'where deletion has been deferred pending a further course of action'.

I don't favour deleting categories without raising them on CfD first; I think that the publicity of CfD and openness in action are are essential. It also leaves open the possibility of a change of consensus being effected - WP:CCC and all that.

Xdamrtalk 17:32, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

This sounds good to me. I would pharase it that "where deletion was deferred pending a further course of action and that action is now complete".
It seems that new subcategories should also be a candidate for speedy deletion if they recreate a hierarchy that has been deleted even if the specific category never existed in the category previously. This would save a good deal of effort at CFD, If someone creates "Cast members of My Mother The Car" we shouldn't have to nominate it, and discuss it at CFD. It should be covered by the previous decision and quickly deleted. I'd have no problem with allowing discussions about recreating deleted categories, and this could also happen at CFD. So if consensus or circumstances change, we could reopen a previously deleted hierarchy. -- Samuel Wantman 23:34, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

When old CFDs get lost

I've set Cydebot to update this page once a day. The page records a list of every page in Category:Categories for deletion. Some old CFDs tend to get lost, so using the history of this page should be able to identify old CFDs that have remained in the category for too long, and have likely been forgotten. --Cyde Weys 04:32, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Category redirects section incorrect

The section explaining category redirects on this page is wrong. You can in fact hard redirect categories. I'm not sure if this is a new feature, but the way you can do this is put a : before the category name as you would to display the category on a page instead of adding the page to the category. Example: "#REDIRECT [[:Category:xyz]]" is a hard redirect. I don't know if someone wants to go through all the soft redirects and change them or what, but that section on this page should be changed. VegaDark 09:34, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

While that "works" in a sense, it also has undesirable side effects, which is why it is not used. See Wikipedia:Categorization#Redirected categories. Basically, unless something has changed recently, articles added to the redirected category, appear in that category and not in the new target category. older ≠ wiser 13:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
You don't actually need the ":". However, in addition to what Bkonrad mentions above, articles already in the redirected category remain in the redirected category not in the new target category. What happens if you follow the category link from an article in a redirected category is that you arrive at the target category (following the redirect) but the article you were looking at is not in this category. Articles in "soft redirected" categories are recatted by a bot into the target category. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Can a bot not be programmed to do this for hard redirects as well? VegaDark 20:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but there needs to be a way to find them. template:Category redirect adds the category to Category:Wikipedia category redirects so all the bot has to do is enumerate though the cats in this category. Per the discussion below, adding adding both a hard redirect and a soft redirect seems to work fairly well. This would work even better if the MediaWiki software were changed so that an article added to a hard redirected category is actually added to the target of the redirect. Given a hard redirect the only point of the soft redirect would be to have a way to identify redirected categories. If we're changing MediaWiki anyway, it might be possible to implement a special page that would return a list of (hard) redirected categories based on a database query, in which case the recatting bot could use this as a way to find hard redirected cats. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:11, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Propose tagging with both and expanding use of Cat redirects overall

IIRC, there was a change last fall, perhaps part of the software update that made it necessary to re-enable emailings??? Hard redirects are also being used on the commons. This needs a better technical answer, but I think there was a mention in one of the email lists, probably the one on the Commons--but I'm not going to wade through the thousand or so since August!
  However, I wouldn't agree that rushing to change any category redirects into hard redirects is a good idea without a lot of discussion. One can tag with BOTH though, so that might be an alternative... Hard redirect with category redirect on the same line much as one puts any ((R from ... } template on a redirect page. That will let the BOT still patrol on occasion and maintain the benefits of the hard redirect. The BOT then cleans up automatically, and fixes up links.
  My feelings are we need to have more CFD deletions/re-namings/merges create an category redirect outcome, Period. TO split the workload, add a parameter so that aged splitting of category redirects (say ten to twelve Plus Old-old ones), so the BOT can patrol each older one in succession without the bogging down Rick Block's time on any one pass. Would probably be a good idea to recruit a couple of other operators too.
  If people are checking their category links, like they're supposed to, the cat redirect then helps them correct the error. The BOT catches the rest. Eventually, the errant party 'discovers' the correct syntax and name, and everything minimizes time waste. Deleting so as to create red-links is pretty wasteful of people's time editing down the road--they have to stop and puzzle out why some name which makes perfectly good sense doesn't link. Consider the ambiguity in 'Historical maps of'--does the category hold maps showing the history of, or old maps, or is it a categorization schema node collecting other categories? We've been addressing such issues here and on the commons since the summer, and now have a proto-project being formalized here. Please join in! It's fair to say a lot of activity on CFD was a result of that restructuring to eliminate ambiguity... there is more to be done--lot's more! Dave Kernow, Mike Peel and to a lesser extent I have been pursuing a similar structural examination and fixups on templates categories. I'm integrating things across wiki-sisters.
  The benefit of having a soft redirected category is the user doesn't recreate, but learns, and is a direct help those to and for those of us who relationally 'think differently' (or for the moment) so that they try one logical name among several possible choices quickly find what the community consensus name has become...'glopstity glops glump', so saves time all around, and prevents the re-creation of the error and split in the hierarchical schema.
  This is in fact, the preferred method on the commons, as many non-English speakers would otherwise struggle to find a perfectly good translated name from their own language. Since the three biggest collections of Interwiki's are Here on 1) Articles 2) on categories, and 3) on the Commons Categories, it would be a nice courtesy for not only our own editors who think 'somewhat differently', but to those many foreign language editors who are attempting to close the gap in their language's wiki-sister-projects as well. As an institution, we need to focus less on 'right and wrong' (Juvenile think), and more on facilitation and elimination of ambiguity to save time multiples for others down the road, so to speak.
  I'm sure I'm not the only one to ever SWEAR when some simple seeming edit suddenly has red-links to fix up, and I'm already overdue in RL say! <g> Such is not necessary on a computerized data manipulation system like our servers and with our BOTs. So I see no technical reason to NOT lend such thoughtful aid to any and all, save we need and should long ago have had more BOT operators than Rick! Best regards // FrankB 18:01, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion part-I

I don't actually run a recatting bot (but somebody does). I tried adding a hard redirect to Template:Category redirect, but this doesn't seem to work (the #REDIRECT line seemingly must be actually in the article/category itself). Seems like the recat bot could be changed to update a soft redirected cat to have a hard redirect as well (if there isn't already one). With this scheme, a user could add an article to a redirected cat, and the only issue would be until the recat bot runs the article would not show up in the target cat (however a software change could be made so that if an article is added to a hard-redirected cat it's actually added to the target cat). This seems like a pretty reasonable solution to me, to a very long standing problem. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:44, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
I suspect like most pre-processors back into antiquity, preprocessor commands will need be abutting the left margin before any other parsing takes place. The included templates are already past the logical branch deciding what to do next since the # wasn't the first non-white character. Not to say that there may not be a work around... I'll ask CBDunkerson. // FrankB 19:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
If the ((Category redirect)) template were substituted then a hard redirect at the top would work fine. The current functionality could be substituted onto the redirect page or moved to a sub-template with a call to that template included in the substitution. Of course, that would require all current usages to be subst'd. --CBD 19:43, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Since I've proved it works without subst'ing, one edit on a page is as good as another... why not just get an AWB pilot to tack in the Hard redirect, and let the template stay as well... that gives an what links here list to use for another pass at another time, whereas subst'ing wouldn't let that residual list stay populated. // FrankB 20:10, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussion part-II

Hello. I've just been directed to this discussion, and as the owner of RobotG I thought I'd better post my 2p worth.

Suggesting that #redirects should be used in the category namespace implies that you think #redirects would make the category system more usable. I question this.

Are categories primarily for browsing? If so category redlinks and redirects are irrelevant, because they will never themselves be in any categories, and thus will never be found by browsing. Are categories primarily for grouping articles about related subjects? If so, the priority must be to keep categories in one place, and the logical conclusion is that category redirects must be usable at the point of addition to the article. Are categories primarily the targets of wikilinks, or a user typing in "Category:X" and hitting "go"? On the whole, I think, no. So if a redlinked category is an inconvenience, it is only so for their least important use.

When this has been discussed before, it has always come back to the article editors' experience– particularly that of the inexperienced user. Imagine we are using #redirects as suggested above. User Alice adds category Authors to an article. On her previewing the article, the category link shows blue: Alice saves the article. She then clicks on "Authors" to see what else is in the category. She is taken to the category "Writers", to which category "Authors" redirects: she finds herself in the "wrong" category, in which her recently-edited article is not to be found! In order to avoid confusion, Alice must understand what a #redirect does, she must know that you can click on the "redirected from…" link to see the #redirect itself and thus get to the "Authors" category as she intended. She is unlikely to know about robots, and will probably not imagine that her article will end up eventually, automagically, in category "Writers". That seems to me too much knowledge and presence of mind to ask for such a simple task as adding a category to an article! And if she does understand all that, she will probably make a leap of logic too far, and see it as a bug that category Authors was not replaced by category Writers when she saved the article!

One way of mitigating this would be to have a sort of ((redirect)) template on the top of all targets of category redirects, but I think that would needlessly clutter category text.

In the light of these considerations, the beauty of the current system is that when you go to the category redirect it is immediately fairly clear what happened, and why, and what to do next is explained. The proper category is only one click away. What we have is a good combination of #redirect functionality and ((category redirect)) narrative.

The reason I am not wholeheartedly in favour of an expansion of the use of ((category redirect))s, and why I sometimes remove less-obvious redirects under CSD C1/C2, is because there are already about 2000 of them, and there is no way to decide which are the populated category redirects short of checking each one every time. This why I set up Category:Often-populated Wikipedia category redirects. In hope of finding a more efficient mechanism, I recently set up an occasional query against the toolserver database mirror, (populated hard-redirects and populated category redirects), which, as you can see if you follow the links, is usually disappointingly out of date! Although similar queries on the live database might be the best mechanism, I cannot see the developers granting me access :-)

While I see the current category redirect mechanism as an efficiently evolved system based logically on the categories' raison d'être (a mechanism which is still amenable to improvements: I have a to do list), I have no axe to grind, nor any overriding preference for the way they should work. Provided the category redirects are all in Category:Wikipedia category redirects then the robot will be able to pick them up, and provided it can be made to understand the syntax to extract the target category it will happily trundle through the articles, altering category references as appropriate. There will be no technical problem if category redirects become #redirect [[:Category:Target category]] ((R from alternative category name)), and we deprecate ((category redirect)) (although there might be a short hiatus while I reprogram RobotG).

Finally, I don't want to violate WP:BEANS: suffice to say I have put some code in RobotG that makes category mischief unlikely to slip through. This is the reason why I am quietly reluctant to share the code of RobotG. Any solution put forward here has to consider the possibility of its abuse, please. --RobertG ♬ talk 16:40, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

If Alice adds category Authors to an article, sees it's a blue link, and doesn't immediately follow it it may well be a soft redirect to Writers. She's now added an article to a soft-redirected category and has no clue she's done anything incorrect. If we change MediaWiki so that adding an article to a hard-redirected category adds it to the target (I don't think this is a tremendously big if), making the soft-redirect a hard-redirect gets the article in the right category immediately. Assuming this change, now whether Alice follows the link or not the article will be in the right spot (without a bot moving it). Alice can add articles to Authors to her heart's content. Bob can add articles to Writers. More importanly, we could choose to change the bot so that it simply does a null edit on articles it finds in redirected cats, so UK and US variant spellings could both be supported with UK articles appearing to be in a category with a UK spelling while US articles appear to be in a category with a US spelling. All articles would actually be in one or the other, but the link on the article could be either. Without changing MediaWiki, if Alice adds an article to Authors, clicks the link, and finds the article is NOT in Writers will she click the "redirected from" link (which would explain all) or simply give up in exasperation? My guess is most editors don't follow the link (it's blue, what could be wrong) so won't even notice. Those that do might be momentarily confused. If we change MediaWiki then noone will be confused, and we get to support category aliases, which (IMO) would be Good Thing(TM). -- Rick Block (talk) 01:43, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
You have specified the ideal solution, one which I had been led to believe was low priority for the developers! If MediaWiki is changed to handle category redirects by automatically placing articles added to them actually into the target category, while the link on the article keeps the "old" text, we can then scrap ((category redirect)). When category #redirects are fully supported no compromises will be necessary. We may need two types of category redirect, one which redirects from consensually unacceptable form [bad spelling, POV title, ambiguous] to accepted form (and which a bot can still occasionally patrol), and another which redirects from one alternative accepted form [spelling variant, alternative name] to another (which the bot ignores). You have my full support. Once MediaWiki is changed on en: I can easily get RobotG to do a one-off run through all category redirects, whether #redirect or ((category redirect)), converting them all into #redirects and running through all the articles in each one if necessary. Please get MediaWiki changed as you suggest!
Until MediaWiki changes I think my logic above is valid. "If Alice doesn't immediately follow the link…" - yes, what you say is correct, but I still think we shouldn't design software that is usable provided the user doesn't click that link!
Please keep me up to date with what happens… --RobertG ♬ talk 09:38, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I've added this to the description of bugzilla:3311. We'll see what happens. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:40, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Appologies for not getting back to this sooner, but I've been having some computer issues and RL time matters.
  1. I've added an endorsement to Rick's prod to the developers at bugzilla:3311, with rationale as to why it's a higher priority than they've given it.
      User Alice will have to learn to look for that font size 1 blue redirect link on any and every page, and how to handle such cases... just like the rest of us have, so while I share some angst for her fate, I don't feel her pain. It's the rest of us I'm concerned with, insofar as enhancing our productivity is concerned...
      
  2. to Are categories primarily for grouping articles about related subjects? If so, the priority must be to keep categories in one place, and the logical conclusion is that category redirects must be usable at the point of addition to the article. I respond, I can agree, but your case seems overstated.
       A) If a alternative name is a blue link, and someone follows it, the matter is resolved... he got to where he wanted to go. They may experience a little discomfiture with a differently titled page, but the little redirected from that other pagename explains the matter, as it always does and has. The soft redirect in the middle for a reader, is a major annoyance... it needs a further read, then a page click. I make no assumptions about whether they are an editor at all, much less an experienced editor.
       B) If the category applied is a redlink, then they are editing and should attempt to find a proper name, of course. But bear in mind the default skin makes the category system's links well down off the radar of many if not most people.
      
  3. My real focus and concern for championing this combined let's do something on this now is on the time-waste of and by good contributing editors when one or more possible relevant names exist in practice... usually as one phrase or another was widely used in one scheme or another, and those through maturation and further work now seem to be in need of reconciliation, or was reconciled in CFD, and one old name or the other no longer works. When that happens, one gets: Dismay! Delay! Did I make a typo, include a non-printing character, or am I going nuts?
      All those questions and perhaps more suddenly need resolved, taking one immediately from the work at hand, into an entirely different (non-productive) priority task—in the arts, it would be 'very bad', the experience shatters the 'suspension of disbelief' in a storyline, as this shatters the equanamity of the editor trying to remember a whole list of important things--or so one hopes! <g>. THAT's the issue to me. Why tolerate that in a computerized system that can now handle the matter?
      So I give a nod to reconciliation in CFD, but not to deleting the old name, thousands of us are used to. That CFD outcome, one way or another wastes further productive editing hours in large multiples to find the new name—wikipedia search is decidely NOT FAST, in any manner.
      If tagging as a category redirect and redirecting the page cleans up the source page eventually (When the BOT is run), and the redirect gets those following the link to the proper page immediately, I see no downside. We are merely using ((category redirect)) as we do the many {R from ....} templates (e.q. ((R from other template)), ((R from other name)), etc.) to provide the necessary categorisation, the BOT fixes up the pages, and business of all humans procedes as fast as possible with as little disruption as needed.
      Another way of saying it is We collectively waste far too much time around here manually doing what the computer system (collectively, lumping in the BOT with the system software in this case... AND that includes the other 'technical' software demands--guidelines and procedures!) should be doing for us.
      To put it a third way, my interest is in 'Unloading the tasking on the thinking contributors' in this project, so they can stay focused on good editing as in writing, not minutia, such as a single category link, which may be stated many different ways. Now that we know this is workable, I see it as being not our job to educate each other into perfection, but instead to implement time saving measures ASAP, if the matter can be automated, by adding such robust supporting structure to enhance everyone's productivity.
      The bottle neck to me, is your BOT, if that duty were shared and a schedule delegated to a few more worthies, there is no reason to wait for the developers to work their magic, so far as I'm concerned. Surely some like users CBD, Omniplex, SlimVirgin, Radiant!, MgM, and many others of long seniority etc. who have demonstrated devotion and have exemplary track records on behalf of the project could share the BOT and the duty. If the category is broken up by date, you can each just patrol a section of the overall list. Anyway, give that some thought, as I really think we needed aliased categories far long ago... only institutional inertia and the low priority from the developers have kept it from happening, and this is no longer needful as it's never been helpful. One of the things that MOST impressed me with Wikipedia several years back was REDIRECTS, and I've been programming one way or another since '76. It's a very powerful feature, and for categories, one very underutilized. The commons does a much better job of that, but there the problem has the multilingual issues also involved (Along with some accompanying Nationalistic odors! <g> If someone were running your BOT there, it would be a very good thing. It's needed. Kudos on the BOT, by the way.
      As a last objection reducer, if you've qualms, we could impliment ((Category redirect)) as an ((R from other category)) tag, and keep the two separated for a trial period. I'd like to see this blessed and in place ASAP simply for the sake of CFD and being able to suggest related changes as it's pragmatic to keep old good names, and we need not suffer the death by a thousand cuts of editor's caught by surprise anymore. Add in, some aliased names seem to make better sense to people, so are tried first like 'Historical maps of', 'in' versus 'by', etc. Dozens of tiny little distinctions that can be safely redirected to the community consensus names, safely, so far as I can see. // Best regards. FrankB 20:17, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposal posted at WP:CAT

I've posted a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Categorization, about overhauling how categorization works. In a nutshell, I'm proposing that the creation of new category pages be restricted. To create a category, you would need to first create a list and then nominate it for conversion to a category at CFD. Only approved categories could be created by an Admin or a bot. I'd appreciate feedback. Please take a look. -- Samuel Wantman 08:41, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Edits to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion

I've made one or two changes to the main page which I leave open for your comments. Firstly, as was recently proposed above, I have removed the 7 day's worth of transcluded debates from the Current discussions section, replacing them with a list of logs instead. The 350k+ of debates was getting to the point where it was almost unusable.

In order that the list of current logs shouldn't be overwhelmed by the rest of the page content, I've moved them up to the top of the page. Given that they are now up at the top, I've removed the Skip to current debates infobox; it seemed superfluous in the circumstances. I've also moved the warning box re. discussion of user categories to the head of the page, hopefully making it a little more prominent.

Hopefully you will agree that these changes have made the page a little more usable. I decided against moving the Discussions pending completion and recently completed section up with Current discussions as it is of arguably less interest to the average editor.

One or two minor points—would there be any advantage in transcluding the current day's debates on the main page? Publicising the current day then moving it to logs when it is over? This would perhaps make things a little clearer for nominators etc. Secondly, would the Requests for speedy renaming section benefit from being hived off onto a separate page? This would remove all debate from the main page, making it fairly static, enabling us to devote it to guidance and links to the discussions.

Xdamrtalk 00:56, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree entirely with Mike - the new page set-up stinks. PLEASE change it back! It now takes seven times as long to re-check the week's CFDs to see the latest comments on them. The new format is a major loss and a major hassle. The new changes have not made the page a little more usable - they have made it far less usable. Grutness...wha? 03:48, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

A possible compromise (at the risk of duplicating effort)

One possible solution would be to keep the old format for WP:Categories for discussion, but have a separate Wikipedia:Categories for discussion (summary) with just links to daily pages as per the new system. it would mean a little more maintenance, perhaps, but would allow for both types of page viewing to be done (ISTR something similar is or was done on AFD for a while). Grutness...wha? 04:57, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Do we really need a bot to maintain a central link to recent/current discussions? Can we not just use the date/time ParserFunctions? Discussions a week old, six days old, five days old, four days old, three days old, two days old, yesterday, today? --RobertG ♬ talk 13:34, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Another compromise

I've no objection to a listing of all debates (whether 5 or 7 days) being available somewhere. Clearly if some find one large page useful then I'm not going to dictate how they should approach CfD. The problem is having these consolidated debates on the main CfD page, along with deletion criteria, guides, speedy deletion, etc, etc. It all amounts to too much clutter on the page, a page which is far too big for those on limited bandwidth.

How would it be if we revert to the summary style on the main page, create a new consolidated debate page, containing all the trancluded logs? That way objectors will have their favoured page format available, and the main page will be slimmed down for those who find the current setup unusable. AfD manages with this setup, so it can't be totally flawed.

Xdamrtalk 18:16, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

No objection from me - that sounds pretty much like my idea but in reverse. In both cases, both the summary and the full list would be available for anyone who wants it. I also agree with the idea about five days, above - that would by itself reduce the size of the full page. Grutness...wha? 22:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Just to add, I have no objections to 5 days either. Apropos my proposal, I'll try it out at changeover tonight, see what the general consensus is. Hopefully it will prove acceptable.
Xdamrtalk 23:43, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I also miss full page display, but I think the all discussions page works nicely fine that. The all-pages view is better for reading, and the day by day is better for editing. Also, the old page was really getting too big to comfortably work with. I can't imagine trying to use the old version over a dial up connection. Overall, I think the change is for the better. -- Prove It (talk) 03:27, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
This is just fine. The "All discussions" approach seems to be a compromise where everybody gets what they want. Good thinking, guys.--Mike Selinker 04:46, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
All this is fine with me, and definitely an improvement. The page was horribly unwieldy before. the wub "?!" 09:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

About creating a category

Hi! If permissible, I would like to create temporary category for pages that need a certain sort of maintenance, empty it, and then request its deletion. Template:Infobox School previously had an image call like | image = [[Image:Name.jpg|300px|The school logo]], but I changed the source code to allow for that and also | image = Name.jpg | imagesize = 300px | caption= The school logo. If possible, I would like to convert all instances of the former to the latter. Would it be allowed under current guidelines to put <includeonly>[[Category:Infobox School previous format]]</includeonly> with the former instances; and if so, could I db-author the category after converting everything? Or should I merely not create the category page, but still use it to identify pages in it? (I generally don't deal with categories, so any help would be appreciated.) GracenotesT § 22:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Umbrella nominations

Do umbrella nominations not work any more? ie is it necessary to create a heading for each item? If so, they basically aren't available as no effort can be saved. The one I tried didn't work, and the amended instructions are opaque. ReeseM 01:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Categories to be listified

Some of the categories that were to be listified have been emptied by a bot and deleted, this goes against the consensus, how are we supposed to listify a category that no longer exists? — AnemoneProjectors (talk) 14:15, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Forget I said that, the category in question was to be deleted, where similar ones were to be listified, and I assumed it had had the same result. — AnemoneProjectors (talk) 14:17, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

On a similar note, is there a way to find whether a category has been listified or not? I'm looking for the lists corresponding to some recently emptied and deleted categories which were closed as "listify then delete", but I can't find them. Specifically, I'm looking for the lists which were to be made from Category:Doctor Who cast members and Category:Doctor Who directors, but the point holds in general — how can an interested editor tell whether a list has been made, and find where it is? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:15, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

If they are in any kind of decent shape then this should surely be accessible from the main article(s)? If not then you'll have to do a search; all recent listify candidates that have come up on CfD have cited their cast articles, so they certainly do exist somewhere.
Xdamrtalk 15:30, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Oh, List of Doctor Who actors seems to be one of the lists that you are after. --Xdamrtalk 15:33, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. I did search for that earlier, but I suppose there was a lag in the database. It turns out that List of Doctor Who actors and List of Doctor Who directors were created just yesterday (March 10), and they weren't linked from anywhere. How are editors supposed to find these newly created lists? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Most of the search databases are not real time but are updated on some schedule. So, if you try to search for something before the update you will not find it. At a minimum, any new list should be placed in Category:Lists if the editor does not know of a better specific category for the new list. BTW, if anyone has the time, Category:Lists looks like it needs someone to move the entries there to more specific categories. Vegaswikian 19:57, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's a suggestion: perhaps when a bot is emptying a listified category, it could include a link to the list in the edit summary. That way, it will show up on the watchlists of interested editors, and if expert attention is needed (as, for example, at the frankly shoddy list created at List of Doctor Who actors) interested editors will know where to go. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:32, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

A worthwhile suggestion. I'm surprised that the lists weren't linked, that is surely an essential step in completing the listification. I'd hope that it was just an oversight. Re the lists being 'shoddy'; they may not be 'featured list' status, but they contain exactly the information that was present in the category. All the listification does is move it out of categories into articles; the information, such as it was, is preserved. What interested editors do with that information is for them to decide.
Xdamrtalk 00:14, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
I think it only fair that the list preserve as much functionality as the category it is replacing. So in the case of List of Doctor Who actors, all the actors listed should be wikified so they are links. This isn't hard to do with a find/replace. -- SamuelWantman 01:53, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
I was mainly referring to the absence of wikification when I called that list "shoddy". Incidentally, I've been contacted by an editor looking for the list of Space: 1999 cast members, and I can't find that list either. It may show up once the server is updated, but this shows that if the failure to provide links to the newly created lists was an oversight, it was committed on multiple occasions. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Non-endemic "endemic" birds

Hi. I hope this is the right place to discuss this. Apparently categories such as Category:Avifauna of Western Mexico recently got renamed to Category:Endemic birds of Western Mexico, etc. However, endemic (ecology) means that the species is found in that area only. Most of the birds with these regional categories are found in other places as well—for instance, Lazuli Bunting got categorized as a Western Mexican endemic although most of its range is in the U. S. and Canada. If the plan is really to categorize based on endemism, the articles will have to be reviewed carefully before recategorization. On the other hand, if the plan is to continue putting fauna into every geographical category they fit into (Birds of Western Mexico, Birds of the Western U. S., Birds of Western Canada), the word "endemic" needs to be changed. Something like "Birds of Western Mexico" would be fine with me, as would many other possibilities. —JerryFriedman 05:04, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

The thrust of the debate was that it would be best to restrict the scope of fauna categories because an animal such as boar is in too many categories. Tim! 10:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I was noticing that categories were accumulating. But was "endemic" the wrong word, or was it getting applied to the wrong species and regions? The Band-tailed Pigeon is now categorized as endemic to both the Southwestern United States and Central Mexico. That's a contradiction—just as if someone were in "1842 births" and "1991 births"—so there must be some kind of misunderstanding. —JerryFriedman 15:15, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Should we do away with the endemic categories altogether and just say "Birds of XXXXXX"? The thing is, each species is endemic to its own unique area (I've seen those maps of the USA with a species range highlighted). I don't really see how this can be categorized appropriately. The information should be conveyed in the article, but I just don't see categories working here. --Cyde Weys 15:24, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, for well-defined regions such as continents, islands, and lakes, you might be able to do it. I can see "endemic fauna of Lake Baikal" or "endemic plants of Cuba". For politically defined regions with arbitrary boundaries, or for ecologically defined regions with fuzzy boundaries, I'm inclined to agree that it wouldn't work. Then if we want geographical categories at all, the question is how to define them. If "Fauna of Scotland" is allowed, should there be a similar category for every political entitiy of comparable size? —JerryFriedman 23:35, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I will argue that the word "endemic" is needed in all categories describing animals with limited ranges. Please take a look at the categorization of articles such as boar, leopard, Green-winged Pytilia, Red-cheeked Cordon-bleu, and Gray Wolf. As can be seen from these (and other) articles on animals, people are using the categorization scheme to indicate every country in which these animals are found. This is inappropriate, as the political boundaries generally have nothing to do with the locations in which the animals are found, and the resulting category lists in individual articles are difficult to read. Adding a description to categories saying that the categories are only for endemic animals will not work either, as the description may be disregarded or removed later.

I am therefore pushing forward with two sets of proposals at WP:CFD. First, I am trying to upmerge all "fauna by country" categories into "fauna by continent" categories (or fauna by subcontinental regions, as should be done for Asia and Africa). (Category:Fauna of Scotland was nominated for merging into Category:Fauna of Europe, but the nomination did not receive any other votes, and so it was closed as "no consensus".) Second, I am trying to add "endemic" to categories for islands or small ecoregions.

As for what happened with some of the "fauna of the United States subregion" and "fauna of Mexico" subregion categories, that seems to have been incompletely discussed. Some of the animals with more extended ranges should probably be listed in broad continental categories and should therefore be removed from the categories now using "endemic". Animals with limited ranges should be listed in "endemic" categories as is appropriate (e.g. Category:Endemic animals of Lake Baikal.)

I am working on more nominations at the moment. Please add comments here. Dr. Submillimeter 09:44, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you're right. The best we can do is to have inclusive cats only for each continent, and endemic cats only for a few isolated ecoregions that are the exclusive home of many species. Every animal will be in one or more continent's cat (boar will unfortunately still be in a handful), and very few will be in any endemic cat. ×Meegs 11:29, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
There are even better examples than Boar: Rock Pigeon and House Mouse would each have something like 200 categories. Then what if we add categories for regions, states, provinces, oblasts, prefectures…? It's better to have the Rock Pigeon in hundreds of lists than have hundreds of categories in the article. So I support continent categories and maybe endemic categories, whether by political boundaries (contrary to what I said above, maybe it is interesting that the Crimson-collared Grosbeak is found only in Mexico) or ecological boundaries ("Endemic Flora of the Sierra Madre del Sur").
It would still be great if the current "endemic birds" problem could be solved as soon as possible. It's really embarrassing to have all those incorrect categories. Maybe just have a bot revert all the edits for now? —JerryFriedman 18:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

As an exercise, I cleaned up Category:Endemic birds of Western Mexico using the AutoWikiBrowser. Birds were moved to Category:Birds of Mexico when they were not endemic to Western Mexico. This took less than an hour for the whole category. Only a few birds are left in the category, but the description is now accurate. I will continue working on some of the other categories than now have the word "endemic".

As I was doing this, I noticed that some people would list these birds in multiple "birds of Mexico" categories. To me, it makes little sense to list a bird in "birds of Western Mexico", "birds of Eastern Mexico" and "birds of Central Mexico" simultaneously. The use of the word "endemic" in category names should end that practice. Dr. Submillimeter 23:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm out of my element, but its not clear to me that regions like Western Mexico are well defined or have contained ecosystems. I'm not suggesting that all endemic cats have to dedicated Lake Tanganyika or the Galapagos Islands, but I'm concerned that asserting that a species of bird is confided to Western Mexico is both too vague and too bold a statement for us to make with a category. Also, I think you just overlooked this, but Category:Birds of the Madrean sky islands and Category:Birds of Sierra Madre Occidental can not belong to Category:Endemic birds of Western Mexico. ×Meegs 13:23, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the category is still defective. I was just trying to fix it in the short term. Maybe these categories need to be renominated for further discussion. (I am working on other nominations at the moment.) From my attempts at cleaning up the category, I noted that a large number of birds have ranges that are restricted to the southwestern North America. Maybe that can be used in a category name? Dr. Submillimeter 20:11, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
If you needed to define "contained ecosystems" for Mexico, then Western, Central, and Eastern would apparently be the way to go, as in Howell and Webb (provided you define "Eastern" as "Gulf" and "Western" as "Pacific"—Howell's "Western Mexico" goes all the way east to the Guatemalan border). There are indeed a lot of birds found only in the southwestern U. S. and Mexico (and maybe Central America), but I'm really not sure any categories smaller than continents are sufficiently well defined, as you both say. Maybe North versus sub-Saharan Africa is.
The Madrean sky islands and the Sierra Madre Occidental are both part of Western Mexico, but if we want categories for their endemics, I think they should be set up as sub-categories, and only the smallest relevant one should be listed. Which I think is what you're suggesting, Meegs.
My suggestion would be to have geographical categories only for continents and oceans, with only "endemic" categories for smaller regions. Is there a guideline for how many articles a category should potentially have? E.g., if an island has exactly one endemic bird, or two, should there be a category for endemic birds of that island? —JerryFriedman 23:07, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Categories with few articles may be kept if they are part of a larger hierarchy. That would definitely be the case for hierarchy of categories for the endemic fauna of specific islands. Dr. Submillimeter 11:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Inclusive categories

For the inclusive (not the endemic) cats, three of us have suggested above merging all regions so that we have just one for each continent. Dr. S has pointed out to me that in two discussions about Africa last month, here and here, some of the opposition was solely about the combination of sub-Saharan Africa with Northern Africa. There is a lot of utility in keeping them separate, but as soon as we allow any continent to be split, we lose the ability to use the by continent label for the parent cat and keep the door closed on all manner of smaller regions. A better solution than continents is to use the WWF's eight ecozones. Similar to continents, using the ecozones would guarantee that no species, including boar, will be in more than 6 or 7 cats. ×Meegs 14:12, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

The only problems with these ecozones is that the terms are not going to be recognized by the general public. Palearctic and Neotropic are much less meaningful than "Eurasia" and "South America". We could try describing the complex ecozones in layman's terms (e.g. Neotropic would be "South and Central America"). If we do not use the layman's terms, people will tend to recreate the continent and country categories anyway. Dr. Submillimeter 22:46, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Good point, and Palearctic would be almost impossible to describe succinctly (even "Northern Africa and Eurasia, excluding south and southeast Asia" isn't quite right). I think we'd do best to decide the set of zones before we proceed. Our wishlist seems to be partitions that are few in number, have ecological significance, are widely recognizable, and discourage subdivision. ×Meegs 11:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Fauna of Europe by region

I launched the nomination to merge this and its subcategories to Category:Fauna of Europe. Although we are still discussing what the final categories should look like, it seemed like this merge was a logical choice regardless of whether we sort fauna by ecozones or continents. If we decide to sort by ecozones, then we can just merge Category:Fauna of Europe into Category:Fauna of the Palaearctic later. If we decide to sort by continent, then this category will be OK. However, I think something needs to be done. Reform of these categories stalled out in Oct 2006. We should not let the reform stall out again. Dr. Submillimeter 17:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Categories with almost no articles

Looking through Special:Categories, I see a very large number of categories with only one or two articles. What is the policy on these? Every category has to start somewhere, but it still feels to me like a waste of resources if a category does not have at least three entries or possibly more. If CfD is not proper, should ((Popcat)) be added to all categories with such a low population? — CobraWiki ( jabber | stuff ) 04:44, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Speedy merging

How do I propose a speedy merge? There is mention of it, but then only a speedy renames section. Shouldn't there be a separate template for speedy merges? No such template is mentioned. And where should I put the request? --greenrd 23:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It would be nice to have such criteria spelled out on the main WP:CFD page. Dr. Submillimeter 08:33, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Notices

I added a bit of detail on notices; it would be helpful to include relevant wikiprojects, and to indicate who has been notified (as is done with the FARC process). Sam 13:23, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Change

I'd like to propose a rule change here, which is that where someone proposes deletion of a significant category (e.g., one with more than, say, 25 entries or a non-stub principal article), that deletion only occur after the proposer documents notification of the category creator, at least one relevant wikiproject, and any major contributors. I think it makes sense before undoing someone's work that there be notice and a chance to respond. There are similar notices provided as part of the FAR/FARC process, which works fairly efficiently. Sam 14:55, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Just to be clear, the above was posted by User:A Musing, I am User:Sam -- Samuel Wantman 08:51, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm afraid that this seems a little too much like an excess of bureaucracy to me. I'm certainly in favour of the creator being informed as a matter of courtesy, however I don't think that he/she have any special claim (WP:OWN), especially if the category was created some time ago. Likewise with WikiProjects, always assuming one exists that covers the category in question. I'm also unsure as to what constitutes a 'major contributor' so far as categories are concerned. Is it someone who has made a lot of edits on the category page? Is it someone who has been enthusiastic in adding the category in question to articles? The first is (usually) a fairly trivial attribute, and the second would take all day to research.
Now, don't take this to mean that I don't favour publicising debates—I certainly do where appropriate. I just wouldn't be terribly keen to see it made compulsory, as a hoop to be jumped through before action can be taken. Creep of red tape and complexity of procedure ought to be avoided as far as is possible.
Xdamrtalk 16:15, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Interesting - you seem to have just added it today as a perenial proposal - can you send me to prior discussions of it? I'm not interested in excess bureaucracy, but it appears to me the explicitly civil thing of notifying people is rarely done here, as opposed to FAC/FARC where it is done as a matter of course. The proposal works there. I know it's easy to turn down a proposal because you have been heard before, but it strikes me that the lack of notice in the CFD process is a problem, and some attention to it would be a very good thing. Notice in two or three obvious places (wikiprojects, creator pages, talk pages, etc.) has worked well to spark informed and coherent discussions elsewhere. Sam 17:54, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Yep, because I was surprised it wasn't on there already. Check the talk page archives of WT:AFD and WT:CSD for a bunch of examples; it comes up every month or so. >Radiant< 08:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Those are different processes, and in the case of WT:AFD my impression is that the "civil" notices to creators are commonly given. My quick review of the archives showed many complaints about lack of notice, but few discussions about solving the problem. I would assert it is a bigger issue here, where very few notices seem to be given. A Musing (formerly Sam) 14:16, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
In theory, it would be nice if all interested parties were informed. In practice it might slow down an already time consuming process. I barely keep up with CfD these days, and I'd like to devote more time to other wiki-pursuits. The other problem is that "interested parties" invariably show up to oppose deletion. That shouldn't be a problem, as XfD's are not a vote, but discussions. However, the perception that results is that the cabal overrides the will of the majority.
I noticed with the "Actors by performance" debate that it was posted on many wikiprojects. The result seemed to be that many people came by and quickly said "Keep". So I don't think the publicity added much to the discussion. The irony for me is that I originally came to CfD because categories I cared about were nominated for deletion. Now that I've been here for a couple of years, I'm ready to delete those very same categories. My point is that these decisions need to be based on an understanding of the overall categorization system. If not, we should just abandon what we've got and adopt a pure-wiki tagging system. Since these decisions need serious consideration, the question I have for A Musing (Sam), is whether he thinks any recent CfD's did not take into account any important information about a category? Put another way, would there have been anything additional besides more "votes". -- (User:Sam) Samuel Wantman 08:51, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I'd suggest it be required for deletion of large categories - let's set the level where it's only going to effect a category where there is a significant amount of material there that is going to be deleted. It is those large categories where the work likely comes from many people and will be difficult to replicate - a category with 10 entries is probably one person's work and they will often be able to return to their source. A Musing (formerly Sam) 14:16, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
The proposal comes out of the discussion following the deletion of the category "Women Writers", when those actively using it suddenly found it gone (by virtue of the bots deleting the category from all the articles). It is pretty clear that many points were not considered by those voting to delete, and there would have been a broader discussion if a couple notices were posted. Yes, undoubtedly many of the folks receiving notice will want to keep a category they have been using: but is it bad to make them justify it, and to give someone who has done work in good faith the opportunity to defend that work before it is deleted? A Musing (formerly Sam) 13:58, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps we haven't defined the problem adequately. Looking over the CFD for 'Women writers' it seems that the decision was in keeping with the consensus of those participating, along with keeping with policy and precedent. I too, sometimes disagree with the results of CFD's and many categories are not categorized as I wish. If we made deletion decisions purely by popularity a large number of categories would not get deleted. What we have decided is to let the categorization system evolve based on contributions by all and edits by concerned self-selecting volunteers. What that has created is not perfect, but pretty good. I think this could be improved, but I would move in the direction of less popular involvement, not more. I think we should move to a system where anyone can populate a category, but category creation should only happen after discussion or some speedy approval process. Creating taxonomies by the masses was fine when categories were starting out, but I see a trend to more and more junk. As people experience tagging systems in other on-line communities, they expect the same from our categories. That is not what we have, and I don't think it is what we want. CfD discussions often deal with grey areas like "Women writers" and the line between black and white moves slowly one way or the other. In this case, the most encyclopedic way to handle the subject might be to have a list of women writers that are discussed in regards to women's literature or women's studies. Having the category opens a can of worms. Eventually all women writers will end up there, and categorization by sex will proliferate. The discussion about how to place the line in a grey area rarely happens in any wikipedia forum. I'm skeptical that these conversations would be more frequent or fruitful if they had been advertised as you suggest. -- Samuel Wantman 06:24, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I disagree on the policy piece - I believe the policy on gender based categories explicitly supports the idea of a women writers category, particuarly given that it is a recognized field of study in most universities, with course taught on the subject and majors and theses built around it. I do like your idea of prior approval for categories as a better approach than that used here -- there are indeed many useless categories. I tried an experiment yesterday and went through the CfDs to provide notice to several people and to comment in other cases that people should be civil and give notice - it doesn't strike me that it has or will have an overwhelming effect on the outcome of many decisions, but it will be a way to be more inviting and inclusive, and treat these pages less like they are "owned" by a group of regulars. Thanks for the input on this. A Musing (formerly Sam) 17:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps I wasn't clear about what I meant by gray areas. I agree with you that the policy on gender based category would allow a category of authors related to women's literature. There's also the policy that says we don't categorize by sex. So perhaps there's a way to name the category so that it doesn't become a repository for every woman author. This is what I mean by a gray area -- the meeting of contradictory categorization policies. Often the best response to a gray situation is explanation, and that often implies a list. Lists allow discussion and explanation and citations. Categorization should have clear boundaries. If we decide that 'women authors' is what we want, it should be obviously clear which authors belong and which don't. If we can't come up with clear distinctions for making a category, then perhaps a list is more appropriate. -- Samuel Wantman 06:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Wait just a minute

  • re: Yep, because I was surprised it wasn't on there already. Check the talk page archives of WT:AFD and WT:CSD for a bunch of examples; it comes up every month or so. >Radiant< 08:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

If this comes up every month or so, then clearly there is some broad support of same. I'm no fan of bureaucracy but the size and scope of wiki these days needs such measures. Radiant!, you seem to have loads of excess time to devote to watching political pages, or are devilishly skilled at using your watchlist, but frankly, that's the last page I ever have time to look at. NOTHING IN ANYTHING but Afd need be hurried, and if we don't start changing the system to make it less BITING to those of us who run businesses, or are pursuing a Thesis or doctoral, or otherwise mostly engaged with RL and give what time we can to the wiki's, then this encyclopedia and all the other sister projects are doomed to never retain the experts and highly qualified people we need to improve overall quality.
  If someone wants to change something outside of main space (where the random page could land a customer-reader, which is the sole half-rationale I can stomach--it's really still a violation of good taste and decent dealings with other people--directly a slap in the face contrary to the spirit and intents of WP:CIV!!!), then they damn well ought to be willing to take the time to at least notify the five most active editors on a page that they are proposing some change... I don't care whether it's a merger, a renaming, or a deletion. WP:OWN has no bearing... this is common courtesy--those editor's have a vested right to that notification, as they've freely given their free time and hard efforts to make such edits. NOT NOTIFYING THEM IS BEYOND RUDE, it's childish. Hiding and sneaking behind their backs, and MAKING AN ASSUMPTION--that they have the time to watch a watchlist like a hawk. How is that fair to the good editor that can only spare a night or two every 10th or 12th day? This is unreasonable. Most of us have to make a living, and have a life off wiki's! // FrankB 18:37, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikipedia. Nobody has a right to anything. Apart perhaps from Jimbo. If you've got a life off-wiki, the best way to prove that is to not fly off the handle when your article/category/template is up for deletion. In case you hadn't noticed, clearing the crap out is the single most time-consuming process. We have somewhere between 2,000-3,000 items in CAT:CSD and its subcategories. At its peak, this can reach anything up to 20,000. The various XfD processes are faced with hundreds of nominations every day. We simply cannot afford to slow down the process any further. Most of us don't care when "our" whatevers get deleted. This is because, as you correctly say, we have lives off-wiki. The folk who throw hissy fits because their stuff got deleted and nobody told them need to get their priorities straight: you have bigger things to worry about than the content of this website - if you don't, you need professional help. Chris cheese whine 20:26, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
PS - the "broad support" is meaningless, as it gets shouted down in much the same way as every other perennial. There is evidently a lot of support for banning anonymous editors, but it's not happening any time soon. Chris cheese whine 20:28, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
As Chris said. There's also broad support to censoring Wikipedia, but the point is that the opposition is a lot broader. Any sufficiently large group of people has "broad" support for any minority viewpoint. >Radiant< 10:21, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I would still like to get pointed to a prior discussion on CfD of the issue - I feel I'm being shouted down, not reasoned down, and while I'm happy to cede a point after seeing the reasoning, I feel the point is being shouted down without reasoning (other than pointing to the newly amended list that does not have any authoritive position on Wikipedia). Providing more carefully reasons (such as User:Sam and User:Xdamr have done, is far more convincing than changing WP:PEREN to make a point and behaving as if one WP:OWNs this page. As noted, I've made a point for one day in making some notices and making the point on individual nominations, and while I don't think it has changed outcomes, I do think it makes for a more open and inclusive process, which is what Wikipedia is all about. Still, I think we all know how this discussion comes out, so while as a mater of civility I'd like to be pointed to where the discussion has been held on CFD before, and I'd still like to view the idea that any notices that are given are made transparent (see below), I won't push the idea of a mandatory notice any more.A Musing (formerly Sam) 14:12, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Like I said, the talk pages of WP:AFD and WP:CSD. It took me 30 seconds to locate two debates. But then, you're saying people "shout you down" while in the meantime accusing them of WP:OWN and WP:POINT, so might I suggest you read WP:KETTLE first? >Radiant< 08:18, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
My request was for a discussion relating to CfD, not AFD; I note that deleting categories rather than articles is a very different proposition, since articles can be automatically watchlisted when created or edited, where one can use a category extensively, adding it to hundreds of files, and it will not be automatically watchlisted. I did a thorough search of the last year of CfD discussion, and the only discussion I find merely highlights it as a problem, and does not propose any mandatory notice.[1] Can you point me to any discussion in the CfD process of a proposal that fits within your changes to WP:PEREN? I continue to believe that it is civil to notify those who have invested energy in developing a category, and that a policy of indicating that they have been notified will improve the discussion and process.A Musing (formerly Sam) 14:58, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
  • You can also watchlist categories. Perhaps the solution is in informing novice users that this is possible. The point here is the same as with mandatory notification anywhere else - it fails all three parts of the policy test (1. it does not indicate a real problem, only an alleged one; 2. it does not actually solve this problem; and 3. it has undesirable side effects). To explain further, it adds complexities to an already convoluted process, it leads to unclarities as to whom to notify, it may annoy people who would want to be notified and weren't, it may annoy people who were notified but didn't want to be, it leads to such reasonings as "this nom is invalid because", it still doesn't actually help much because there is no easy way to locate all "frequent users" of a cat, it violates WP:BURO, and is a textbook example of m:instruction creep. >Radiant< 08:48, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I have now learned to watchlist categories and added many to my watchlist, but note that I am not a novice user, and suspect many other established users who use categories do not watchlist them. The problem isn't going to go away through watchlists given the limits of the software at present. I also note that I have discovered through this discussion that notifying key people involved in adding categories is difficult as well, since there is no one place to look and one must scrutinize article by article. It strikes me notices to wikiprojects are a good idea in such a case. My biggest concern is that there is no culture of notification on these pages, as there is elsewhere, and such a culture would lessen complaints such as this one. Indeed, there seems to be a hostility to notice, as people fail to assume those people will participate in good faith and instead think they will be "biased" toward the category they have been using. From looking at the entries here, most are renames or merges, and most of the deletes are of relatively small categories. The big problem arises because of the instability created when a major and well-populated category used by many is deleted without participation from the users. If we want to avoid bureaucracy, I think a culture of notice is needed. Bureaucracy tends to follow when problems persist despite complaints. A Musing (formerly Sam) 13:03, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
  • What "limits of the software" do you mean? And what "elsewhere" do you mean that does mandate notification? Note that nobody is objection to notifying people, but people are objecting to mandatory notification (which, to my best knowledge, isn't present anywhere else, either). >Radiant< 13:38, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
The limit of the software I was specifically referring to in that clause is the inability of the software to automatically watchlist categories. The other limit of the software that is relevant is the inability to easily identify who has been actively using a category (as one can do with articles). In each case, this makes it harder to keep people in the loop on what is happening with a category. There is a clear culture of notice in the WP:FAR process, whic is the "elsewhere" I was referring to. A Musing (formerly Sam) 13:55, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Group nominations

I think group nomination are a useful tool on CfD. Especially since often many categories may be in a similar situation. However, there have been times that I wonder if a few categories which may only be tangently associated with the nom, or may have other special circumstances, which get renamed/deleted/merged/etc, simply due to a majority of Delete per nom. Whether that is fair or not is not the subject of this suggestion, however.

I simply want to suggest that we implement what seems to work well on Speedy noms: If two Wikipedians object to a speedy nom, then it gets relisted on WP:CFD as a regular nomination. So, in the case of group nominations, two Wikipedians may request that a category or categories be split/relisted from a group nom. Once there are at least two requesters, the category/categories get relisted (and a link at the original nom, to the new nom, would seem to be appropriate as well). This should cause no loss of discussion, but should promote discussion. - jc37 11:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it is mistaken to characterise Delete per nom votes as unthinkingly made. It is simply an expression of agreement with the nominator's rationale in toto. If you are in full agreement with a nomination then there is little to be gained from reprising it in your own response.
As to your suggestion, it certainly has merit but I will say straight away that I think that the two objection threshold is too low. I'd say five would be a more appropriate number. Bear in mind that this is not speedy nomination, it is CfD with 5+ days of debate. The urgency of WP:CSD and its consequent low threshold do not apply here—at least not to the same extent.
First and foremost I would like to see, if you can provide it, examples of the problem in question (ie debates). There is no point in adding bureaucracy and procedure unless there is a clearly illustrated need.
Xdamrtalk 14:30, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Interesting idea: That the number of objectors should equal the number of days of waiting time of the discussion. However, I think the requirement of two Wikipedians is enough for this purpose.

As for examples, I think the easiest path is to instead point to previous discussions on this page. See Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#An improvement to the large nominations process- maybe? for example. Obviously what I'm suggesting (relisting if just two Wikipedians ask for it) is a much simpler process.

Also note: relisting is just that: relisting. It merely separates a category from a group nom, it doesn't stop that category from being discussed, or being free from being deleted. It also can help prevent individual categories "bogging down" a group nom discussion, by allowing such categories their own discussion. This aids in clarity and transparency, and should help make such group nominations appear less controversial. - jc37 14:45, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Noting who has been notified

I note language asking that when people are notified, that be noted on the nomination page. This strikes me as good practice, followed elsewhere on Wiki, and, among other things, makes clear when and to what extent creators and maintainers have been notified. What is the reasoned objection to having that process be transparent? (As noted above, I am not pushing the idea posting above and roundly shouted down, but perhaps we can have a discussion just on notice without the shouting?). A Musing (formerly Sam) 14:06, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

This is a good idea and is inline with several other processes such as Wikipedia:Deletion review#Steps to list a new deletion review which asks that the closing admin be notified of a review of their closure. Tim! 07:45, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
If you propose deletion of a category, you are welcome to notify whomever you like of that, and note the notification in your nomination. The objection is to making it mandatory. >Radiant< 08:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I have added language suggesting that where notifications are given they be noted on the nomination page. A Musing (formerly Sam) 13:28, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Instant renaming

There really needs to be another option in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy, much faster than the 48 hour delay needed for speedy rename.

It would be used ONLY in cases where someone creates a category, and then quickly realizes that he/she made a minor error in capitalization, spelling, or grammar. They could mark their request on that page as Instant rename, and then it would be done immediately without any need for delay. Only a category's creator would be allowed to request an "Instant rename", and only within 24 hours of the creation time (or maybe even less time if 24 hours is too long).

This seems like a very reasonable proposal with no chance for abuse. What do others think? How does the process work for implementing a proposal like this? Does it get voted on? Thanks for considering this. --Seattle Skier (talk) 17:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I could see this working as a new section on the CFD page. It could be called instant rename. For it to work, the category should be empty, and there should be only one contributor to the history, and that contributor should request a deletion. There should be a link to the renamed category (the contributor should have already created it). Then, any admin can delete the misnamed category instantly, and remove it from the list. Simple, no fuss, no muss. -- Samuel Wantman 18:37, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, if the 48 hour delay was only added to deal with the countries (speedy criterion #5), is there some way to change it so that items which meet criteria #1,2,3 could be instantly renamed? That would seem to be the best overall solution to address all concerns. There should be no need to delay all of the truly trivial renames which fit criteria #1–3. Criterion #4 is more complicated, perhaps it should retain the 48 hour delay.
I'm still unsure about implementation. Could someone please answer my previous question: How does the process work for implementing a proposal like this? Thanks. --Seattle Skier (talk) 21:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
That is a good question. I have deleted categories that I created by mistake without going through any procedure. It seemed the obvious thing to do. I misspelled the category, I was the only contributor, and I'm an admin, so I just fixed the error. I can't imagine that anyone would find that objectionable. I've also had people ask me to fix their mistakes on the spot and I have. So I see the speedy listing, as just the place to ask admins. If there was any question to the deletion, I won't do it. I've also taken the position that I'd be willing to delete a category if I can talk someone out of their decision to make a category, it was just created, and nobody else contributed to the effort. So pending any objection (I haven't seen any), we should just create a section for instant deletions. So let's just wait a few days, and see if any objections show up here on the talk page. -- Samuel Wantman 07:49, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Looking this over a little more, I think that this should be called "Instant deletions". The criteria for instant deletions should be:
  1. The category to be deleted is empty.
  2. Speedy criteria #1, 2 or 3 are obviously met, or all of the following conditions are met:
  • The category is less than 72 hours old when the request is made.
  • The person who created the category is making the request.
  • Everyone who has contributed to the category is in agreement.
I don't think there is a need to get involved with instant renaming. If the category was recently created and depopulated, a new, correctly named category can be created and populated without an admin getting involved. -- Samuel Wantman 07:59, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think any new process is needed for what's being discussed here. If you create a category with a typo, don't put anything in it and it can be deleted easily enough. I've (twice) created categories with typos when creating category "trees" for musicians by nationality/instrument/genre - to correct myself, I created the correct category and populated that, then made sure the "typo" category was empty before tagging it with the speedy deletion tag ((db-author)), leaving an explanatory/apologetic edit summary so an admin could see my inability to spell "Japanese bassoonists" for example... no problems either time. Alternatively, wait 4 days and then tag it with ((db-catempty)) and it can be speedily deleted that way too. In the unlikely event that you have created a category with a typo AND then populated it with lots of articles... how about using WP:AWB (the quick way to clear up your mess)? (Although having to undo your mistakes by hand might teach you a lessson!) Bencherlite 00:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I would also like to see a speedy merge option for cases where a merge is obvious (e.g. Category:Mickye Mouse into Category:Mickey Mouse). Could this be incorporated into WP:CFD? Dr. Submillimeter 08:51, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

As above. Bencherlite 00:21, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Categorization by source nominations

Multiple categories that are being used to categorize by source were listed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 24. The discussion seems rather complex (see the top entry), and it would probably be better to have all the categories relisted in one discussion. Could someone (maybe an administrator) do this?

Also, several of us think that it would be a good idea to shift these categories from the article pages to the articles' talk pages. Can this be done in an automated way? Dr. Submillimeter 08:33, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

My Bot can do that ping me when you get the details worked out. Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) 00:53, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Re: Executions by country

I apologize for bringing up again a topic that was just settled. I did not see (was not aware of) the CfD discussion, and thus did not comment. Still, this categorization scheme is not appropriate, as for example, there was no organized, centralised nation-state called Japan until, arguably, either 1603 or 1868. Even if we want to allow the inclusion of people executed as the result of violating shogunal law or Toyotomi Hideyoshi's edicts, there are examples of those killed simply by their military enemies. Hatano Hideharu, Oyamada Nobushige, Takeda Nobukado, and Torii Suneemon (along with countless others) were killed at the order of Oda Nobunaga, not for violating Japanese law, but simply for opposing Nobunaga in combat.

The same type of argument is applicable in countless cases throughout history. Whenever an invading army "executed" particularly important political prisoners, or did it in a particularly cruel or visible way, it was an action done by the armies, by their generals, not necessarily by their state, particularly in the many centuries before the advent of the concept of the nation-state. In many countries across the world and throughout history, people have been captured and killed by their political or military enemies, and not by a state. I guess that begins to come down to one's definition of "execution"... LordAmeth 15:53, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Take a look a Category:Executed people there are other subcategories that may be better choices for some individuals. If there are groups that would be better in their own new subcategory, then that is also an option. Due to the nature of this rename, some cleanup is expected. Vegaswikian 17:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

terrorism by country

I want to CFD the "Terrorism in X" categories, as they violate WP:WTA. There are more than 40 such categories. I am following the advise on the project page, and asking for help. This will be my first CFD. How can I nominate them all together? Should I put a tag on all of them, manually? Also, are they CFD'ed before? Is there any rationale keeping these categories? I thought creation of these cats might be a result of a compromise during the discussions of 'banning' the use of the word terrorism. Thanks a lot in advance. denizTC 03:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


Can somebody please help me? See above denizTC 03:26, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

New procedure for moving articles out of category space

I suggest that WP:CFD create a special template for cases where articles are created in category space and where the nominator wants the text moved into article space. This happens infrequently (once or twice a month), but it is common enough that it may be worth having a special template. The current templates are only appropriate for deleting categories, renaming a category inn category space, or merging categories. None of these operations appropriately explain what people often want to do with these special categories (which is to keep the text and delete the category), and it seems inappropriate to mark these "categories" for deletion.

For an example of what I am talking about, see Category:Jewish Museum of Florida, which looks like an article on the museum. This is currently nominated for "deletion", although I think everyone would like the text moved to an article (perhaps Jewish Museum of Florida).

If I get positive feedback on this, I will write up a few templates and can even create a test "category". Dr. Submillimeter 14:18, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice idea. I was all set to hit the "move" button, then realised why there's a problem here for non-admins (especially those who remember that "cut and paste" moves are frowned upon as it loses the edit history). I haven't seen this before (on the odd occasions where I've seen text in a category, it's usually been wholly inappropriate and deletable anyway!) but some tools for the task would be useful. Bencherlite 15:01, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree, it seems to happen often enough that it would make sense to create a template for it. -- Prove It (talk) 15:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I have created prelimiary templates at User:Dr. Submillimeter/Sandbox. Feel free to edit these as would be appropriate. I would suggest calling these "Category for Conversion" (CfC) nominations. Feel free to comment here. Dr. Submillimeter 18:30, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Forgot to check back here for your templates for CfC. I dug around in your sandbox for the buried treasure and liked the look of what I saw. Fancy a test? Bencherlite 16:00, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Go for it. The template is at Template:Cfc. You can use the instructions at WP:CFD. Dr. Submillimeter 16:26, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Language missing from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy?

It seems like some language was deleted from the instructions. The text says "Use the following format:" but no sample format follows. Can someone fix this?--Vbd (talk) 03:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I've restored it from an older version of the page. Thanks for finding this ... -- Prove It (talk) 13:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Old cfd not finished

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 February 4#Category:Video game villains, most of the categories have been deleted, but many articles have not been moved. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 12:06, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

African Americans

User:Dekimasu has correctly pointed out here that, when used as an adjective, "African American" should be hypenated. Thus, for example, Category:African American inventors should be renamed to Category:African-American inventors, along with all other categories similarly named. This is important not only for grammatical reasons, but for consistency, as there are some categories which are correctly titled, e.g. African-American actors. Note also some categories need to be renamed in the "opposite direction", e.g. category:Fictional African-Americans. It would, of course, be easier to retain the status quo, but there is neither consistency or accuracy achieved in doing so. I would, therefore, request some feedback, and also assistance in doing this.

— superbfc [ talk | cont ] — 16:10, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
This change makes sense to me. I support it. futurebird 04:22, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Speedy criteria number 4 is confusing

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion#Speedy_criteria. I don't understand what "Non-conformance with "x by y", "x of y", or "x in y" categorization conventions" means. Perhaps I am not alone in this. Could someone edit this page to more clearly describe the meaning of this sentence? Joie de Vivre 14:45, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories), which sets out the criteria in detail e.g. the section relating to Categories by Country: "Airports in Foo" would be right, "Airports of Foo" would be wrong and speedyable; "Lakes in Foo" would be speedyable to "Lakes of Foo"; "Organisations in Foo" would be speedyable to "Organisations based in Foo". Similarly, "Compositions by (Mr) Foo" not "Compositions of Foo". Anyone considering whether a category is correctly named will need to check the conventions anyway, and the sentence contains the necessary link. Having said that, if you think you can improve the explanation, feel free to suggest a better version! Bencherlite 15:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

What to do about mice?

Category:Mouse (which is being speedily renamed to Category:Mice) is problematic. Mice have already been catted under Category:Old World rats and mice and Category:New world rats and mice. Most articles in Category:Mouse/Category:Mice need to be recatted into one of them. And most articles pertaining to "mice in general" really aren't about mice in general but about house mice (Old World mice). Yet if someone creates an article about mouse droppings or mouse bites or whatever, they are almost certainly going to slap [[Category:Mice]] at the bottom of it. I can see having Category:Mice with Category:New World mice and Category:Old World mice as subcats (themselves also subcats of the larger "rats and mice" categories, which in turn are under further taxonomic categories). But where would Category:Mice go, without making it confusing? Is there a good model for how to handle conflicting scientific and general-parlance categorizations like this? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:49, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to see scientific categorization done in a parallel taxonomy to the common terminology category. To make this work, all the scientific categorizations should use the precise scientific names for the species, family, genus, etc... So for the mouse example it would be categorized in Category:Genus Mus. It would be helpful in this case for articles to have their Latin names appear in the scientific categories and the common names to appear in the common terminology category. This could be done by categorizing the redirects. For example, House mouse can remain categorized in Category:Mouse, and the redirect Mus musculus could be categorized in Category:Genus Mus. You probably wouldn't want Mouse to appear in the listings of Category:Genus mus, but it would be useful to a link to the category by adding a "See also" link like this:
  • Other mouse species can be found in Category:Genus Mus
Better yet, a box could be created to navigate the entire category structure, similar to how there is already a box to navigate all the articles for the classification. Does this help? -- Samuel Wantman 11:01, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
It might. I'll think on it. In response to a couple of points, I personally agree with your cat-the-redirs idea, but I'm not sure others would go along with it, since it's not "standard practice". Yes, we would not want Mouse, the generic article, to appear in Category:Genus Mus unless nothing in that article were classified as outside of that genus (which I'm highly skeptical of). If it were only about Mus species, I then would expect it to be categorized in Category:Genus Mus as well as Category:Mouse. I also wouldn't add to the Mouse article a "See also" that pointed to the category; not normal practice either. I'm still left wondering what to do about Category:New World rats and mice though. It is seemingly useless as both overinclusive and a false-ish dichotomy. Hmm... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Sure some might not consider it "standard practice", but that does not make it wrong. It is an excellent way to correctly categorize articles for topics that do no have their own articles currently. I see this as another case where using this technique is needed. Vegaswikian 17:45, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Not saying I oppose it, just that others might. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 06:36, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
One of the reasons we have "ignore all rules" is to allow for creative solutions to new problems. If this solves the problem by bending a rule, then we need to ignore the rule. -- Samuel Wantman 08:10, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Categorized redirects now appear in italics on category pages. Please see Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects for proposed guidelines. --☑ SamuelWantman 01:00, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Template?

Is there an equivalant template for categories where a CFD has concluded, similar to the one often found on the talk pages of articles that have survived an AFD? If so, where can I find it? BastunBaStun not BaTsun 13:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

((cfdend)) is the one that you are after, applied to the category talk page. --Xdamrtalk 13:33, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks :-) BastunBaStun not BaTsun 16:40, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Salting

Rather then protecting salted pages, should we create a subpage of Protected titles or should we just list categories on that main page? Or is there a reason we would want to continue protecting? Vegaswikian 23:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Notification on talk page of main articles?

Is this too much to ask for before a category is deleted out from under an article it supports? -- Kendrick7talk 00:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Something really needs to be done to widen notification, because watching a category means actually watching every article in a category. It's getting to the point where I'm cursing the wikipedians who hang out here under my breath on a weekly basis when I see the Bot running through articles and deleting a cat. The latest one is Category:Disputed convictions which was deleted for being POV, whose sole purpose was to keep POV out of Category:Wrongful convictions. Now those "disputed" articles are just being up merged to "wrongful" and the POV problem is worse not better. But no one who knows anything ever gets notice of a CfD so deletionists here just run around in their fishbowl willy-nilly. This is a real problem which needs a real solution!! -- Kendrick7talk 19:09, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree completely. There is an odd sense by some that those who actually use a category are "biased", when really their input is essential to making a well-informed decision. I think this is a continuing problem, and deserved getting addressed somehow.A Musing 20:04, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, I would prefer to see a ban on notifying anyone. There is a systemic bias towards retention of too many categories, and it can only be made worse if more people with vested interests in categories and/or emotional attachment to the topic participate. In a small minority of cases specialist information is relevant, but dispassionate interest in categories is the best guide to whether a category should exist. Haddiscoe 01:02, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

'Discussions pending completion and recently completed'

I'd just like to draw your attention to a discussion which has probably been overlooked, Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Working#In process. Keeping the above section on WP:CFD and the 'In progress' section of WP:CFD/W in sync takes a fair bit of effort. Admins and editors at the working end of CfD tend to use the latter tally, I'm not sure for whose benefit the WP:CFD tally is maintained. We already have the list of ongoing (five days) debates automatically generated; if we get rid of 'Discussions pending completion and recently completed' then we will have an effectively maintenance-free page.

Any insights into the use of the above section, or views on its removal?

Xdamrtalk 01:14, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

That sounds pretty reasonable—a section transcluded onto both CFD and CFD/W seems to be the way to go. Yours is certainly a compelling rationale for retaining the 'Pending completions' section, but does anyone find any practical use in the 'Recently completed discussions' list?
Xdamrtalk 12:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and introduced a Discussions awaiting closure section to both CFD and CFD/W. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Open discussions tally is transcluded in to this section. This essentially replicates the status quo, sans the 'Recently completed discussions' section. If anyone has any insights as to the utility of that section then it could always be re-added.
As far as things go now, those working on CFD/W will probably keep the tally current as they go along, making CFD main page essentially maintenance free. Woo hoo.
Xdamrtalk 16:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
New setup: the 'Discussions awaiting closure' from CFD/W is now directly transcluded to CFD. There's no longer a need for a separate page dealing solely with the tally. Thanks to User:Radiant! for this neat solution. --Xdamrtalk 20:44, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Demographics vs. Demography

I started fixing this before I was made aware of this page. There has been a persistant misuse of the word demographics instead of demography as in e.g. demographics of Egypt. It should be demography as per the demography and the demographics pages. There is a substantial amount of categories this applies to and I'm not sure how to do this. Any help would be appreciated. Virgule82 19:30, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Some of the categories are Category:Demographics, Category:Demographics by country, Category:Demographics of the United States —Preceding unsigned comment added by Virgule82 (talk • contribs)

There is, however, no such word as "demographys" so please don't change articles accordingly. John Smith's 20:31, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
It's a typo, lighten up Virgule82 22:10, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I think you misinterpret the meaning of the word "Demographics" in these articles. As a study, demographics and demography are perhaps different things (although the article on demographics itself does not give a proper explanation of the study), but the data which results from the study of demography are demographics, and so the articles, which are simply about the data, are therefore correctly named "Demographics of..." Lexicon (talk) 22:28, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

If I may quote the demographics article: "The term demographics as a noun is often used erroneously in place of demography, the study of human population, its structure and change. Although there is no absolute delineation, ('demographic' as an adjective can indeed refer to either (e.g., demographic transition), demography focuses on population structure, processes and dynamics, whereas demographics is most often used in the fields of media studies, advertising, marketing, and polling, and should not be used interchangeably with the term "demography" or (more broadly) "population studies."" It seems that these articles are all about population growth, structure, birth rates, immigration etc. I believe that is demography, not demographics, no? Virgule82 22:52, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
No its not. What the heck are you trying to pull? Demographics means (Websters): "The characteristics of human populations and population segments, especially when used to identify consumer markets: The demographics of the Southwest indicate a growing population of older consumers." That's exactly how the word is used in all the articles. Please revert your edits before you get penalized for vandalism. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 03:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
No, sorry, that is not what these articles are about. Demographics is primarily a marketing term whose usage has been erroneously expanding into other areas. Demography is the study of human populations, specially with regards to size and density, distribution and vital statistics" to quote webster. This is similar to the way the term geography is used in the country articles. Virgule82 03:45, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

See also the talk page on demography for this.

Okay, first off, as the Webster's dictionary quote above said, the word means "The characteristics of human populations and population segments..." The "especially" and what comes after it doesn't mean only, it means especially. Secondly, I object to the word "erroneously" in your comment above. The meaning of words change, and this one, if it really didn't mean what it's being used for now, does mean it now. But thirdly, and finally, as I have stated, the word "demographics" is here used as in this sentence: "By using the study of demography, researchers produce demographic data, data which may be termed, specifically, 'demographics'." If you really want to modify the articles, you will have to modify them with "Demographic data for..." not "Demography of..." as the articles are not about the study of demography, but instead, and this is the third time I'm saying this, so I hope you get it, the data provided by that study, which can be called "demographics". Lexicon (talk) 19:06, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

asked and answered

I'm finding CfD to be turning beyond debate into badgering in a number of cases, and I'd like to put in a guideline to avoid it. The two cases (one affecting me, one not) that come to mind are User:Cool Cat's constant invocation of the "Kurdistan is not a country" argument despite no one else agreeing with this argument (here, here, here, and here), and User: Otto4711's continued pressure on me and others in the Laurel & Hardy debate here. The latter got me to stop conversation on that subject, which made me realize that I wanted some new guidelines. What they should be is unclear, but something like "the nominator should only answer questions directly posed to him or her," or something. Take a look and see if you agree.--Mike Selinker 15:08, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

CfD systemic bias

There's currently a systemic bias at WP:CfD. When categories are nominated for deletion, the category page is tagged. But no one puts categories on their watch pages, because the result is watching every page in that category, not just the category itself. When a category is nominated for deletion that have a main article, the main article talk page isn't even notified. So no one with any interest in the category under discussion is likely to be aware of it until and unless the bot is sent off to delete it five days later. So CfD discussions are the blind leading the blind with the sole guiding voice being that of the nominator who is the only person who WP:CARES.

Another problem is rationales that apply quite well to WP:AfD are being applied to WP:CfD in ways that don't make sense -- particularly WP:USEFUL isn't credited as a Keep reason since that's the main reason for any category -- categories are useful for browsing a group of related articles.

Can anyone here do anything to fix this? -- Kendrick7talk 21:47, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Not sure where you got the idea that watching a category watches every page in it, because that's just flatout untrue. I watch lots of categories myself, I'm sure others do as well. And there should be at least one guy watching the category anyway: the creator. --tjstrf talk 22:41, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

... oh ... gee, I could have sworn it was like that back in August. Did this behavior change recently? OK, sorry -- that's been a huge part of my complaint. I still think hardly anyone puts categories on their watch pages anyway; the only real reason to would be if you are afraid it would go to CfD. Well, I'm off to expand my watchlist five fold, because apparently you just never know. -- Kendrick7talk 22:52, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
There is somewhat of a problem here, but I don't see any way to fix it, short of mandatory notification. And that is unlikely to happen. -Amarkov moo! 23:34, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

To be frank, I think the opposite is more of a problem. There is a systemic bias that results from people seeing the tags on category pages wanting to keep the category. The people who spend a considerable amount of time at CfD and the related policy pages have put a good deal of effort into thinking about creating a set of policies and practices that will result in a coherent categorization system. The people who come to discussions because they see the tags on categories that they visit frequently are most likely the people who created and populated the category, or fans of the subject matter. Many of those people make categorization decisions in a vacuum, thinking mostly of the decisions effect on their beloved category. The systemic bias I describe seems to be more than enough to counter the systemic bias described by Kendrick7. -- Samuel Wantman

Categories that have been around long enough that their creators have retired, and categories you wouldn't expect to be up for CfD aren't really watched by anyone. Probably the ones that are watched by "valiant" editors are exactly the ones they, perhaps rightfully, are fearing the CfD reaper about. No one guards an empty vault. So we're looking through the same peephole from different directions. If you all use the same standards as WP:AfD, a process wherein a tagged article is arguably more visible, you're going to end up with a process that ends up that much more deletionist. -- Kendrick7talk 07:30, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes it is the same peephole, and by looking from both directions you can get a pretty good view of what is going on. I came to CfD as an inclusionist and now find myself advocating standards that would delete many more categories than those that are getting deleted. It seems that the process makes it fairly difficult to remove popular categories and there are many safeguards that rein in the deletionists. Lack of consensus is an automatic keep. I can think of many examples of problematic categories that took a tremendous effort to delete, and very few that got deleted that should have been kept. Neither of these are the norm. Most nominated categories get deleted or renamed without controversy. What bugs me most about the process is that it takes a very small effort to create a bad category, but a much larger effort involving several people to get it deleted. I'd be interested to know of examples where you think the "deletionist view" overwhelmed a reasonable position to keep a category.
There is a big difference between a silly little POV stub of an article and a silly little category. If List of famous people with red hair is created, it probably won't be seen by many people. It is unlikely that many articles will get linked to it. If someone creates Category:Famous people with red hair they are likely to put lots of people in the category. It then becomes a blemish on every article in the category. An article about someone who is not notable is not as detrimental as a category about an insignificant attribute. For this reason I'm much more deletionist about categories than articles. For me, categories have to be proven to be beneficial to be kept, but articles should be proven to be harmful to be deleted. --Samuel Wantman 09:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
First, two examples to show your "policies" are all over the map; these are two I've noticed in the past few weeks:
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_March_15#Members_of_service_and_social_organizations popped up on my radar when I checked on Andrew Jackson Zilker the other day. The deletion reason for Category:Elks was [The category] is frequently not relevant to the people's notability. Well, OK. Zilker did build Barton Springs Pool for his Elks club, and it's a major Austin amenity, and perhaps he wasn't motivated by the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks philosophy of benevolence when he gave away the land that became Zilker Park, the largest metropolitan park in that same city, which are the reasons he is remembered for. But I can deal with frequently not relevant to the people's notability being a good rule of thumb for deleting a category.
Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_April_23#Category:Disputed_convictions got deleted a few weeks ago, and popped up for me when Tyrone Brown had the cat removed. There are plenty of people (e.g. Leo Frank) who's sole claim to fame is the fact that their conviction was disputed. Now the argument for deletion is most convictions are disputed. But where's Leo Frank now? Category:Wrongful convictions instead, though that's not technically correct; so whatever WP:NPOV problem you were trying to solve you've only made worse, because in the future any POV pusher who thinks a conviction is even mildly disputed will happily just stick them in the "wrongful" box instead. But what I really want to know is: Where'd the rule of thumb about whether a category is relevant to the people's notability go? Wikibreak?
So, what -- you don't want instruction WP:CREEP? Well here's the starting point for Category:Anti-Judaism's proposed deletion by User:Andrew c last week Now that Anti-Islam sentiment and Anti-Mormonism have been deleted, and the 3 Christian related Anti-s are on there way to be deleted, I'm proposing this one to be deleted as well. Right, no instruction creep there. Oh, and Category:Anti-Catholicism actually was briefly deleted here until I pointed this out to the scores of folks at Talk:Anti-Catholicism. Yet somehow, Category:Anti-Gnosticism remained untouched — User:Colin4C summed up my sentiments on these deletions, on topics which each have been the subject of scores of books, fairly well here, full thread here.
So, WP:CREEP is ok, except when its not. Defining categories are ok to delete, except when they are not. And these are just a few WP:CfDs I'm aware of. I'm scared to look at the potential carnage I'll see if I actually delve into your archives. -- Kendrick7talk 20:25, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
There is a strong systematic bias toward deleting categories, which I attribute to two things: (a) the small number of people who regularly pay attention to CfD's have, as we all do, limited knowledge, and are thus often discussing categories where they have not worked on articles, have not actively used the encylopedia in those areas, and really don't have much of an idea of what the substantive issues are; and (b) there is an enormous amount of hostility to providing notice to the people who are actively engaged in particular areas, because it gets in the way of the deleting. I went out of my way for about ten days to provide notices to those who were actively using categories, and the result was a number of better, more substantive discussions and in many cases better ideas for what to merge or replace - the notice probably only "saved" as many categories as they got deleted. Indeed, if notices are provided, there will probably be a charge of canvassing. The idea that people with knowledge or interest have bias is directly contrary to the idea of consensus on Wikipedia, but yet exists very strongly on these pages, and is expressed above by User:Sam. It's just a silly notion, but it persists. And, as a result, CfD is systematically biased in a way that makes categories very unstable on Wikipedia, which makes them much inherantly less useful. A Musing 21:39, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't think it is a silly notion to say that people with knowledge about a subject have a bias towards keeping categories about the subject. I say this because I've done it myself, and I've seen others do it. I fist came to these pages because many of the LGBT categories I used and knew about were being deleted. I fought hard to keep them. Now, two years later, I'd probably vote to delete them and move the information into lists. I saw the same thing going on in the discussions about Category:Anti-Semitic people. Had I not been a regular at CfD, I would have been advocating that the category been kept instead of deleted. Categories do not exist in isolation. Each has to fit into the larger system. It is the regulars at CfD that keep the categorization system from devolving into a pure tagging system where anything goes. This said, I am not opposed to informing people about categories being deleted but I am concerned about how difficult it already is to get rid of bad categories. -- Samuel Wantman 22:02, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I think what you are describing is the difficulty CfD has with dealing with gray areas. The anti-religion category battles have been some of the most contentious. It looks clear to me that there is now a consensus to remove categorization of people based on their negative views. For this reason we don't have the categories Category:Racists, Category:Anti-Semitic people, etc... Since those categories have been removed, people have been categorized in the larger "anti-ism" categories. Personally, I think the "anti-ism" categories should be kept, but people should not be categorized in them based on their beliefs. It might help to have a forum where an entire gray area can be discussed at once, so that there is clarity about where to draw the line. The closest we have to that forum is this talk page, and the talk page for Wikipedia:Overcategorization. The problem is, that even if you and I and everyone on this page come up with a sensible way to carve through a gray area, CfD will continue to come up with its own conclusions. Often though, it is the CfD regulars that eventually work out a solution to the bigger picture. When enough people are convinced of the merits of the solution the CfDs become routine and we move onto another difficult gray area. If you can come up with a more efficient way to deal with these problem areas, I for one would be thrilled to hear about it. -- Samuel Wantman 21:50, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
That sounds like an interesting essay. I remember one editor put it well that a "bad" article by itself doesn't affect much, but a "bad" category can be inserted into hundreds or thousands of articles. So the scope of problems generated by a bad category is potentially much, much greater than the scope of problems generated by a bad article. That's part of the reason why the bar for creating a new category is higher than the bar for creating a new article. Another difference is the purposes categories serve versus articles. Articles are the main stuff of Wikipedia, whereas Categories are the navigational system that let you more easily find the articles you want. Articles are meant to be the end points you spend most of your time in, while categories should be streamlined entities that are easy for readers to understand and use. Category tags in an article should ideally be an efficient, organized list of key categories that can get the reader from one article to another quickly. Too many or too disorganized a bunch of category tags on an article and it becomes more difficult on the reader to use and more difficult for editors to keep up to date. Dugwiki 22:06, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
I've applied WP:KISS as best I could, and created Wikipedia:Categories are different from articles (shortcut WP:NOTART), meant to get editors thinking about this problem. The long term solution, I believe, is to come up with guidlines paralleling the deletion rules currently written to deal primarily with WP:AfD discussions, a lot of which could be split from WP:OCAT. -- Kendrick7talk 19:48, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

On CfD guidelines and policy

I've been following this discussion with interest—some excellent comments have been made. At the root of this is CfD's largely uncodified, piecemeal nature. As a little exercise, a month or two ago, I made a listing of all policy/guideline pages that I could find which touched upon CfD (User:Xdamr/CfD policy rationalisation). I was rather staggered by the disorganised jumble of scraps which I accumulated. There really does not seem to be a central, organised explanation of categorisation and of CfD; even official policy pages are thoroughly out of date. As an example, Wikipedia:Category deletion policy until recently continued to mandate the use of Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/unresolved for further discussion of controversial nominations, despite the fact that that page has been in disuse since Dec 2005, superseded by the emergence of the 'No Consensus' verdict on CfD. In more than two years, no one had thought it necessary to update the official policy page to reflect this. As I have noted, CfD seems to operate in an uncodified fashion, without this layer of policy and explanation—WP:OCAT seems to be the only page whose use bucks this trend.

I'm not sure that I have anything particular to contribute to this specific debate, but I would like to suggest that we recognise that all CfD guidelines are crying out for wholesale revision. There are, to my mind, three main areas to address; how categories should be used (from a writer's POV), how to nominate categories for CfD and engage with the debate (the issue WP:NOTART is trying to address), and how CfD discussions should be closed and the categories dealt with (for benefit of admins). At the moment we seem to get by on a mixture of following the example of others and of group memory, surely this isn't the best approach?

Any thoughts? Xdamrtalk 20:54, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

First, thanks for pointing out Wikipedia:Category deletion policy exists as such -- isn't even linked to from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion which is confusing. Neither, come to think of it, is WP:OCAT. WP:CDP's content is largely duplicated at WP:CfD, and there's a subpage Wikipedia:Category deletion policy/Speedy criteria which dupes it again. -- Kendrick7talk 21:17, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, I just did an update to Wikipedia:Category deletion policy to reflect current policy. I believe that nothing I added is in dispute since that is the consensus policy used today. I did add a section about dealing with other then keep and delete so how to handle those is more clearly laid out. Feel free to tweak as needed. Vegaswikian 21:44, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The systemic bias is towards retention, and it can only be made worse if more people with vested interests in categories and/or emotional attachment to the topic participate. In a small minority of cases specialist information is relevant, but dispassionate interest in categories is the best guide to whether a category should exist. Haddiscoe 01:02, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely agreed. The systematic bias is towards creation and retention. Consider 1) it's much easier to create a Category than to create an Article, in that the content that has to be written for a new Category is minimal or none. 2) As far as I'm aware there's no patrol to check new Categories, as there is for new articles. 3) It's much easier to delete an Article than to delete a Category (which can't even be blanked), as in the latter case there's neither a speedy delete nor a PROD process. This is not even to mention the way in which editors vote on Categories for Deletion. (And yes, the process tends to be a vote rather than a search for consensus: see the multiple comments of "per nom" etc.) As a result, category clutter abounds, and the system is increasingly unworkable. Fortunately, as far as I can see, most casual Wikipedia users don't bother themselves with Categories very much, so the damage is less than it might otherwise be. But on the other hand, the usefulness of the system is likewise much less than it might otherwise be. --Jbmurray 22:29, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Listify cleanup

In going through Category:Categories to be listified then deleted, I ran into Category:One Piece cast members which points back to the big discussion on cast members. This category is not listed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 25#Category:Actors by series, however Category:Category:One Piece voice actors was. Can this be listified or does it need to be renominated? I already messed up one so I'm looking through the category for other anomalies. Vegaswikian 00:14, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Personally I'd be bold and go for it. The whole point of the January discussion was to settle the issue once and for all, for all the by-series categories (or at least all which could be found as of 25/01). The category has been tagged with ((listify)), so those watching it should have been given adequate notice of what is to happen.
Xdamrtalk 00:18, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I also found Category:One Tree Hill cast members which is not in the big list but was renamed from Category:One Tree Hill actors which was in the list while waiting to be listified. So, I'll probably list it on the main working page to get these old ones out of the way. I'll try and figure this out as I add them to the working section. Vegaswikian 00:26, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Many of these categories were renamed and marked for listifying as part of the same CFD discussion. Doing both has just made it more difficult to manage the process. I would suggest that if the result is "listify", it not also get renamed. The rename happened very quickly after the discussion was closed. When I went to add the listify tags, it made it much harder to verify which categories to tag, and now it makes it confusing when it comes time to actually delete the categories. -- Samuel Wantman 07:36, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
The only ones I have not verified as being listed from a CfD are:
  • Category:Port Charles cast members
  • Category:Texas cast members
  • Category:The Agency (U.S. TV drama series) cast members
Vegaswikian 07:53, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Oh, I can answer that. The CFD closing boiled down to (1) a rename for consistency, and (2) deletion iff a proper list existed as an alternative. Hence the renames. >Radiant< 10:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Any sort of complaint process in place (re: CFD conduct)?

I wish to register a complaint about the manner in which a category that was put up for deletion was voted upon in terms of whether or not it should be deleted. I feel very strongly that the individuals involved who voted for deletion did not take the time to educate themselves about the matter/issue at hand, but rather voted blindly for deletion based on the simple fact that it was proposed for deletion (again by someone with no idea about the category's vital importance to the completeness of the Wikipedia project). I feel that the voting process was tainted by these "yes men" who did not contribute any feasible arguments in favor of their votes for deletion, and that the individuals who would've been able to contribute some real background knowledge about the subject matter were not given a chance to weigh in on the matter. The category in question concerned musical artists who were grouped into a classification based on their performances of one or more (John) Peel Sessions, a distinction that only came if said artist had something new and innovative to contribute to the world of music. As the late Peel was an advocate for change and innovation in popular music, this was a giant signifier for a musical artist. I am both angry and saddened that people with no interest or knowledge in this subject matter were given a chance to shutter a category that honored this distinction amongst groups with Wikipedia articles. (Krushsister 04:56, 13 May 2007 (UTC))

If you think that the consensus was somehow tainted by these people not being familiar with the topic, you can nominate it at WP:DRV. However, you must demonstrate that they would have said differently had they known about the topic. -Amarkov moo! 05:01, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Thank you, Amarkov. That's just what I needed to hear. I promise you I will provide for an impassioned and informed reasoning for why the category needs to be preserved. (Krushsister 05:06, 13 May 2007 (UTC))
Really? Even I've heard of peel sessions, and I hardly know my radio edit from a hole in the wall. I'm looking forward to the day CfD can address this general ivory tower problem. -- Kendrick7talk 05:55, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
As one of the editors who has been subjected to abuse by Krushsister, I would like to say that I do know about the topic, and remain absolutely certain that the correct decision was made. The removal of a category is not a denigration of the subject, but merely a judgement that it is not suitable material for a category. No one is suggesting that there shouldn't be an article. Haddiscoe 01:00, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

TV shows

moving this from mainpage to solicit more comment.

User:Otto4711 has been proposing a lot of TV show categories for deletion, almost always with the same rationale: the articles are easily interlinked, with little room for growth. Some of these are passing, and some of these are failing. I find this state of affairs hard to understand, so I’d like to solicit opinions so we can have the sort of mass nomination that Otto thinks won’t work. So I’m going to try to define features of TV show category. A TV show category might contain:

  1. its eponymous article (e.g., Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
  2. cast member articles (e.g., Sarah Michelle Gellar)
  3. crew and creator articles (e.g., Josh Whedon)
  4. a category for episodes (e.g., category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes)
  5. a category for characters (e.g., category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters)
  6. a category for locations (e.g., category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer settings)
  7. a category for associated properties (e.g., (e.g., category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer games)
  8. articles that would be in the above categories but aren’t because there are “too few” of them
  9. lists (e.g., List of Buffyverse historical flashbacks)
  10. articles about associated series and spinoffs (e.g., Angel (TV series))
  11. articles about organizations, soundtracks, catchphrases, websites, and other things that don’t usually have show subcategories (e.g., Dingoes Ate My Baby)

I’d like interested people to look at that list and say what makes them want to delete a category. For example, I think a category gets a keep if has more than #1-3, but I expect I have one of the lowest thresholds. Tell why you’d delete a category, and maybe we can craft a rule that makes sense so we don’t have to vote on 500 individual show categories.--Mike Selinker 14:53, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we can reframe this discussion. I think we should look at the problems that sometimes result from having these categories, and determine if there are ways to mitigate those problems. If there are ways to solve the problems, it really doesn't matter if we keep the categories. The basic problem of these categories is that it leads to the overcategorization of articles leading to category clutter. This is mostly due to the mis-categorization of individuals who were cast or crew of the show. A smaller problem is that a small number of subcategories then appear out-of-place when they become subcategories in larger hierarchies. Another systemic problem is that they set a precedent that will lead to additional eponymous categorization.

So how can we mitigate this problem. First off, I think there should be a project wide policy on not categorizing people by their artistic creations. In a sense this is a backwards categorization. Creations should be categorized by their creator and not the other way round.

Second, we could create some templates that routinely get added to categories like this that explain which articles and categories should or should not be members. Editors should be encouraged to remove miscategorizations.

Third. These categories should not be directly placed in some larger hierarchies. Instead of appearing in Category:2000s American television series there should be a category Category:TV show categories or something similar. This is in essence saying that we think that articles are the important entry point to the topic. I consider all these eponymous categories to be subject categories, which are somewhat different from other categories. Most categories have a "X is a Y" relationship from the article to the category. Subject categories have a "X is related to Y" relationship. (This is a bigger topic for discussion).

If these three things were to happen, I would not care if these categories remained. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 19:06, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

What your proposal overlooks, though, is that these eponymous categories provide little navigational benefit to the reader while simultaneously increasing the amount of editorial maintainence required per television series article when changes occur. Maintainence increases because you still have to alter the series' main article regardless of whether or not an eponymous category exists, and thus when such a category exists you have to considering modifying both the main article, the category section of the main article and possibly the category section of other articles in the same category. So it's a combination of extra work for little to no benefit. All that is in addition to and separate from the other problems of category clutter you mentioned. Dugwiki 19:54, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
What type of navigation is needed? Does the category serve these needs best? Would a nav template work better? If you want an eposide list, clearly a nav template is better since you can list them in order, not something a category is good for. Templates also allow you to list all of the episodes even if they don't exist yet and the list can be included in each appropriate article. So the question would seem to be what is the better solution, category or nav template? In some cases both is a valid answer. Vegaswikian 20:07, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
You neglected to mention an episode list article, the third option and one that is probably best overall. As far as navigation, the question is how readers will go about finding information related to the program. Most users will start their search by typing the name of the show in the search box, producing the main article for the television show (or a disam page that leads directly to the main article). Once the reader is at the main article for a television series, they are (or should be) able to immediately navigate links for the cast list, episodes and characters of the show. In addition, as mentioned above, the article can contain information about the series that a category can not and can provide auxilliary information next to the links such as air dates for episodes and matching actor names to characters they portrayed. Thus for purposes of collecting lists of links to all the articles directly related to a specific television series, the series' main article is the more commonly used and superior navigational hub to an eponymous category for the show, at least in terms of cast lists, episode lists and character names. Dugwiki 20:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I have proposed both here and at WP:OCAT that categories named for TV shows be treated like categories named for people. The same exception, that coverage of the TV show is broken up into multiple articles that are not easily interlinked and which can't be easily categorized elsewhere, should be applied. We've gotten pretty good at identifying when an eponymous category isn't required. The same reasoning ought to apply to other similar categories too. Otto4711 19:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Bot query

I'm rather surprised to find that a search-replace bot can't handle such tasks as "Cat:A to Cat:B AND Cat:C". Could a botrunner enlighten me why that is the case? >Radiant< 07:58, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm almost positive that I can do it in AWB, if you have an example I can run a test. Worst case, I could do it in 2 passes. --After Midnight 0001 01:30, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Fictional Sociopaths

Previously, the category:Fictional sociopaths was deleted. However, here are some reasons to bring it back up:

=CJK= 20:04, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Previous debate at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_14#Category:Fictional_sociopaths. --Xdamrtalk 22:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)


Why no speedy delete or "PROD" for categories?

I'm assuming that this must have been discussed and some kind of consensus reached. If you could point me to that discussion, that would be handy. (For the reasons behind my query, see inter alia my comment above under Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion#On_CfD_guidelines_and_policy.) --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 12:04, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:SPEEDY#Categories There isn't much. --Kbdank71 15:49, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

CFD discussion templates

The CfD discussion starter templates (eg Template:Cfr2) have been edited by User:AzaToth. The net effect of these edits is to append (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) to category names and '→' in place of 'to'. This, of course, means that the work of a closing admin is complicated. Whereas before (in the case of, eg, a Rename discussion) we would have the code [[:Category:Old name]] to [[:Category:New name]] (easily cut and pasted to WP:CFD/W), we now have ((lc|(({1|Old name))))} → ((lc|(({2|New name))))} which has to be mangled by the admin into CFD/W bot-readable form. I've posted a note on AzaToth's talk page, pointing out this unhelpful complication so hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Xdamrtalk 22:41, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Can see if I can make a fix that everyone is happy about. →AzaToth 23:02, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, this is the result:

Category:Category

Propose delete Category:Category
((lcss|Category))
Nominator's rationale: Your reason(s) for the proposed deletion. →AzaToth 23:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Category:FromCategory

Propose merge Category:FromCategory into Category:IntoCategory
((lcss|FromCategory)) → ((lcss|IntoCategory))
Nominator's rationale: Your reason(s) for the proposed merge. →AzaToth 23:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Category:CatOldName

Propose rename Category:CatOldName to Category:CatNewName
((lcss|CatOldName)) → ((lcss|CatNewName))
Nominator's rationale: "Your reason(s) for the proposed rename. →AzaToth 23:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)"

Category:CatOldName

Propose rename Category:CatOldName to Category:to be determined by consensus
((lcss|CatOldName)) → ((lcss|to be determined by consensus))
Nominator's rationale: Your reason(s) for the proposed rename. →AzaToth 23:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Category:FromCategory

Propose conversion into article Category:FromCategory to ToArticle
((lcss|FromCategory)) → ((lass|ToArticle))
Nominator's rationale: Your reason(s) for the proposed conversion. →AzaToth 23:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)


→AzaToth 23:36, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Can I ask a stupid question? Why is this now more difficult than it needs to be? Do we really need immediate links to edit, talk, history, etc? Isn't that all available by clicking on the category itself? Ok, that was a few questions, but hopefully you get my meaning. It ain't broke, why are we trying to "fix" it? --Kbdank71 02:07, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
I'd say revert to the old version. Nothing gained by this except problems and more work. Vegaswikian 04:52, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
In fairness, now that my issue above is taken care of, I regard these changes as useful to closing admins (or at least to this particular closing admin). 'Edit' enables quick and easy removal of the cfd template from category pages, 'talk' enables quick and easy addition of ((cfdend)), etc, etc. Others may get along fine without it, but I would be sorry to see them disappear (even though the slight duplication of content is vaguely irksome).
Xdamrtalk 22:49, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I also dislike these changes. They make CfD pages more bulky, requiring more scrolling to read them, and the links added are all available anyway to anyone using WP:POPUPS. I know that newbies may not use popups, but I'm amazed if any admin doesn't use them. For group nominations, these links can add screenfuls of unecessary links and whitespace. Please can we get rid of the ((lcss|FromCategory)) → ((lass|ToArticle)) stuff? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:57, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I also dislike the changes. The worst feature is that the ((lc1)) template does not produce a link to the category itself ... which means that we can't use What links here to find discussions. I've changed these to use ((lc)) instead. -- Prove It (talk) 13:14, 15 June 2007 (UTC)


Aaaargh!

Please can people take a look at today's CfD, and in particular at the nomninations for Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from the Virgin Islands etc: they are simply horrible, and a huge step- backwards in legibility and useability.

There is no link to the category being renamed, and including the rename target in the section heading creates absurdly long section headings with unwieldy links. We simply don't need the merge or rename target in the section header. Please please please can we go back to the old arrangement of having the section header saying an unlinked "Category:FromCategory" and the text saying "Propose merge Category:FromCategory into Category:IntoCategory"? That's clean, simple, contains all that's needed, and doesn't create absurd section links like this monster: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 June 14#Category:Members_of_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives_from_the_Virgin_Islands_to_Category:Delegates_to_the_United_States_House_of_Representatives_from_the_U.S._Virgin_Islands. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:26, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Re:That last link - Yuck! For one thing, no links in headers, if you please. The way that should have been laid out:

Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from the Virgin Islands

Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from the Virgin Islands (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Rename Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from the Virgin Islands to Category:Delegates to the United States House of Representatives from the U.S. Virgin Islands
==== Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from the Virgin Islands ====
 ((lc|Members of the United States House of Representatives from the Virgin Islands))
 :'''Rename''' [[:Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from the Virgin Islands]] to [[:Category:Delegates to the United States House of Representatives from the U.S. Virgin Islands]]
 
 *'''Propose renaming''' - That's what they are: Delegates, not Members. —[[User talk:Markles|Markles]] 00:04, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

This presumes the normal "wordwrap", of course. (And the necessitated leading space and nowikitags to illustrate the syntax.) - jc37 08:42, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd be happy with that apart from the ((lc)) line. All it does is to offer a few links who which are available once the category is viewed, and are in any case directly available to anyone who has taken a moment to install WP:POPUPS. It's cluttersome on single nominations, and horrendous on group nominations. I suggest the following:
==== Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from the Virgin Islands ====
 :'''Rename''' [[:Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from the Virgin Islands]] to [[:Category:Delegates to the United States House of Representatives from the U.S. Virgin Islands]]
 
 *'''Propose renaming''' - That's what they are: Delegates, not Members. —[[User talk:Markles|Markles]] 00:04, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
That gives us a simple header, links to both the categories (from where editors can find history etc if they want to), all in a clear and uncluttered layout. What more do we need? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:22, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Note: I have reverted ((cfr2)) to the last version before the changes by AzaToth. I'm sure that these changes were well-intended, but there is no consensus for them, and I suggest further discussion before any changes are made. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:28, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Remember that all the four templates should result in a similar look, you can't just concentrate on one template. →AzaToth 16:54, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, even if one template avoids the huge long section names, that's an improvement; but in any case I returned here to note that I had done the same to ((cfc2)), ((cfm2)), and ((cfm2)). Please could we discuss any further proposed changes before they are implemented? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:02, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
  • I tend to agree that the old version of CFR is better. My newer version was a compromise too hastily put together. >Radiant< 12:31, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Cont.

My rationale for the change, was that I found the different templates not match each other. Most templates seemed to have spun from an older version of ((cfd)), but have all developed into different directions. I found that the best solution would be to recreate them all using a similar "template". I tried to combine the different features of the different templates, and came up with the first version. But as a request arrived that it should be possible to easy manually copy and paste to a log page, I changed it to place the links to the different pages beneath the major line. I don't really understand whar Radiant means by "impedes the legibility of the CFD page", as it's just a cleanup of the cfd templates. Each feature now found in all templates was present in the templates before, though only in some (except the →). →AzaToth 11:33, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Problem with group nominations

I found the older templates easy to use for group nominations. These new templates, however, are not set up for such nominations. Can this be fixed? Dr. Submillimeter 11:45, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe that the old template allowed that. →AzaToth 12:33, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Yes they did. It was possible to add an input that would become the section name for a group nomination. For example ((subst:cfd|Blah)) would point to a CFD debate named "Blah" (although some templates were set up to point towards "Category:Blah" instead of "Blah"). I once used this feature many times. With the current templates, this is no longer possible. Dr. Submillimeter 14:36, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
You're welcome to edit those templates to fix them? >Radiant< 14:39, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
I have just modified ((cfd)) per Dr S's suggestion (it irritated me too), and I have also modified the documentation. Please could others provide some feedback. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I fixed the cfd/doc so it wouldn't show that annoying error message in the example. --Kbdank71 10:35, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Link to category under discussion

Can I edit the tempaltes that produce the discussions so that the section names are Wikilinks to the categories being discussed? This is really useful for category discussion. Dr. Submillimeter 15:28, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't that go back to multiple links to a category from the same space? --Kbdank71 17:55, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
That would be better than zero links from the same space. See, for example, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 June 13#Category:Primates of Italy. (Also, feel free to laugh at the category.) Dr. Submillimeter 19:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Actually, a link does appear for the discussion on Category:Primates of Italy, but look at some of the other discussions at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 June 13. Some of them lack direct links to the categories under discussion. Dr. Submillimeter 19:16, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
e/c I tried to say the same thing but you beat me to it. My original comment was based upon what June 7th looked like (the last day I closed). Why are some of them missing on todays listings? Is the template broken? I agree that is a problem. --Kbdank71 19:25, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Protection

I was somewhat surprised to notice these templates aren't protected per Wikipedia:High-risk templates. To my best knowledge, most or all deletion-related templates are protected for being a plausible vandal vector. I have hereby protected them; note that we have recently had to protect WP:CFD/W for the same reason. >Radiant< 13:13, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

When to use category redirects

On Japanese pages, WP:MOS-JA has tried to enforce a standard romanization scheme, which involves macrons over long ō and ū syllables; and, by extension, category names also follow these rules. In article space, we always make non-macron redirects (ie, from Tohoku region to Tōhoku region) to cover cases where the macron'd ō may not be easily entered on someone's keyboard. In categories, I have been doing the same thing when creating categories with macrons in the name, using the ((category redirect)) template.

I noticed that sometimes when CFRs are closed, the old category is just deleted; while other times, the redirect template is added to the old category. Is there a preferred way? Or, maybe a better question is, Is there any problems caused by adding the redirect template to categories like this? Neier 21:28, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Articles in redirected categories are recategorized by a bot (currently User:SelketBot). The more there are, the longer it takes to go through them all. There has been discussion off and on about software changes enabling use of #REDIRECT for redirecting categories (this sort of half works). As far as I know, this has not happened yet. So, is there a problem? I'd say no, unless we're talking about thousands of categories (which I think we're not). -- Rick Block (talk) 21:54, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
Previous discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion/Archive 9#Discussion part-II - this relates to bugzilla:3311. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:02, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Merge proposed on WP:PM

This merge was proposed on WP:PM. I figured it was more relevant here, so I cut and pasted it here -

Don't know if this has already been discussed. Thanks for having a look,xC | ☎ 21:28, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Board game categories

I posted this at Wikiproject Board and table games, but it was suggested that I bring it here as well. This is regarding Category:Board_games.

These are, in my opinion, a mess. There's stuff like "abstract strategy games" and "economic simulation board games" (which I think could be better named "Business themed board games") being in the subcategory of Games by Mechanic, when it should really be Games by Theme. There's stuff like the Talisman category, which probably shouldn't exist at all. There are categories that don't exist, like Trading or Negotiation games that could be created and exist under Board games by Mechanic, but don't.

Anyway, I was planning to shuffle these about and probably make a lot of category changes for individual games in a way that made more sense to me. It's a task that I can do at work (unlike taking photos). But I wanted to check in here to see if people thought this was a good or bad idea.

There's also the larger issue of whether it would be appropriate to expand the board game categories by theme and whatnot to include card games as well. I think that it would make sense to change "Fantasy board games" to something like "Fantasy themed board and table games" It just doesn't make sense to me that pretty much all card games only exist in the category of "Dedicated deck card games" and I don't think it would be that useful to create separate "card games by theme/mechanic" categories.

Obviously, the deletion and renaming issues would probably have to be made in a formal discussion at CfD. But is there any reason why I can't or shouldn't start reorganizing these categories in a more comprehensive manner?

If this is an inappropriate forum for this, I apologize.

-Chunky Rice 21:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

You might want to outline what you plan on doing over at the wikiproject, just so people are aware of it, and any disagreements can be worked out before any possible edit wars erupt. And yes, deletion and renaming needs to be done here. Other than that, I'd say be bold. --Kbdank71 16:50, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Franks

This is a request for advise. I contribute regular on the historical subject of early Franks. Now the Franks were a proto-Dutch people that once conquered Gaul and later conquered half of Europe. For this reason this people has been all over Europe. Everytime I edit or create pages I see again and again things like "this is a project of wikipedia France", "this is a stub of French nobility", "Categories: French monarchs". This sometimes happens with things or people that could be related to France, but mostly occures totally out of context. When I simply delete it, usually it placed back. Now I am Dutch and off course I could place "Dutch here" and "Dutch there" all over wikipedia, but that's not my thing. What is highly irritating me is that the templates used by this "French" take so much place: sometimes when you want to read something you have to scroll below 3 useless templates. All this wouldn't be so bad if those "French projects" actually contributed quality stuff, but here it becomes weird: when you delete their thing it is placed back, even though they haven't contributed to their "high priority article" in years..... Help!

Is there someone with a useful idea? Or should I simply wait untill everybody pollutes these articles with Dutch, Belgic, Luxemburgian, German, Swiss, Austrian, Italian and Spanish (were the Franks have been) stuff so nobody can't find an article anymore without scrolling some meters down? johanthon 19:47, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, let me see if I have this right. You create or add to articles about the Franks, and other people add France-based templates to them. And if you try to remove them, they get re-added. That about right? --Kbdank71 20:01, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that's right. But it is also about 'categories' and so on. johanthon 20:45, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

These templates should not go on the article at all; they should go on the talk pages. If someone has placed such a template on the article itself, of course you should summarily remove it. But if it's on the talk page I can't really say I see the harm; the current discussions are found at the bottom of the talk page anyway, so the scrolling is close to a non-issue. As for the categories; again, it's the talk pages that wind up in the category, not the article pages.

I admit there's a bit of a sense of disconnect in seeing a WikiProject that seems to you tangentially related, place its banner on the talk page (I went through the same thing when the Big Ten wikiproject labelled the Harvey Friedman article, given that he has no sacks in the past five seasons :-), but in the end I can't really see why it's a problem; if they have something to contribute they're welcome to do so. --Trovatore 20:52, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Some examples would be useful. There is a pain in the ass template at Merovingian, which should go horizontally at the bottom in my view, but this can be a problem, especially for short articles. Create your own template-free Wikiproject Franks & try to to hold the barbarians off that way perhaps - no hang on, you are the barbarians... Johnbod 00:51, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

History Week at WP:CFD

Can we declare this "History Week at WP:CFD" (which follows "Primate Week at WP:CFD")? Dr. Submillimeter 12:32, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Category:People by city

In some discussions on cleaning up categories for people from the London area, it is becoming apparent that people do not feel comfortable with this categorization system, and some people may even support deleting the system. However, a deletion of just Category:People from London by itself, even if it was supported by WikiProject London, would seem inappropriate if categories for people in other cities remained. Therefore, it seems like the entire Category:People by city hierarchy would need to be deleted.

The problem with brining this hierarchy forward for discussion is that it appears to be impossible to tag all of the categories in the hierarchy. I have problems even displaying the category hierarchy using Special:CategoryTree, and it looks like it would take hours to tag all the categories with the AutoWikiBrowser. If a nomination was made, would it be possible just to tag the top category, or this a situation where deletion would be impossible just because the categories cannot be tagged? Dr. Submillimeter 21:58, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Category:United States District Court judges Oregon

Will I do not disagree that a rename may be in order for the above, it does not meet the 5 speedy items listed. The only one close is violating nameing conventions, but if one looks at the main parent cat of Category:United States District Court judges one will see that there is not a standard as of yet for the sub categories. So they all need to be standardized, not just this one. Aboutmovies 05:09, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Silly category round-up for June 2007

Here is a sample of the silliest categories that were deleted or renamed at WP:CFD during the month of June 2007:

American asses
Musical groups with head in its name
Mythological things at least in part based on chickens
Orthodox text editors
Possible Replacements for Anchor Steve Bartelstein
Primates of Italy (a duplicate of Category:Popes)
Primates of the Jerusalem Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and Epitropia of the Holy Sepulcher in America

Dr. Submillimeter 13:32, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Help - new category for discussion

I don't know how to do this stuff, so would someone mind helping me figure out what to do with this category? It appears to be created by a user who is not aware of other categories that exist on the same topic. Additionally, the phrase "Learning quiz" is not used in English, to my knowledge. I think the category should be delete, along with the article "Learning quiz." — Chris53516 (Talk) 15:20, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I marked the category for speedy deletion, as it was empty. In the future, do not feel intimidated; just follow the instructions on the WP:CFD page.
As for the article, it appears to have been converted into a redirect for quiz. It should no longer be a problem, either. Dr. Submillimeter 20:57, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Reorganization

Prehaps it would be better if cfd discussions are done here in a more similar manner as they are done for afd discussions and mfd discussions, where instead of finding the page on the log, click on the cfd link, and it takes you to its own page. That way it is easier to watch a cfd discussion, and it can easier be listed on a delsort.--SefringleTalk 03:41, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it works pretty well. Besides, CFD doesn't get nearly the amount of traffic that AFD does. --Kbdank71 03:52, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Template

Either the template or the instuctions, or both, for {x{subst:cfd}x} are still badly adrift. It doesn't do what it says at all. Johnbod 19:51, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Incorrectly closed CFD

Can someone delete Category:Journalists killed in the Vietnam War, please? A well-meaning user created it before the related CFD was finished. The CFD originally proposed such a category, but consensus went with Category:Journalists killed while covering the Vietnam War instead. Thanks, jwillbur 22:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Done. --Kbdank71 23:38, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Incorrectly opened CFD

What is the situation if a user has placed a cfd on a page but not created the entry in the CFD log? Is it a void nomination because the procedure hasn't been followed (can the CFD be removed from the page)? Or do I have to add it to the log to object to a move that the originator of the CFD can't be bothered to give a reason for?. The categories in question are Category:Sega Mega Drive, Category:Cancelled Sega Mega Drive games and Category:Sega Mega Drive games - X201 19:15, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

All conceptions of God are labeled under Mythological creatures

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Mythological_characters

I propose a Deities associated with religion be put under a seperate category named Deities or the category be renamed to Mythological creatures/Deities.

After all, dictionary.com defines mythological as "imaginary; fictitious." I think that calling every religion's god fictitious was not the original intention, but regardless, it should be changed.

They're using "mythological" in a different than normal sense, actually. I suggest giving it a notice like that on Category:Christian mythology, which explains the technical meaning of the term. --tjstrf talk 04:35, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Categories should not be empied before nomination

Do we need to clarify this? I'm asking since in doing category cleanup you can wind up with a category that is empty. That is the result and not the goal of the editors activities in some cases. Other editors may consider this a violation of the guideline to not empty a category before nomination for deletion. I know I did this on at least one occasion. Vegaswikian 19:09, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Where exactly is this "guideline" stated explicitly? I think the issue is one of discretion. I don't see a problem emptying a category if it is emptied as part of a cleanup, and its deletion is clearly uncontroversial. Even if there is disagreement (such as when one category is emptied by moving the contents to a category with a slightly different name), the results can be easily undone if the discussion results in a reverse merge. It might be a bad idea to empty a category and then request a speedy deletion. This could be seen as a way of circumventing discussion. But even in this case it might be uncontroversial. The big problem with emptying categories is when set of articles get removed from a category entirely. If the set does not end up in a similar category, there is no way to use the contents of the category to help assess the validity of the category. In these cases, I don't think the category should be depopulated. But as long as people are acting in good faith, the previous or potential population can be identified, and everyone assumes good faith, I don't see a problem with emptying categories. --☑ SamuelWantman 20:22, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Don't know where it is 'stated explicitly', but it came up in a comment today on CfD. Vegaswikian 20:31, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I think a good rule of thumb is do your category clean-up under the assumption the category will be kept. After all, if the category is kept but you took all the articles out then that means someone will have to repopulate the whole thing. So if the only reason you're removing an article is because the category is nominated for deletion, then don't remove the article. On the other hand, if you would remove the article even if the category were kept because it doesn't belong in that category to begin with, then that's ok. Dugwiki 20:34, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
The main problem is that many times, the contents of a category help drive the discussion, and sometimes the nomination itself. Without knowing what articles were there, it's impossible to make a good argument for or against (except the obvious, "delete, empty"). And even for those that were merged/renamed instead of just deleted, it's much harder to a) find the person who did it, and b) wade through their contributions to find the articles. --Kbdank71 20:40, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
The second para of the project page here is:
"Unless the change is non-controversial (such as vandalism or a duplicate), please do not remove the category from pages before the community has made a decision."
-which is a very necessary thing to say. we have seen instances where a category has been emptied in very dubious good faith, and then put up for nomination. Since it is impossible for ordinary editors then to see what the category had contained, this is potentially a highly effective way of gaming the system, which I doubt is always spotted. This does not specifically say categories should not be removed before a nomination (maybe somewhere else does), but I think clearly implies it. I think when doing category work you need to make a preliminary decision about whether the category should be kept, and if not, do the nomination first. Perhaps the policy should be made more explicit. We have had two emptied categories (by the nominators, one right before, one right after the nomination) in todays nominations, and I think the point needs to be made (though I support deletion of both). Johnbod 21:45, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
Further to this, see this today where it appears exactly this has been done. I checked a couple of articles, but apparently not the right one - another editor has picked it up. Johnbod 15:33, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Lack of notification for categories under discussion

I created Category:NUMB3RS some time back, and while I wasn't watching the category I was watching the article (NUMB3RS). As such, I was unaware that the category had been nominated for deletion until it was removed from the article ([3]). I think that I agree with the deletion of the category (as I recall, when I created it, the navigational template wasn't around), but I would have much appreciated notification of its nomination for deletion.

As such, I want to propose two things, and would like to see at least one of them implemented:

  1. Bot notification to all of the authors of a category (or at least the primary author) that the category is up for deletion/discussion. Such a thing is used for speedy deletion nominations.
  2. A standard way of notifying category authors of the discussion, such as is in place at Templates for Deletion (and which should be heavily encouraged).

The first one of these is preferable, but is more technical (although maybe someone over at Wikipedia:Bot requests would be interested in setting one up). What do people here think? Mike Peel 18:21, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. You should give people an option to disable these notifications though (i.e. they can add themselves to an "exceptions" list, or add some code to their talk page). And it'd be a good idea to notify everyone in a category when a user category is nominated. Melsaran 18:27, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
I don't object to voluntary notification of the creator of a category. It's fine if this happens via a bot, but I personally prefer #2. I strongly object to the idea of notifying individual members of user categories; by the way, that has been proposed and rejected at least twice. In any case, discussion of that issue belongs elsewhere. — Black Falcon (Talk) 20:44, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Anyone who is concerned should have the article on their watch list. Vegaswikian 22:21, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Adding multiple categories for discussion

Is there a way to speed this up in adding multiple ones to rename and adding the requests on each category? Particularly when there are about 26 sub-cats and 50 or more sub-sub-cats? Simply south 18:48, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

New bot function available

Per Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AMbot 2, AMbot is now available to assist with group nominations at CFD and UCFD. Upon request, AMbot can tag all the categories of a properly created group nom and can also be used to remove tags after keep decisions. Requests for the bot may be placed at User talk:AMbot/requests. If anyone has any recommendations for how or where to make this known other than by this post, please let me know. --After Midnight 0001 21:50, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Image categories

Do we have any position on categories existing only for images? TewfikTalk 09:16, 12 August 2007 (UTC)


Proposed solution to categorising those imprisoned during The Troubles

There has been extensive debate on how to neutrally categorise those individuals imprisoned during The Troubles in Britain and Ireland. After much discussion (see here, here, here and here), there was a feeling that the proposal should be opened to a wider audience for discussion and comment before proceeding. Since most of the cats are to be created, a proper CfD is not suitable, so I have propsed the general idea here.

As far as I can tell, only two exisitng would cats require renaming:

Category:People imprisoned for terrorism to Category:People imprisoned on charges of terrorism (see this discussion here)
Category:Criminals (and subcats) to Category:People imprisoned on criminal charges (and subcats)

I have resisted proposing the latter of these yet, as it would be a huge undertaking (see all the subcats) and I'm not convinced it would have greater support, despite following the same rationale as the former.

The rough 'tree' of categories proposed is as follows, (although note that it would not be a tree precisely, as some subcats reside in more than one parent, including some not shown. For example, the prisoners accorded Special Category Status subcats would also be subcat of Category: Prisoners of war. But for ease of display here, I have proposed it in a tree-like manner.)

  • Category:People imprisoned on charges of terrorism (requires renaming) (done, Rockpocket 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:Irish republicans imprisoned on charges of terrorism (done, Rockpocket 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:Irish republican prisoners accorded Special Category Status (struck, see below, Rockpocket 21:16, 24 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:Ulster loyalists imprisoned on charges of terrorism (done, see below Rockpocket 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:Ulster loyalist prisoners accorded Special Category Status (struck, see below, Rockpocket 21:16, 24 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:People imprisoned on criminal charges (requires renaming) (postponed, see below Rockpocket 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:Irish republicans imprisoned on criminal charges (postponed below, see below Rockpocket 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:Ulster loyalists imprisoned on criminal charges (postponed below, see below Rockpocket 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:People imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict (done, see below Rockpocket 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:Prisoners accorded Special Category Status (done, Rockpocket 21:16, 24 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:Republicans imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict (done, Rockpocket 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:Irish republicans interned without trial
  • Category:Irish republicans imprisoned by UK jury courts
  • Category:Irish republicans imprisoned by UK non-jury courts
  • Category:Irish republicans imprisoned by ROI jury courts
  • Category:Irish republicans imprisoned by ROI non-jury courts
  • Category:Loyalists imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict (done, Rockpocket 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC))
  • Category:Ulster loyalists interned without trial
  • Category:Ulster loyalists imprisoned by UK jury courts
  • Category:Ulster loyalists imprisoned by UK non-jury courts
  • People whose convictions were overturned (done, see below Rockpocket 03:44, 25 October 2007 (UTC))

This might be covering too much detail, and some of the 4th level cats may never be created, as there may not be enough people to populate them. Nevertheless, as a template for a neutral and comprehensive categorisation, I support its implementation. Thoughts on the whole schedule, but also on the renaming of the two cats, would be welcome. Rockpocket 00:33, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Assuming the Category:People imprisoned on charges of terrorism rename is completed, I would support this proposed structure. (And I agree that a "Cat:Criminals" rename would be difficult to implement, but is also possibly unneccessary under this effort.) Guliolopez 01:07, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I have a couple of issues with some of the proposals mainly to do with the use of the terms terrorism and criminals, firstly terrorism is a very loaded term, and in this context very partisan, Irish Republicans have fought against British rule in Ireland for many generations long before the term terrorism came into use, and one mans terrorist is anothers freedom fighter, would Wolfe Tone be classified as a terrorist under these categories, our James Connolly or even Michael Collins or Eamon de Valera, who decides who is a terrorist, the same applies to the use of criminal who decides. All these people that would be categoried in these categories wether Loyalist or Republican where imprision for political offences and that is what they should be categorised as Category:People imprisoned on charges of political offences not as criminals or terrorists.--padraig 01:10, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Hi. I understood that the whole point of Rockpocket's proposal was to specifically AVOID classifying people as terrorists one way or the other. Rather, that by categorising someone who actually WAS "imprisoned on charges of terrorism" under the relevant cat, it acknowledges that one jurisdiction (or whatever) "claimed" that he/she (or whoever) was a terrorist, but that (for the purposes of Wikipedia at least) the claim is acknowledged as having been made - But not "supported" neccesarily. That's why - personally - I think the cat proposal is a decent compromise that avoids POV, while recognising that people were charged. IE: With this cat structure, there is recognition that the charge was laid, but there is no specific acknowledgement about whether it was "legit" or not. And hence it avoids the POV pitfalls. (Or at least - it fits with WP tenets on this type of thing). Guliolopez 01:32, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Exactly. Since their convictions will not have mentioned political offences that is not verifiable and therefore fails WP:V. The beauty of this proposal is that the inclusion criteria every single cat can be verified, therefore there should be no argument over whether someone is or is not included. If Collins was charged under terror legislation, then he would be in that cat, if he was charged with criminal offenses, he would be in that cat. No-one "decides" anyone is a "terrorist" or a "criminal". We just look at the documented charges and categorise according to that. Rockpocket 01:36, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Any one convicted of charges relating to the troubles where convicted of Sheduled offences which dealt with offences related the political conflict in Northern Ireland, and where tried in political non-jury diplock courts specially setup to deal with such cases, therefore the political aspect is verifiable.--padraig 01:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
And you will note there are specific cats for exactly those people (Category:Irish republicans imprisoned by UK non-jury courts and, to some extent, Category:Irish republican prisoners accorded Special Category Status). Those are indeed verifiable, which is why they are represented. Going from those to "political prisoner" status is a matter of opinion and/or synthesis. Rockpocket 05:01, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Two comments:

  1. My idea would be that any given "political" prisoner would be catgorised as both e.g. "Irish republican imprisoned by UK non-jury courts" and "Irish republican imprisoned on charges of terrorism", always side by side. That way the status of the action, the status of the person carrying it out and the status of the court that convicted him or her is clear from the categories. If you read that and think "political" that's good - it means the category reflects your POV without being POV itself.
  2. Exactly the same applies to "People imprisoned on criminal charges". No way Category:Criminals should be renamed! That is the category for common criminals. The proposed cat is for those who, while they may have been called "common criminals" by certain politicians and newspapers, were involved in the same activities as "people imprisoned on charges of terrorism" i.e. activities related to the NI conflict. The whole point of the proposed category list is that every person imprisoned during the conflict can be categorised as imprisoned on one or the other type of charge, and the whole lot must be a sub-cat of "Prisoners and detainees", not of "Terrorists" or of "Criminals", and definitely not as an alternative to either of them.

Scolaire 07:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem with that is that Category:People imprisoned on criminal charges does not specify its only for people who "may have been called "common criminals" by certain politicians and newspapers, were involved in the same activities as "people imprisoned on charges of terrorism". Any so-called "common criminal" could be placed in there (assuming they were imprisoned) so it will either end up as a duplicate of Category:Criminals, or as a subcat of it. The proposed subcats (Category:Irish republicans imprisoned on criminal charges) are more specific in the manner you suggest, but that doesn't change the fact that we will have do something with the parent. Rockpocket 08:27, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Could we put "Republicans/Loyalists imprisoned on criminal charges" into the "Republicans/Loyalists imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict" cat for now? I know that's moving away from the original plan, but it would allow us to create the cats while avoiding the "criminals" minefield. Scolaire 09:06, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes, perhaps that is the best way forward, leaving out Category:People imprisoned on criminal charges completely for the moment. It may be something that needs to be addressed later, but at least it avoids that hurdle for the moment. Rockpocket 17:19, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
The rename proposal was well received and was adopted today. Since the comment heres are generally favorable, and those that had criticisms at least appeared to acknowledge that this proposal was an improvement on the current situation, I intend to go ahead with the plan, perhaps tomorrow. Rockpocket 02:17, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Excellent! Scolaire 07:05, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
Putting "Category:Irish republican prisoners accorded Special Category Status" as a subcat of "Category:Irish republicans imprisoned on charges of terrorism" is worrying. At the time SCS was introduced there weren't any terrorist charges as such, Prevention of Terrorism Acts gives more information. Until the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 there wasn't really any such thing as a terrorist charge. One Night In Hackney303 21:03, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for letting me know, I have adjusted the schedule (no pun intended) accordingly. At the moment I'm not making subcats at the third level anyway, as there simply isn't enough articles to put in them where the information is clear. As it stands, the only problem is that Category:Prisoners accorded Special Category Status is currently a subcat of Category:People imprisoned on charges of terrorism, which would appear to be wrong. I think if we remove that we should be fine for the moment. Rockpocket 21:16, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Some (ie, those convicted after the act and of offences committed before 1 March 1976) will have been obviously, but anyone convicted (or who received it while already imprisoned, for example Billy McKee) before the introduction won't have been strictly speaking, although in real terms the offence was the same, just the classification had changed. One Night In Hackney303 21:43, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
For the moment I am putting anyone whose article says they were imprisoned, but it isn't clear on exactly what charges, in Category:Republicans imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict. Once that is done we can then begin to parse out those that can go into the terror charges sub-category, and perhaps create subcats for those that were interned, those that had jury and non-jury trials etc. I'll keep the SCS issue separate for the moment. Rockpocket 22:01, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

(de-indent) Just so I (and probably others) understand where we are. "Category:Republicans imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict" should be used for various groups of people.

Does that sound about right? One Night In Hackney303 00:25, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

That sounds about right, except I have been including those that were tried by Special Criminal Courts, and those imprisoned for being a member of the IRA in the ROI, in the Category:Irish Republicans imprisoned on charges of terrorism subcat. I don't know the specifics of the legislation in the ROI, but those cases seemed appropriate for the "charges of terrorism" subdivision. Maybe that shouldn't be the case, I'm open to alternative opinion on this. Also, obviously its just not anyone imprisoned in those jurisdictions that can be added to the cat, but those that claim to have acted for political reasons. I don't think those held in remand, but not convicted, should be added; Adams is in there based on his internment (but he, and others, will be moved to subcat Category:Irish republicans interned without trial when I get around to making it). There are a few other exceptional cases, I have puzzled over:
As I said, I'm trying to get everyone in the parent cats first and then worry about more detailed classification once that is done. After that there is sure to be shuttling between and within them. Some people, like Martin Meehan (Irish republican) seem to be appropriate for loads of different subcats (SCS, internment, terror). I am perfectly happy for editors of good standing to get involved and help out with this (as I'm sure I have made mistakes), I would just rather not have to deal with the Prisoner of War brigade revert warring over it. Rockpocket 01:40, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually, come to think of it those convicted by Special Criminal Courts probably shouldn't be in the terror subcat (instead if can have its own non-jury court conviction subcat at a later junction). However, what do you think we should do with those found guilty of being a member of the IRA, is that a "charge of terrorism" for our purposes or not? I think it probably is, (e.g.) but welcome other's thoughts. Rockpocket 01:58, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I have finished the first stage in this process. I'm taking a break now but, will continue to subcategorise as best I can over the next few days. Rockpocket 03:38, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
To avoid problems I tend to think we're better off sticking to wholly factual categorisation. The [Provisional] IRA is only classed as an illegal organisation in the Republic of Ireland, not a terrorist organisation. If we lean towards a "charge of terrorism" for our purposes then ideally you'd have to include anyone convicted prior to 1974 in the UK. Why are we treating the Offences against the State Act 1939 differently to the Prevention of Violence Act? If we stick to factual there's no room for interpretation and should prevent problems.
There were always going to be ones that don't fit nicely into the categories, but I think you've got them right. I tend to agree with you on the B6 (and Guildford Four as well obviously), it's definitely best not to put political labels on them. Donna Maguire is a strange one. When I created the article the cat I used was the most appropriate one, but if anyone changed the new cat to the parent cat I wouldn't object. She tends to differ from Adams in remand terms (as do the Colombia Three) in that she was actually convicted of the offence, and would have been imprisoned were it not for the amount of time she'd already served on remand. Similarly the C3 would have been imprisoned if they hadn't fled the country. One Night In Hackney303 04:23, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Three of the articles I have worked have been tagged for possible inclusion in Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#Proposed solution to categorising those imprisoned during The Troubles). (namely Tomás Mac Giolla, Seán Garland and Billy McMillen. Now "The Troubles" is described as the period from 'the late 1960s to the signing of the Belfast Agreement in 1998'. None of the aforementioned were imprisoned in the period in question. All were jailed at some stage during the "Border Campaign" but not "The Troubles". Why then did "Rocketpocket" list them for inclusion in the category? Clearly they do not belong in the proposed category. Coolavokig 05:25, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
You will note that the cats themselves relate to imprisonment during the "Northern Ireland conflict", not The Troubles specifically (despite the title of this section, which was made a fair while ago and was not meant to be definitive). This was intentional, as the Border Campaign (IRA) was clearly a conflict over Northern Ireland. Of course, we now run into problems of when the conflict started. I have currently stopped short of including people imprisoned or interned before the creation of the Irish Free State, though there is no real reason they couldn't be added, I suppose. It just seemed that the Anglo-Irish Treaty was a reasonable cut off point because as after that the conflicts were more about the North, specifically, than before.
As for ONiH's reasoning. The differentiation between "imprisoned on charges of terrorism" and just plain "imprisoned" was originally as a way of differentiating those people that were charged with criminal acts, even though it was in the "name" of political struggle (as some people objected to volunteers being described as common criminals). However, you make an entirely valid point that why should we make an arbitrary decision about "terrorism charges" when we can go with the letter of the legislation. I'm happy to go with your suggestion then, and will make the changes accordingly unless someone beats me to it. Rockpocket 06:43, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Isn't Category:Irish Republicans imprisoned by non-jury courts a bit, well, broad? The reason is that I can only think of one person we have an article on where a person probably wasn't convicted by a jury and that's Billy McKee in relation to his April 1971 arrest. Oh and Gerry Kelly and the Price sisters etc, but the category is still pretty broad. One Night In Hackney303 22:33, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand. Are you suggesting that pretty much everyone we convicted by a non-jury court (the cat is too broad) or pretty much everyone was convicted by a jury (too narrow)? These third level sub-cats were suggested by Scolaire and I have been populating them based on the information in the articles. Based on that, there appear to be 10 or so people convicted by non-jury courts. It may be that all the others were too, but that simply isn't noted in the article text. Rockpocket 22:42, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
Almost everyone convicted in the north was convicted by non-jury Diplock courts, same as everyone convicted in the Special Criminal Court in the south, with the exception of those interned.--Padraig 22:50, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't think they were ever introduced in England, but as far as I'm aware nobody tried after they were introduced in Northern Ireland would have been tried by a jury. Quite often the defendants would refuse to recognise the court anyway, so it's a bit of a moot point whether they were tried in a Diplock court or tried by jury. One Night In Hackney303 22:50, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
So its likely that anyone tried in the South and the North were non-jury, and those tried on the British mainland and elsewhere were jury trials. Going through them, there does appear to be a fair number of people who were tried on the mainland, so it might be worth it. However, I'm not that bothered either way about these particular sub-cats (though I think the interned one is useful). If the consensus is that the whole jury/non-jury things isn't particularly informative, i'll happily merge them back. Is there any other sub-cats of Category:Republicans imprisoned during the Northern Ireland conflict that you think would be informative? Rockpocket 23:01, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
I think we should have the sub-cats that were proposed:
  • Category:Irish republicans interned without trial
  • Category:Irish republicans imprisoned by UK jury courts
  • Category:Irish republicans imprisoned by UK non-jury courts
  • Category:Irish republicans imprisoned by ROI jury courts
  • Category:Irish republicans imprisoned by ROI non-jury courts
which would seperate them better.--Padraig 22:56, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

(indent) I'm not adverse to this (and the way it is set up, these all still can be made as sub-sub-cats). The reason I didn't was because I can't confidently populate these cats based on the information currently available in our articles. If you feel you can, then please do so! (as an aside, I don't suppose anyone has access to the full list of the ~1500 or so people interned in the 1970s?) Rockpocket 23:16, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

(deindent) I think to the non-involved editor, seperating people tried by jury (of which we don't have more than 5-10 at most) and people tried by non-jury isn't that important a distinction to make. Mention it in the article obviously, but I don't seen the benefit in categorising people that way. One Night In Hackney303 23:11, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Question

Can any user close a CFD or do you have to be admin? Onnaghar tl | co | @ 11:18, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Depending on the status of the !vote and what the required action is. If there is a clear consensus for the status quo, then there is no good reason any editor, who knows what they are doing, couldn't close it. Rockpocket 17:08, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, as of right now, non-admins cannot close CfD that are "delete", or that require bots (like a category with 200+ articles). We used to have WP:CFD/W unprotected, so anyone could list categories there that need deletion or bot work. However, now the page is protected so non-admins cannot participate in that aspect of the discussion/deletion process. So if you are up to it, you can close keeps, and even renames/merge if you then rename the cats by hand and tag the old cat for speedy deletion under G6 with a note pointing to the corresponding CfD section. It is also recommended that non-admins not close discussions that are borderline or where consensus is hard to determine. Hope this helps.-Andrew c [talk] 18:22, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually they can close speedy deletes if an admin does the delete. I know that sometimes when it is clearly a speedy, I delete it and hope to get back to tag the discussion. If a non admin wants to close those, that should be just fine. Vegaswikian 23:16, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I knew that non-admins couldn't close deletes, because of previous problems with a naughty editor adding categories for deletion to the working list; I didn't realise that non-admins could still close rename/merge categories if they were prepared to do the leg-work and I'll remember that in future if the debates get backlogged, as sometimes happens (I have AWB access which can help too). I have closed a few "speedy deleted" debates (including one of Vegaswikian's speedys, the other day, if I remember correctly) and a couple of procedural ones e.g. something that should have been listed on WP:UCFD or where a category was nominated twice in one day, and nobody's complained about my lack of a mop! Adding "non-admin closure" is, I think, recommended (although superfluous when the close is because of a speedy deletion, I think). BencherliteTalk 23:58, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, for the many heads up! Onnaghar tl | co 15:51, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Even our categories are notable

Wikipedia reclassifies industry analysts. -- Jreferee (Talk) 00:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Anyone want to comment to her blog post with a ((Sofixit))?  :) --Kbdank71 02:24, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Missing discussion pages

Looks like no one had created the formatted discussion pages after September 1. I just did the ones through September 4. Can someone with AWB or another tool create these for the rest of the year and maybe add another month on a regular basis? Vegaswikian 07:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Category:Redirects_to_Wiktionary

I have been informed that all redirects to wiktionary are violative; therefore, the category, & all content, are in violation.

[[ hopiakuta Please do sign your signature on your message. ~~ Thank You. -]] 07:16, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Informed by who? I don't see any discussion indicating a problem with that category. the wub "?!" 18:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Ditto. Who said that and why? Based on what policy or guideline? Doczilla 09:50, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Amazing feat of bureaucracy

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 September 14#Category:United Kingdom pop musical group stubs: "I have not reposted it there, because that forum uses a different format" - in other words, "I don't give a shit for this inconsistency". Good job, admins, keep it up. Wikipedia needs more of you. And then more. How am I, a newcomer, supposed to know all these bureaucratic hoops, when even and admin (!) has a great difficulty to "repost" because of "different format"? Isn't it time to establish "senior admins"? Laudak 22:15, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

No, just admins who aren't lazy. I posted the discussion at Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion for you. the wub "?!" 18:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, you are the one who first said "And I will not "move it" anywhere. If no one else cares and you are too busy or bossy, the less it is my problem." [4] - in other words, well, you get the idea. It's hard to get people to care about things when you yourself don't. --Kbdank71 19:22, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
As the admin who closed the discussion, I want to say thanks to Kbdank71. I had read Laurak's comment at the CfD, and decided that if the nominator wasn't bothered, why should I be? I have no interest either way in the outcome, and was just closing a discussion. We have all been newcomers at some stage, and I and others tried to help by pointing you politely in the right direction. It's a pity that the civility wasn't returned, but that's life. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:11, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Hey brownie, "if the nominator wasn't bothered, why should I be?" You did worse than that: you closed the discussion without giving a chance for someone else who cares to do the job. I cared just enough to point at a discrepancy. Someone else may finish the job. This is how wikipedia works, I assume. To make a culprit of me here is very nice turn of tables, thank you very much. I am glad not all of you behave this way. But pity to see admins (ie people with power) seem to have lost common sense and respect to other people contribs. Laudak 17:01, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Again I ask, if you come to CFD with the attitude of "piss on that, you fix it, I don't care", why should anyone care to help you? I can see if you just didn't know, and seemed like you were willing to learn, I'd help you out. But the way things transpired, I'd have closed it the same way BHG did. --Kbdank71 17:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Again I say: you say: "should anyone care to help you" -- You are badly mistaken: I don't need your freaking help, especially with your attitude. Once again: I contributed some help (although minor and not deserving all this fuss) to the project. If you don't like me and don't want "help" me, be my guest. Just don't prevent others to help the project out of some bureaucratic attitude just because I reported it in "wrong place". If some admins here think that it is more important to report in "proper place" and "proper format" than to fix the problem, then some admins here are really messed up with priorities in a project like that. Laudak 22:15, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

New Pastor Wayne?

User:Stijn Calle has been creating numbers of silly sub-cats of Category:Angelic apparitions with church approval, Category:Angelic apparitions without church approval, Category:Marian apparitions without church approval and so on .... It takes me about 20 minutes to nominate a single category, so I can't face doing them myself. One or two might be ok, like Category:Black Madonna of Częstochowa or Category:Our Lady of Lourdes. Johnbod 22:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think they can fairly be called that. The odd one might be ok & the rest I think misunderstand what cats are for. Johnbod 23:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I love categories that include allegedly as a criteria for inclusion. Would it be easier to do as an umbrella nomination? As more are added, they can simply be tagged with a copy and paste and added to the nomination? Vegaswikian 23:44, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm sure, but they all have to be tagged. The whole bottom layer of Category:Apparitions needs to go, I think. I'm just hopeless at the templates, there are never enough windows to go back & find what you're supposed to do next. Johnbod 23:49, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
There is a bot which is approved to tag multiple categories as long as you do the nomination. Please see User talk:AMbot/requests. --After Midnight 0001 20:15, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I have just done a tidyup group nomination at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 October 28#Apparitions. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

RFC

I tried to get a discussion going about a category. A user with a different view decided that the discussion should take place in another venue (CFD). However, I feel that CFD has the character of being a vote these days. Whilst I accept the existence of voting for the creation of admins, I think it is possible that, for categories, we can discuss the issues in a reasoned way using threads and back-and-forth discussion. It is official policy to determine things using discussion in preference to votes. I am opening an RFC because I would like the views of the general wikipopulice. Eiler7 21:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)


a) I can't speak for others, but when I close discussions at CFD, I don't count votes. However, if a RFC works better for you, so be it. b) Mind giving us a link to the RFC so we can participate? --Kbdank71 22:03, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Here is a link [5]. If you do not count votes, how do you determine consensus? Eiler7 22:11, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I have given you a link to the current CFD. As for the RFC, this is it. You have already commented on it. Eiler7 22:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
I have just seen that the CFD was closed, without consensus but by appeal to a guideline SNOW. Once again CFD has been reduced to a vote. Eiler7 22:22, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Well, WP:SNOW doesn't mean "let's make it a vote" it means "this was just considered" + "there is an overwhelming majority" + "the overwhelming majority is citing policy (correctly)." That's what the CfD was reduced to. Check WP:SNOW. Also, Kbdank - the RFC in question is this one here, unless I'm mistaken. --Cheeser1 23:15, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Comment here is the link to the discussion which Eiler7 started Category_talk:Homophobia#Proposed_deletion. DuncanHill 23:01, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Note the overwhelming majority (ie "vote") also included everyone citing the same policies and the pre-existing consensus for keeping the article. Consensus is determined by the closing admin, who weighs each interpretation of policy and determines what the consensus is. "No consensus" is a perfectly valid option, but if an overwhelming majority support something based on policy, and a few people object on questionable grounds, which option will seem more sensible? --Cheeser1 23:15, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Comment out of courtesy I have linked this RfC from the talk page of the category concerned, and informed the closer of the CfD as well. DuncanHill 23:21, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Question: The objection here is "how can you make consensus if you don't count votes." It refers to an RfC that was 13-0. Now, maybe counting votes doesn't make sense, but I think unanimity implies consensus. Does anyone else think this is kind of nonsense? --Cheeser1 23:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

13-0 is a vote. Not only that, this vote was opened and closed on the same day. Wikipedia is not a democracy. See WP:NOT. Eiler7 23:34, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but it was unanimous. How much clearer consensus could there possibly be????? You asked how consensus is determined. If everybody agrees, then I think that's how it's determined Eiler. Why are you asking such a ridiculous question, and then (deliberately?) misinterpreting my answer? I didn't say it was a vote. I said it was unanimous, and thus a clear and obvious consensus existed. --Cheeser1 00:33, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Eiler7, you were invited to open a CfD, yet you chose not to do this, you instead used a talk page to open a debate about deletion. 13-0 is a consensus in line with the consensus in the previous, very recent CfDs, so WP:SNOW is appropriate for closure. You have failed to get the category deleted through its talk page, you did not participate in the CfD, and so now you open an RfC (without bothereing to mention it at the category's talk page or to inform the closer of the CfD). I think the word is "forumshopping"? DuncanHill 23:41, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yep, that's exactly the word. --Cheeser1 00:33, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
RfC is fine by me. I added a comment about the extra need for care if the homophobia category survives and was not sure whether it belongs here or on the homophobia cat talkpage ;[6]. Open for discussion as always. Hal Cross 04:45, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I thought when you said you were filing an RFC, you meant at WP:RFC. Regardless, though, you asked how I determine consensus if I don't count votes. As I said, consensus is not vote counting. I read all of the comments, determine who has the strongest argument, and close the discussion as such. As for your CFD that was just closed, I agree with the closing. When there are no objections, it's very clear that there is not only consensus, but that it is unanimous. --Kbdank71 13:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Unanimous? Cheeser himself requested that I add my comments, and I will do so again. I know that some might consider the objections to the category to be 'questionable'. The truth is most categories are not controversial. Very few of them get to the point of even facing a request for deletion. Most categories are also methods of organising knowledge in such a way that we can better understand the world (ie, the process of categorizing aids understanding of the material). One example of this are the columns on the periodic table. We became better able to understand the nature and the relationship of elements once they were structured in such a way that the relationship became readily understandable. The other function of categories is to allow for greater retrieval of existing information, and to assist with the gaps, in knowing where there are holes and lack of understanding. Most categories here at wikipedia follow those guidelines. Homophobia is saddled with several problems. First, there is a lack of understanding as to what constitutes 'homophobia'. Differences will emerge depending individual opinion. Secondly, this subjectivity creates a lack of cohesion among the elements of the category. The do not have anything in common with each other other. Third, the category of homophobia does not assist with the retrieval of information. Do people use homophobia regularly to access a cluster of related information? Fourth, does the categorisation of homophobia assist in finding gaps that need to be improved here at wikipedia? Homophobia, in my assessment fills none of these characteristics to a category here at wikipedia, and so will always face the regular calls for deletion. I do not see any way to solve these problems, which is why I support the deletion of the category Homophobia. Benkenobi18 22:26, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
The CfD was unanimous. How can you question that? First of all, we have an article homophobia that provides "understanding as to what constitutes homophobia." If there isn't a precise, deterministic, P-time algorithm to compute exactly whether or not something is homophobic, sorry, but these are social sciences. There is gray area. Your second point is the same as your first, and the third is a pretty bold claim. How do you know it doesn't help? Because you don't like it and it doesn't help you? --Cheeser1 21:34, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I'm confused, is Eiler7, Benkenobi18? - jc37 23:12, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

If this discussion is an appeal to a CFD discussion, why isn't it going on over there? Are we really discussing a deleted category here, or am I mistaken? Can I be Frank? (Talk to me!) 03:08, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

No, it is not an appeal. It is a commentary on how a particular category (that is, Category:Homophobia) was being "proposed" for deletion on its talk page, where it was becoming impossbile to assess consensus - it was simply a few people with differing opinions going on at length, where those who started the discussion did so with the intention of concluding it with some "consensus" that mandated deletion. The way to properly build consensus for deleting a category is a CfD. The fact that those who were attempting to delete the category admitted that they refused to CfD it because they wouldn't like the outcome is a great example of forumshopping. So it got CfD'd, since that's what they were after, and it was unanimously kept. --Cheeser1 03:30, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Obscure instructions in Procedure section

I have just done my first CFD and two parts of the instructions are unclear to me. At the end of Procedure, III, there are three left-aligned bullet points: "Preview before saving" (which I understand), "Link both categories to delete and categories to merge into" (which I don't understand) and "Always add a colon" (which I suppose relates to the previous bullet point). At what place are linked categories supposed to be edited in? I don't think this is intended to be done in the subst templades. Thincat 11:51, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I think it means make it easy for people. Don't have your nomination say "I want to delete Category FooBar". Instead write "I want to delete Category:FooBar". Or, not "I want to merge Category Foo into Category Bar", but "I want to merge Category:Foo into Category:Bar".
About the colon, that's pretty self explanatory. When linking to categories (from anywhere, not just at CFD), you need to add a colon before the word Category. For example, [[:Category:Foo]]. If you don't put the colon before the word Category, it will just add the page you are editing to that category, not link to it. Test it out at the Wikipedia:Sandbox if you want. Hope that helps. --Kbdank71 20:22, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
That makes sense to me now (and I can't think why I wasn't able to work this out for myself!). I'll see about improving the instructions because it is only parts of the explanatory text that should have links and not the nominated category itself (which is made into a link by the template). Also, the text is best preceded by Delete or whatever since the template does not include the rationale. Thincat 09:04, 12 October 2007 (UTC).
I've changed the instructions but I'd be glad of a review by experts and novices. Thincat 09:58, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I took a quick glance at it. Looks good. Thanks! --Kbdank71 16:21, 12 October 2007 (UTC)


Category:Churches destroyed in the Great Fire and not rebuilt

If it helps, change it to Category:Churches destroyed in the Great Fire of London and not rebuilt- being English, perhaps I underestimated the extent to which "The Great Fire" would be universally understood. Recently the 20th aniversary of the Great Storm of 16th October 1987 was marked. While a memorable event to those who remember it, no-one could write about it for a world wide audience as "The Great Storm". Bashereyre 19:23, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Defining attribute

Discussion moved to Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Defining_attribute, which is probably where it should have been all along. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:18, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
The following discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Discussion at the lengthy CfD on Erdős numbers turned to the question of what we mean by the frequently-used CfD term of "defining attribute". It is used in the nutshell box at the top of WP:CAT, but nowhere else in the page.

I was asked for a definition of the term, and offered the following which I think goes some way to crudely encapsulating what I understand to the be consensus on its usage over the last year at CfD:

For biographical articles, the consensus appears to me to be that it is one or more the following:
  1. a thing for which they are notable per WP:NOTE and/or WP:BIO, and hence the reason for which there is a wikipedia article on that person (e.g. being a notable mathematician); or,
  2. a fundamental detail of biographical data which assists in identifying the person through the usual records (e.g. nationality, year of birth and death); or,
  3. (more controversially) a significant quality of that individual which may be unrelated to either of the the above but which sets a person apart from the majority of her or his peers and which groups people with a similar quality, which is why for example we sometimes categorise LGBT people, through the principles set out at WP:CATGRS.

I wanted to ask what other CfD regulars thought of this as a summary of how CfD generally approaches ... and whether it might be a good idea to take it over to WT:CAT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:18, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

I have seen it defined somewhere as something which it would clearly be wrong to omit from a shortish article on the subject - say a bit over stub length. 1) above is only a partial definition, 2) yes, but unhelpful 3) is certainly included, but hard to define, as we know. Johnbod 03:47, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
I rather like your more practical formulation, though I think that I would prefer "short but well-balanced article", because many short articles are rather overwhelmed by one or two small and rather trivial items. I'm not entirely sure that I'd want to drop the reference to WP:NOTE, but there is a case for doing so, because too few editors seem to understand the general principle in WP:NOTE (most focus on the exceptions). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:58, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page, such as the current discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

proposed merger

Proposed merger of Category:Places of worship in the Netherlands into Category:Places of worship in The Netherlands indeed there seems just to be a spelling mistake --LURobby 19:56, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Speedied, although per convention, it was merged from "The" to "the". --Kbdank71 13:14, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Categories populated by templates

WP:CFD#Procedure says:

If the category is only populated by a template, go to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion.

Doesn't this only apply when the user wants to delete the category? I'd like to rename a category only populated by a template. Should I really go to WP:TFD? --PEJL 19:53, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Why would it? That's not what it says. Doczilla 08:32, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
template Talkpage βcommand 19:58, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, can you be slightly more verbose? --PEJL 20:38, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
I think βcommand is suggesting you bring this up on the template's talk page, but I think for a rename in this case CFD would be appropriate. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:58, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
OK, I'll take it to CFD. But when exactly should the user go to WP:TFD? Only when deleting a category only populated by a template that should also be deleted? If so, the instruction should say that. --PEJL 07:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Good suggestion. It does say this now. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:33, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Roller-coaster merges

How do we deal with the merge from Roller-coaster-by-amusement park categories? I looked at the template and the easiest solution appears to be to add the state category to the article and when this is completed update the template to drop the category by park add. Anyone see a better approach? Vegaswikian 23:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

That's the best way I can see of doing it. the wub "?!" 23:36, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Timeline embedded into a category page

Would someone a little more expert on categories mind taking a look at the page Category:Archaeology of Sweden, which has a timeline embedded into it. It's the same timeline as at Scandinavian prehistory#Timeline of Prehistoric Sweden, but neither includes the other (perhaps the category page once was included into the article, if so, someone came to their senses). Thanks. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:32, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Inefficient serial renames

Have a look at this discussion (April 2007) and this one (November 2007). Such serial tweaks and renames seems rather inefficient. It also makes it progressively harder to trace the page history of the original category, as you have to go back through two renames, not one, to find the original category page and creator. I'm also surprised that the original discussion wasn't flagged up in the new discussion. It makes CfD look like a place where the latest fashion for category names rules, rather than considered debate. In one half of the year it will be "of", in the other half of the year it will by "by", and whether it is poetry or poems depends on the day of the week... Am I being unduly harsh here? Carcharoth 10:44, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Note that in this case one of the original categories was recreated! That just seems silly. In April the verdict was that the name needed changing. In November the verdict was to switch back to the old name! Carcharoth 10:46, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
I think that you are being unduly harsh, and that what happened here was actually rather good. Consensus can change, and decisions are not set in stone; I hope this won't be the last time that a previous decision is revisited, and either tweaked or overturned.
What we actually happened in this case is a more logical tan first appears. Firstly, there was a 10 April CfD on a sample of categries, which settled on "Poetry of" to replace than a variety of formats (including "foo poems", "poems by foo"), with an explicit rejection of "Poems of". The 26 April CfD applied this standardisation decision to many more categories, and the November 2 CfD made a small tweak from "poetry of" to "poetry by". That seems to me to be a microcosm of wikipedia's general incrementalism working well: a decision revisited and found to be still fundamentally right, but with scope for a small tweak. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:19, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
Sure. It's just that in one case a category name was ahead of its time and was renamed and then renamed again back to what it had been before! That is what seemed silly. Carcharoth (talk) 14:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Ambassadors by country of origin

I am considering nominating the members of Category:Ambassadors by country of origin for renaming to establish a consistent naming of either Ambassadors of foo or Ambassadors from foo. This will take a reasonable amount of time tagging so I'd be grateful for any preliminary thoughts on whether of or from is preferred, and maybe to solicit a bot to do the tagging. Tim! (talk) 11:06, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:NOT#DATABASE?

I would welcome any comments on my suggestion at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Not_a_structured_database. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:04, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Need help cleaning up a close

Can someone who knows something about templates look at this closing and see if you can help. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:07, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedians by contact information

Moved from WP:VPP:

I was surprised that there wasn't any categories that showed Wikipedians that could be contacted via means like IRC or AIM, so I decided to hunt down some userboxes and populate some. My thinking was that this is useful for collaboration. There are many times where I jump on #wikipedia to ask a quick silly question, like a naming convention, or to see if anyone remembered where a template was that could be used for format some external link. I've listed my own AIM screen name on my userpage and user talk page also as a method of collaboration. I created three categories at this point, Category:Wikipedians by contact information, Category:Wikipedians available through AIM, and Category:Wikipedians available through Jabber, using only templates that actually listed a contactable ID. I got to a template for MSN and saw that a similar category had been removed via CfD here, where it was deleted under the argument that Wikipedia wasn't a social networking site. While I agree with that general idea, I don't think this considered the categories as helping with collaboration in relation to Wikipedia. Before I continue I figured I should get more feedback about this (especially given only five editors were involved in the CfD). -- Ned Scott 06:13, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The argument that we're not a social networking site is spurious if applied to categorizing information already here. I'm not entirely sure what purpose the category would have but offhand I see no reason why it's inappropriate to gather information people have chosen to include about themselves.Wikidemo (talk) 09:39, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
This is a good place to put a link to a discussion at CfD, encouraging other editors to go there. It's a bad place to have a discussion that really should occur at CFD, particularly since discussions there are archived (by the date started) while discussions here are not permanently archived at all. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
A good suggestion. I have copied over what we have so far and linked the section of the VP to here. -- Ned Scott 03:10, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Actually, as this is a user category, it would probably be better served at WT:UCFD. Ben Hocking (talk|contribs) 20:02, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I've now listed this for deletion review, Wikipedia:Deletion review#:Category:Wikipedians by contact information. -- Ned Scott 20:03, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Academic paper on WP categories

People may find this paper interesting, or not! Johnbod (talk) 14:18, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Category:Buffyverse

"The Buffyverse" is a slang term for the fictional universe of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. These two shows have more in common than differences.

Currently, we have a Category:Buffyverse (slang, a mishmash of articles and subcategories); and below it we have a Category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Category:Angel (TV series). I'm finding this messy and confusing; the overlap between the shows makes good categorisation difficult and what we have at the moment sure doesn't look good to me.

I'm wondering if anyone can come up with a better scheme for this, and put it through CFD. The best I can think of is to merge and delete all 3 categories into a new Category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. --kingboyk (talk) 19:24, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I've taken this to CFD - Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_December_7#Category:Buffyverse. --kingboyk (talk) 18:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Category:Fictional and Non-Fictional Heroines

This category is more focused on women who have influenced and still to date influence people around the world, and are considered heroines. It should be seperate from the Category:Heros. That category is very broad while this one is more focused and includes both fictional and non-fictional females.Mcelite (talk) 17:07, 7 December 2007 (UTC)mcelite

This category was discussed at CFD on 2007/12/7 and deleted. --Lquilter (talk) 19:39, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

speedy section: differences

Is there a reason why the "speedy" criteria on this page (WP:CFD) are different from those at WP:CSD? I've been confused about this several times and am inclined to just fix it, but perhaps I've missed some older discussion on it? --Lquilter (talk) 19:30, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. I realized that the renaming/merging section is fine if the prefatory text is just edited slightly to include CSD#Categories #1 in its examples. So I edited that text to add: "empty categories that have been empty for four days" from WP:CSD; that prefatory sentence now reads: Categories that qualify for speedy deletion (per Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion, e.g. "patent nonsense", "recreation", empty categories that have been empty for four days) can be tagged with the regular speedy tags, such as ((db|reason)), and no delay is required for these. --Lquilter (talk) 19:37, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Burma - Improper close - Admin needed please

This debate has been improperly closed after less than 24 hours by an involved party. Can an admin please re-open? Johnbod (talk) 13:47, 18 December 2007 (UTC) Sorted - at review. Johnbod (talk) 18:08, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Category:South Tyrol

supparluca emptied and redirected Category:South Tyrol despite consensus at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 November 28#Category:South Tyrol to leave it alone. Chris (talk) 05:50, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

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