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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Aranel (talk | contribs) at 02:50, 13 March 2005 (→[[:Category:Magicians]]). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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Deletion of a category may mean that the articles and images in it are directly put in its parent category, or that another subdivision of the parent category is made. If they are already members of more suitable categories, it may also mean that they become a member of one category less.

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  2. Read and understand Wikipedia:Categorization before using this page. Nominate categories that violate policies there, or are misspelled, mis-capitalized, redundant/need to be merged, not NPOV, small without potential for growth, or are generally bad ideas. (See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style.)
  3. Please read the Wikipedia:Categorization of people policy if nominating or voting on a people-related category.
  4. Unless the category to be deleted is non-controversial – vandalism or a duplicate, for example – please do not depopulate the category (remove the tags from articles) before the community has made a decision.
  5. Add {{cfd}} to the category page for deletion. (If you are recommending that the category be renamed, you may also add a note giving the suggested new name.) This will add a message to it, and also put the page you are nominating into Category:Categories for deletion. It's important to do this to help alert people who are watching or browsing the category.
    1. Alternately, use the rename template like this: {{cfr|newname}}
    2. If you are concerned with a stub category, make sure to inform the WikiProject Stub sorting
  6. Add new deletion candidates under the appropriate day near the top of this page.
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  8. Sign any listing or vote you make by typing ~~~~ after your text.
  9. Link both categories to delete and categories to merge into. Failure to do this will delay consideration of your suggestion.

Special notes

Some categories may be listed in Category:Categories for deletion but accidently not listed here.

Old discussions from this page have been archived to:

In light of various new policies, some /unresolved disputes will be re-listed here in the near future.

See also meta-discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion phrases regarding the content of the {{cfd}} template, and about advisory/non-advisory phrases to be used on this "Categories for deletion" page.

March 12

Category:Wikipedia:Suspected sockpuppets of DickWitham

Inappropriate use of categories. DickWitham has only been, as of this writing, blocked for 24 hours for vandalism, and the others listed have not been blocked at all. They have the right to edit their User pages, which would take them off of the category if they decided to do so. RickK 23:24, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete. This category is inappropriate. Zzyzx11 02:31, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Welsh rugby

Should be renamed Category:Welsh rugby union as 'rugby' refers to both rugby league and rugby union which are two different sports. Other 'national rugby union categories' exist and they have 'union' in the title.GordyB 19:47, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Agree. Wincoote 19:55, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Agree. Avoids confusion. Rugby league and rugby union are two different sports. Zzyzx11 02:33, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:History stubs

The category in use is Category:Historical stubs. -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:05, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Keep and move the articles in Category:Historical stubs to Category:History stubs. Neutralitytalk 22:04, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)
  • for once I'm tempted to agree with Neutrality over Aranel on a stubs issue - keep and move things to this category (as long as it doesn't cause the servers to ave conniptions). Any stub that has been created at some time in the past is a historical stub - what we are concerned with is stubs connected with history. Therefore "History stubs" is the correct name. Note also that this would keep it in line with other stub categories (e.g., Anatomy stubs, Archaeology stubs, Biology stubs...). Grutness|hello? 22:58, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep in agreement with Grutness' arguments. Courtland 23:32, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
    • All fine by me (in fact, I do like it better, I just don't think it's really worth the effort), as long as someone else is willing to make the dummy edits necessary to transfer the articles. -Aranel ("Sarah") 00:38, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:U.S. military in the 20th century

Empty. Redundant with Category:U.S. military history 1900-1999. -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:00, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete. Redundant, empty category. Zzyzx11 02:27, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:U.S. military history 1900 and on

Empty. Redundant with Category:U.S. military history 1900-1999. -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:00, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete. Redundant, empty category. Zzyzx11 02:27, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

March 11

Empty Jews Categories

Delete. Empty. Why do people insist on creating categories when there are no articles to go in them? Plus, we already have Category:Jews, do we need empty subcats? -Kbdank71 16:52, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:East European Jews
Category:Czech Jews
Category:Caribbean Jews
Category:Asian Jews
Category:African Jews
Category:North European Jews
Category:Oceanian Jews
Category:South-East European Jews
Category:West European Jews
Category:Canadian Jews
Category:Hungarian Jews
Category:Iberian Jews
Category:LGBT Jews
Category:Latin American Jews

User:Carbonbase decided to move all Lists of Jews to Categories. Obviously he was soon reverted, but the empty lists remained. They should all be deleted. Jayjg (talk) 17:19, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, unnecessary empty cats. Megan1967 02:02, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Turbans

Empty category, serves no purpose. -- EmperorBMA|話す 10:15, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete. Empty for months. --A D Monroe III 11:58, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. -Kbdank71 14:17, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

March 10

Category:River in Cambridgeshire

Should be Category:Rivers in Cambridgeshire, at least for now. -- Beland 06:07, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Shouldn't both of these Rivers categories have the same convention? Either Rivers in Foo or Foo Rivers? -Kbdank71 15:06, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:London Rivers

The convention is Xxxx rivers; just need a lowercase R. -- Beland 05:54, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Bridges in London and Category:London River Crossings

These should be merged, but Category:London River Crossings is confusing. I recommend Category:Bridges and tunnels in London, kicking the lone ferry to Category:Transport in London, and making the merged category also a child thereof. (Thanks to Willmcw who noticed this issue slipping through the cracks.) -- Beland 05:38, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Categories under Eccentrics

While we are deleting Category:Eccentrics should we also delete Category:Compulsive Hoarders and Category:Misers? --ssd 05:34, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Compulsive Hoarders

Category:Misers

Category:Loonies

Given the three above nominations, need more be said about this one? On second consideration, rather than delteing, should this be Category:British Loonies pollitical party or something? --ssd 05:41, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete, derogatory and un-encyclopaedic name. If it is to be a category related to the Monster Raving Loony Party, then it should called as such rather than leaving it open to interpretation (and libel). Megan1967 02:09, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Articles that need pictures

Misguided category created by User:SamuraiClinton, a user who is creating a significant amount of cleanup work for other editors. We already have Wikipedia:Requested pictures, which makes this category redundant. Rhobite 02:36, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

  • Keep this category, it is useful! --GoofyGuy 02:44, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • It is completely redundant! Why did you create it? Rhobite 02:49, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
      • Some categories can help link people to articles that need pictures; especially when there is a template to inform them! --GoofyGuy 03:06, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep since a viewer of a page is likely to notice the category than hit "what links here" and see it's linked by the page requesting images. Cburnett 05:28, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Wikipedia:Requested pictures is a better system, divided by topic. —Mar·ka·ci:2005-03-11 13:29 Z
  • Delete because it's too messy to follow with this and Requested pictures and Image:No image yet and who knows what else. --iMb~Mw 13:47, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Weak delete. Might be useful, but has the potential to become huge (the vast majority of articles could use more pictures). I envision a Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles that need pictures sorting in the future. --SPUI (talk) 01:05, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, redundant and intrusive. It's like a cleanup tag, only... not? -Sean Curtin 05:52, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, Requested pictures already does an adequate job. Megan1967 02:10, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Octogenarians

  • I'm somewhat surprised by the fact that Category:Nonagenarians turned out to be considered useless and thus deleted but this category did not. Any opinions on whether this is a useful category?? Georgia guy 21:16, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Hard to maintain. Not useful info - there's already a category for birth years. Do people who died in their 80's count? Or are they "former octogenarians"? -Willmcw 22:09, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. All the same arguments that played into the Nonagenarian category being deleted apply here. Courtland 23:20, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)
  • Delete. This is too broad for even a list to be particularly useful. -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:25, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Same reasons as Nonagenarians. -Kbdank71 14:53, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. It's hard enough with all the catergories there are now. Ted Wilkes 19:48, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Native peoples of Quebec → Category:Aboriginal peoples in Quebec

As decided on Talk:Native peoples of Quebec, "Aboriginal peoples in Quebec" is a much more accurate term than "Native peoples of Quebec". An attempt to move the Category manually failed with the error message: "This action cannot be performed on this page.". If categories can be moved, please move as above. Thanks. Kurieeto 14:41, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

  • The category is empty. Is it, in any form, needed? -Kbdank71 16:01, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Yes, the category is needed. It was depopulated by a user who has since been banned, but was left empty while an improved name was debated. As a new name has been decided upon it is ready to be repopulated, after the name change. Thanks, Kurieeto 17:15, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
Support move. -Kbdank71 15:16, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The Government of Canada's Department of Indian and Northern Affairs has developed a writing guide regarding the use of such terms [1].
For the term "indigenous", the Department instructs: "The term is rarely used in the Department, and when it is used, it usually refers to Aboriginal people internationally. Outside the Department, the term is gaining currency, particularly among some Aboriginal scholars."
For the term "aboriginal", the Department instructs: ""Aboriginal people" is a collective name for the original peoples of North America and their descendants. The Canadian Constitution (the Constitution Act, 1982) recognizes three groups of Aboriginal peoples — Indians, Métis and Inuit." The Department goes on to say that "By adding the ‘s' to people, you are emphasizing that there is a diversity of people within the group known as Aboriginal people."
Consensus was achieved on Talk:Native peoples of Quebec to use the terminology used by the Government of Canada, as Canadians are the most likely to be reading about aboriginals in Canada. We do not wish to break with the naming conventions of the Government as this would create confusion. Kurieeto 15:15, Mar 12, 2005 (UTC)

March 9

Category:Female chess players

We don't normally separate genders in categories. I agree that there may be some value in this, since famous female chess players are still relatively unusual, but I believe a list would be better suited. (I brought this up on the talk page—one person agreed with me and one did not.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 18:13, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete. I'm a fan of chess and female chess players (since a lot of them are Hungarian), but I agree a list is probably better. -Kbdank71 18:50, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. See the category's talk page. --Sonjaaa 23:39, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. "since famous female chess players are still relatively unusual". See also my comments on the talk page. Dysprosia 02:24, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Notable enough to put on a list, but I don't think we need to separate male and female chess players, in the categorization scheme. --Azkar 02:40, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • List and delete. -Sean Curtin 18:27, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • 'Delete - spurious relationship. -- Netoholic @ 18:45, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)
  • List and Delete Names will give away gender a lot of the time, a list can provide extra info in a better way (e.g. first female grandmaster), much rather have them separated by nationality. Greg Robson 21:40, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. People in this cat aren't directly in Category:Chess players, which sounds sexist. (Unless we make a Category:Male chess players? That's sounds dumb.) --A D Monroe III 23:04, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, notable and unique category. No need to make a Male chess player category as most people assume, rightly or wrongly, that chess players are male. Megan1967 02:13, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Eccentrics (Round 3?)

See Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/resolved#Category:Eccentrics. Seems this category was deleted on December 20 and re-created on December 22. Last consensus was that a list was appropriate. What do we want to do this time? -Kbdank71 17:50, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Magicians

It's a duplicate of Category:Professional magicians and had only two entries (I depopulated it). Paranoid 17:46, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • KEEP While content may be duplicated, I think that Professional magicians should be a subcategory of Magicians, and it should not be a People by occupation subcat, just of Magic, since there are amateur magicians of some note (like Johnny Carson). 132.205.45.148 20:37, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. Should probably be renamed. Not all magicians are amateur or professional performance artists - many, particularly in history, genuinely profess(ed) to having magical power. They should be in separate, distinguishable categories. Also, I wonder whether Category:Professional magicians shouldn't be re-categorised. It is currently under Category:Magic, which is a sub-category of Category:Occult. Stage magic is hardly occult and the other entries in Category:Magic all seem to refer to the occult, as opposed to entertainment, kind. -- Necrothesp 15:57, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I agree w/ re-categorizing. It should be a subcat of "entertainers", not "occult." -Willmcw 22:20, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete: name is too ambiguous. Category:Professional magicians should likewise be renamed to Category:Stage magicians. -Sean Curtin 18:31, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
    • Support this. -- Necrothesp 18:47, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Rename to Category:Stage magicians, per User:Gtrmp's suggetion. -Willmcw 22:20, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment Where does Merlin (or, for the young ones, Harry Potter) play into this? Fictional (but actual) magicians shouldn't be thrown in with Doug Henning.

Category:Youth organisations of Singapore

Only one entry, which is to the non-Singaporean-specific Boys' Brigade. I don't really see the point of this category. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:11, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That is because I just created it a few seconds ago. Articles for the biggest youth organisations in Singapore will be added in due course obviously.--Huaiwei 10:13, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Wouldn't it be better to create at least one of the articles before creating a category? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:33, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. The only article in that category that belongs there is List of youth organisations in Singapore. (Neither Scouting nor Boys' Brigade should be there.) We don't create categories because they might hypothetically be useful at some point in the future. Once the articles have been created, then it may be appropriate to recreate this category. -Aranel ("Sarah") 18:13, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Neutralitytalk 04:34, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, unnecessary cat. Megan1967 02:15, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Native American languages

This category is redundant. Languages are already classified by genetic affiliation (e.g. Navajo language belongs to Category:Apachean languages which belongs to Category:Athabaskan languages which belongs to Category:Na-Dené languages which belongs to Category:Languages) and by region (e.g. Navajo language belongs to Category:Languages of North America which belongs to Category:Languages by country (which itself should be renamed to Category:Languages by continent or Category:Languages by region) which belongs to Category:Languages). There's also considerable inconsistency in membership: Category:Apachean languages, Category:Athabaskan languages and Category:Na-Dené languages all belong to both Category:Native American languages and to Category:Languages, while Category:Algic languages belongs only to Category:Native American languages. I would say only Category:Na-Dené languages and Category:Algic languages should belong to Category:Languages, which should really be only a category of subcategories (separate language families) as much as possible. --Angr 10:08, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Would this category be okay if it were more consistently applied? As a layperson who is interested in languages but completely unfamiliar with the family groupings (and therefore unable to effectively use them), I find it very helpful. -Aranel ("Sarah") 18:13, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete Keep. The multi-axial classification proposed by Ish ishwar sounds reasonable. Courtland 23:24, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC) Well, there are articles for Native American languages and Native American, and the languages article has a top level genetic classification but not a complete languages list. However, it would be useful to have a simple list of Native American languages with their "full path" through the classification scheme, such as Angr outlined above; such could be a subpage of the languages article, for instance. Courtland 00:10, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)
  • ???. I dont know about deletion. It is true that there is a Native American languages article that has the top level genetic groupings. But so do other specific language family articles, such as Algic languages. Here is what I think that we need if we want to be perfect:
  • a genetic classification
  • an areal classification
  1. by continent
  2. by country (?)
  3. by cultural area (which overlaps country & continent boundaries)
  • by culture/history (which would give us our Native American grouping)
I think we need a "Native American" group somewhere because many laypersons dont even know that Native Americans speak many different unrelated languages. They are just grouped all together into a kind of non-Euro-American American category. Of course we need the genetic and areal groupings because they are the standard way to classify languages. So, I think we could classify Klallam as (1) Salishan language family (2) North American (3) USA (4) Northwest Coastal (5) Native American. This would be a lot of work, esp. since most Nat. Amer. langs do not even have an article. - Ish ishwar 23:47, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)

Category:Public schools in Scotland

Rename to Category:Private schools in Scotland Rename to Category:Independent schools in Scotland (see below) as whilst fee paying schools in England are referred to as public, fee-paying schools in Scotland are referred to as private. Greg Robson 07:48, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Keep as is; Category:Public schools in the United Kingdom would look ridiculous. Mark1 04:41, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • But only because it is also mis-named. There's a reason that the "I" in "ISIS" stands for "Independent". Uncle G 14:08, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)
  • See User:GregRobson/Schools. If we replace "Public" with "Independent" throughout we can probably keep the layout as it is. Uncle G 14:08, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)
  • I have amended the above proposal This was an oversight when I initially came up with the categories, I didn't realise how complex it was going to be, a lot of renaming needs to be done - but hey, at least it's better than it was ;) Greg Robson 08:42, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Swedish publishers

Empty. -Aranel ("Sarah") 04:26, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Legal resources

Delete. I find it's too vague to be of any real help in classification. -- PullUpYourSocks 00:36, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • The only article is about Legal Citations, and we already have a cat for that: Category:Legal citation . Besides, when I think of "Legal resources", I think of a repository for lawyers, much like the phone book. -Kbdank71 15:05, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Not helpful. Ted Wilkes 19:48, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

March 8

Category:Analogy articles

Delete. Both articles are on VFD for being original research. Should this wait until those are deleted, or can I list it now? --SPUI (talk) 22:18, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Support Delete. I think we can consider deletion of the category independently of most actions taken around the articles in that category. I don't think there's enough content for this category for one; second, the articles in the category should be "list" articles rather than "standard" articles, in which case they could be listed on one of the "lists of lists" or even on or in association with the Analogy article. Courtland 23:33, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)
  • Delete. -Kbdank71 15:46, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. I disagree with the people on top of me. I found 1 analogy article, then I wanted to create more analogy articles to accomidate that category. Computing analogies was Wikipedia's first analogy article. --GoofyGuy 03:09, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Rhobite 03:23, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Category:Quebec actors

Delete. Empty and duplicated by Category:Canadian actors. -Kbdank71 21:00, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • non-voting comment: I wouldn't say it is duplicated by Category:Canadian actors but that this broader category would be a suitable home for contents ... err, future contents of the targeted category. Courtland 23:41, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)
  • KEEP, the Quebec entertainment industry is the most vibrant in Canada, but most Quebecers who would follow Quebec actors would not probably think of them as Canadian. Further, most Canadians outside of Quebec would not know anything about Quebec actors (and vice versa). OFcourse it is empty... 132.205.45.148 20:50, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
If their entertainment industry is the most vibrant in Canada, why is the category empty? And what's the justification for keeping an empty category? (and way off topic, but if Quebec is in Canada, why don't Quebecers think of themselves as Canadian? I'm from New Jersey, but I'm also think of myself as an American. Is is just me?) -Kbdank71 18:58, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
The category was depopulated by a now-banned user. What distinguishes Quebec actors is that they work mostly in French (and note Quebec is also culturally and even linguistically (dialect) very different from France). Acting is part of culture, and it's natural to categorize and classify cultural topics according to cultural dividing lines rather than political ones. -- Curps 20:46, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete - there are too many categories already. We don't need to start more for each country's provinces, states, regions and so on. Ted Wilkes 19:48, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • So... a category for Tibet actors, or Flemish actors is unacceptable since there's a discontinuity in cultural content in those countries? (China, Belgium). It ***not*** for a separate state/province, it's for a regional unit within a country with a culturally different background. So I would not have a separate cat for each state/province, but I would for those that are culturally different enough (ie. Corsica, Catalonia, Zanzibar, ...) 132.205.15.43 22:27, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep - English Canadian television and movies and French (Quebec) television and movies are very much separate worlds, with very little crossover or overlap. In fact, you would have a much stronger case for merging Canadian actors and American actors into a single "North American actors" category, because so many Canadian actors work in the US and some have taken US citizenship or dual citizenship. Sorry, but this nomination makes no sense at all. Cultural topics should be classified according to cultural dividing lines, not politics. Don't disrupt Wikipedia to make a point. The category could be populated easily enough, but will necessarily remain relatively small... most English speaking users have only very limited interest in actors who work in a non-English language, no matter how much of a household name they may be in their own home turf. -- Curps 22:44, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. Looking at the edit history, it seems that it is empty only because the now-banned User:JillandJack depopulated it. That should be fixed. -- Curps 22:47, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Even if I think all this "Quebec isn't Canada" stuff is fluff and nonsense, that's my POV so it doesn't matter. People believe it, so Wikipedia should reflect it. Unless, of course, no one puts any articles back in this cat soon. --A D Monroe III 11:47, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Politically, Quebec is part of Canada. But culturally it is very much a separate world. From the point of view of popular culture and language, English Canada and the United States are very similar: virtually all of the top-rated TV shows on English-Canadian television are American shows (except hockey :-). However, the top-rated shows on French-language television in Quebec are all homegrown shows (not shows from France or anywhere else), usually prominently using Quebec French slang and dialect and pronunciation. There is a "star system" which really doesn't exist anymore in Hollywood... some popular entertainers not only act but also do stand-up comedy and morning radio shows (!). Really, it is a very, very different world from English Canadian movies or television. Trust me on this if you haven't done the research. -- Curps 20:46, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:British playwrights

Confusing and unhelpful semi-duplication of standard and well populated Category:British dramatists and playwrights. It contained three articles which I have moved out. Wincoote 18:22, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Russian and Soviet attack aircraft,Category:Russian and Soviet military aircraft,Category:Russian and Soviet bomber aircraft and Category:Russian and Soviet fighter aircraft

All duplicate the (actually used) "Soviet and Russian" equivalents and are largely unpopulated. Ought to be deleted. --VivaEmilyDavies 01:51, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Soviet people

Move (to Category:Russian people) or Delete this category and its seven subcategories as it's a duplicate of Category:Russian people. IZAK 10:28, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Oppose. I know the USSR isn't around anymore, but isn't this similar to saying delete "People of the USA" because "People of New Jersey" exists? Not all Soviets are Russians. -Kbdank71 16:39, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose Where would all the non-Russian Soviets go? And millions of Russians throughout history were never in the Soviet Union. —Michael Z. 2005-03-8 17:19 Z
  • Oppose We still keep Roman people, for example, even though the Roman Empire/Republic are long gone. --VivaEmilyDavies 22:10, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose "duplicate of Category:Russian people"? I can think of people in 14 former-Soviet, non-Russian countries that might disagree with you there! And also a lot of non-Soviet Russians, for that matter. Grutness|hello? 23:52, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

March 7

Category:Sudanese political parties -> Category:Political parties of Sudan

Proposed move in line with naming conventions. I apologize for moving the one article in the category already. I have never proposed a move for a category that I did not create myself before and was unaware of the guideline. - BanyanTree 01:56, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Move as proposed per naming conventions. Fine. Now, can we move onto categories with more than one entry? Sigh. --A D Monroe III 19:56, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • No, this should actually be renamed to Category:Political parties in Sudan to fall in line with the discussion of Fooish political parties to Political parties in Foo listed on February 17. RedWolf 04:25, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Category:Musical fiction

This was created but not used. I have no idea why. It seems pointless. -- Samuel Wantman 10:11, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete. Although... Spinal Tap certainly fits the bill... -Kbdank71 18:12, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Rename as Category:Fictional musicians and musical groups. Not only Spinal Tap, but also Bad Taste, The Rutles, Hornets Attack Victor Mature, and numerous other "bands". A case could also be made for the likes of The Archies, The Wombles, and even (possibly) The Monkees. Grutness|hello? 06:24, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Rename, as above. I can think of a couple of others such as the Be Sharps and the Band With Rocks In. Radiant! 10:53, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. "Fictional music groups" should be those that appear exclusively in books, films, etc. Spinal Tap had real people (under assumed names), sang real songs, and had real tours. So it may have begun as a fictional group, but it became real once they stepped started to do real things. Likewise the Monkees. -Willmcw 23:40, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

March 6

Category:Italian Aircraft manufacturers

Delete. Empty and possibly duplicated by Category:Italian aircraft. -Kbdank71 20:37, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Fooish newspapers --> Newspapers in Foo

See Category:Newspapers by country. Fooish newspapers implies Fooish-language newspapers; Newspapers in Foo is unambigious. (Plus, of course, we eliminate awkward adjectives.) Neutralitytalk 19:35, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

  • Oppose. Prefer more concise version. And I have been maintaining the general newspaper category, just in case that's worth anything. Maurreen 07:32, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Oppose It doesn't to me. I think this sort of change would contribute little or nothing but ungainliness to Wikipedia. Wincoote 18:30, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Stub

Rename to Category:Stubs. Neutralitytalk 17:58, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

Question ... doesn't this present a technical challenge considering the number of items in the category? Courtland 18:28, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
  • No change. This has come up before, and it lost before. The stub category is obsolete. The only change that should be made to it is emptying it by either extending articles or sorting stub articles into more specific stub categories. It is not worth the overhead to rename something that really should be slowly phased out. --ssd 20:33, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • It's not obsolete. There are always going to be articles that are not easily sorted. I think we should mark it for renaming the next time it is discontinued and then re-added, if that makes any sense. It obviously should be stubs. If we should end up removing the category from the generic stub template and then re-adding it (as has happened a few times in the past), we should use Category:Stubs (we actually missed a great opportunity to do this when last this happened). -Aranel ("Sarah") 00:16, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • One option: Start up Category:Stubs with a new template (maybe just Template:St) and run the two in parallel for the time being. Category:Stub is dropping in size, and it would be easy for WP:WSS to change Stub to St for those stubs not able to be subcategorised. Given time, hopefully Category stub will dwindle away. Once it has dwindled sufficiently, then it can be merged with the new category. At the moment, however, I suspect it would cause too much strain on the servers to do one giant changeover. If not, simply keep as is - certainly deletion is the worst possible option. Grutness|hello? 05:14, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, no rename - Category for the generic stub template is a server resource problem. Stub sorters can still find items with Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Stub . -- Netoholic @ 18:51, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)
  • Keep as is. Throwing in my vote before it is interpreted that there are not enough stub sorters (I'm one) supporting this to keep it from changing or being deleted. Categorization seems to be happening at a brisk pace (based on some random page surveys) and the size of the category will hopefully get more manageable as time goes on. If we knew the rate of stub creation, that would help us to very roughly project when this size might be reached. Also, if we can mount a "merge or bust" campaign that encourages stub mergers over deletion (a significant number of stubs end up in the deletion queues) the rate of decline could be accelerated further. Courtland 23:57, 2005 Mar 10 (UTC)
  • Delete. The category doesn't even work properly, because of all the items in it. May as well delete. --jag123 01:17, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Economic Stubs

Rename to Category:Economy stubs. Neutralitytalk 17:58, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

  • Agree. -Kbdank71 20:44, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Agree. --CDN99 21:13, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Oppose: Economics and finance stubs for the reasons below. --CDN99 15:34, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Should it be Category:Economics stubs instead? -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:49, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Neutral May not really matter a lot. doles 03:34, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)
  • I'm quite puzzled by this. I'd find it very odd if someone said "I study economy" as I've always thought of the academic field as "economics," e.g. "I study economics." Hence, Economy stubs would be short articles along the lines of Economy of South Africa, while Economics stubs would be short articles along the lines of Government spending. Is this some sort of British English thing? - RedWordSmith 05:33, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
    • Just be explicit, I also like Economics and finance stubs as suggested below. - RedWordSmith 18:25, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose - basically I agree with Aranel and RedWordSmith's comments. While there are some finance related articles in there (correctly if you look at the template), most of the articles currently in this category are about things related to Economics - the social science. IMO the phrase on the category page needs to be changed to "...stub articles relating to Economics...", at the moment it says "...relating to Economy..." and Economy just points to a disambig. page. I also think the template text should be changed to economics rather than economy as well, I'll do it if that's what ppl decide. I would support a renaming to "Economics stubs" or "Economics and Finance stubs". -- Lochaber 13:39, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • change to Economics and finance, for all the reasons given above. Grutness|hello? 22:17, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • strongly oppose for reasons outlined by RedWordSmith, , Grutness's suggestion of Economics and finance is a much better change - if it needs to be changed at all. the word economics includes everything economy does, plus more such as economics theory that would not be covered by economy. Bluemoose 11:07, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Stock exchange

Is a list of stock exchanges, should be plural. Please move to Category:Stock exchanges. -- Lawrence Lavigne 15:32, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

  • Move. Cats should not be singular. (Unless there's only one article in the cat? ;)) --A D Monroe III 13:22, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Alternative medicine stubs

Category:Alternative medicine stubs was created on 4 Mar 2005 and clearly duplicates the pre-existing Category:CAM stubs which was created on 21 Feb 2005. The creator of this duplicate category also wrote the template{{CAM-stub}} which uses the term CAM. -- John Gohde 10:45, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  1. pre-existed the duplicate Category:Alternative medicine stubs stubs category, and
  2. Category:CAM stubs takes up less screen space. -- John Gohde 10:45, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • KEEP - Category:CAM stubs is meaningless without a stub notice in an article; John Gohde, see Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub. {{CAM-stub}} adds the alternative medicine stubs to Category:Stub categories, and provides a convenient way for alternative medicine stubs to be tagged as such. Category:CAM stubs will be nominated for deletion shortly. --CDN99 15:44, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. I agree with John on this. Nonetheless, I fixed the CAM stubs category ... Category:CAM stubs and {{Template:CAM-stub}}. Courtland 18:44, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
  • This is all getting very ridiculous. Delete all but one each of the categories and templates. I'd say keep Template:CAM-stub and Category:CAM stubs simply because of the shorter names. -Sean Curtin 20:08, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)
    • When things are all settled, I'll take care of the deletions for that which I created (as it should be), which I created merely because a significant complaint at the outset was apparently the technical issue of "one works and the other does not". Courtland 23:26, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
  • Keep. I'm not an expert on medicine, so if I were to look for this, I'd search for "alternative medicine", not "CAM". -Kbdank71 20:23, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • that is very useful input because it touches on "usability" rather than "standards" ... though they are both quite important. Courtland 23:35, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)
    • Only knowledgeable individuals should be classifying articles into categories. Wikipedia guidelines clearly state that no CAM article should go into category:alternative medicine because it is a major category. The stub category exists for a reason: To suggest that stub topics be moved into the glossary of alternative medicine. It exists for the benefit of knowledgeable individuals interested in developing CAM related articles. -- John Gohde 01:42, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Ok, I'll re-phrase, then. I'm not an expert on medicine, so if I were to look for this, I'd search for "alternative medicine stubs", not "CAM stubs". But regardless, this is an encyclopedia, not a medical journal. If average Joe User was interested in finding everything related to alternative medicine, including stubs, how is he expected to know that he should be looking in CAM stubs? -Kbdank71 18:48, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • Personally, I think categories are just plain stupid to begin with. The only categories that remotely make any sense are those that the public shouldn't see at all because they are for administrative purposes. Stubs would be one category the public should never see. -- John Gohde 21:46, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
          • Well, that didn't answer my question, but thanks for your opinion anyway. -Kbdank71 22:07, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
        • Keep this as the category name (It's going to be more intuitive to people browsing category lists). Definitely keep the tempate at CAM though. Snowspinner 23:25, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

Various Oscar categories (redux)

Although the last CFR failed, there are some essential renames we need to do to make these categories conform to standards. This applies to all "Oscar" and "Oscar Nominee" subcategories of Category:Academy Awards.

In general, [[Category:Blah Oscar]] should be renamed to [[Category:Blah Oscar winners]]. [[Category:Blah Oscar Nominee]] should be renamed to [[Category:Blah Oscar nominees]].

Some categories also use unofficial titles: Category:Best Director Oscar (and related nominee category) should be [[Category:Directing Oscar winners/nominees]]. There's also a problem with this category in terms of semantics. This award is awarded to the film, not the individual. The nominees category has individuals, but the winners category has films. We need to split these categories like the actor/actress categories, but in the opposite way: [[Category:Directing Oscar winners/nominees]] should be for films, with [[Category:Directing Oscar winners/nominees (director)]] for the directors themselves. Alternatively, we could just stick both people and films into the category. I don't have a huge problem with that.

– flamurai (t) 01:26, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

  • I stick by what I said before - do it the way they are announced Category:Academy Award winners for best director; Category:Academy Award nominees for best director, +c. Grutness|hello? 06:07, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment. So for every one Oscar category, we have FOUR WP categories? Seems like overkill to me. I'd support merging the films and people together, and even winners and nominees. -Kbdank71 17:43, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • No, only two - and two that it should be in - nominees and winners. The two are very different things... Putting them together would be like having Category: Presidential candidates of the United States but no category for presidents. Why would you possibly need four? The film isn't a director, and does not win the award for best director. The director is the director. If for some odd reason you do want to list the film as well, it can go in the same category as the director. Grutness|hello? 05:22, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
      • Wrong. The award is for Directing, not Best Director, and it is awarded to the film. The director's or directors' name(s) isn't even on the ballot. The only awards that officially go to a person, not a film, are the acting awards. Note the naming of the awards. Only the actor/actress categories are named with the people nouns. The rest are named with the process nouns: art direction, writing, directing, etc. – flamurai (t) 17:30, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)
    • Under the above recommendation, many award categories would only require two Wikipedia categories (nominees and winners), not four. (The acting awards, for example, are awarded to individuals.) I definitely wouldn't combine nominees and winners; they are very different things in the American film world. -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:08, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Not all of them. Just the acting ones right now. I don't support grouping winners and nominees, but I don't mind mixing films and people in one category. – flamurai (t) 03:12, Mar 7, 2005 (UTC)
  • Alright, then, I'll agree with the proposal for standards purposes, even though I don't see the need for a nominee cagegory. -Kbdank71 17:33, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • I support the addition of "winners" and renaming "Nominee" to "nominees", but I vehemently oppose merging anything together. For awards like best actor, I see it necessary to categorize both the people who wonder the oscar and the films that got them the oscar (how ever you want to say it is semantics). Putting films with people together is bad. Putting nominees and winners together circumvents my entire purpose of this categorization to begin with (Category:Academy Award winning actors had both nominees and winners). For entirely picture-centric awards (best picture is the only that comes to mind) I don't see the need to categorize the acceptors of the award (usually the producer or director?) but everything else can be to the people nominated, the people that won, the films nominated, and the films that won. And I still oppose the last CFR to make them insanely long and presume this CFR won't drift toward that. Cburnett 21:22, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Just want to further qualify my position. When I add the category to an article, I put the film or winner in HTML comment after it. Specifically, so when all of the categorization is done then the comments can be removed and the data put into a section on the article (something like "Awards"). All robots that I've seen go through categories will move comments to top of the categories, which voids the purpose of them being there. If a robot can't do the renaming without messing these comments up and no one is willing to do it by hand, then I remove my support until categorization and "Awards" section is done.
Removing the comments, or moving them so that they lose context (there's really little difference), would instill much more work to achieve the same goal. Cburnett 23:34, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)


February 27

Category:Disorders

Should probably be Category:Psychiatric disorders, which will then fit as a subcategory of Category:Diseases. Alex.tan 05:15, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

How does Category:Growth disorders (a subcat) fit under your proposed new name? RedWolf 06:32, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)
Well, according to the dictionary definition of disease and disorder, I can only assume that the word "disease" is broader in definition in defining something regarded as an abnormal process in the body. Therefore, Category:Growth disorders should be a subcat of Category:Diseases. Alex.tan 16:43, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Support renaming; move the couple of non-psychiatric articles somewhere else under Category:Diseases.--Pharos 16:07, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Rename as per Pharos. "Disorders" is too vague; my desk would qualify. --A D Monroe III 01:52, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Complicated revision proposed. I wanted to wade in on this earlier but only now got around to "doing my homework". After looking through the medical dictionary entries presented by onelook.com for "disorder" and "disease" it seems that a "disease", regardless of the cause, is characterized by a set of symptoms that allow identification of the "same disease" across persons, whereas a "disorder" does not necessarily need to be so characterized. Take a broken leg as an example; we all know what a broken leg is, but the manifestation is highly variable among persons as it depends on how the broken leg occurred. There are secondary manifestations that might be characterized as "diseases" as consequences of the breakage; for instance, loss of feeling along the top of the foot due to severing a cutaneous nerve (I don't know enough anatomy to know if that's a reasonable example, but it will serve) ... it doesn't matter how the nerve was cut, the outcome is the same and has the same symptoms. Does this make sense? Of particular note are the entries for "disorder" and "disease" in "Dorland's Medical Dictionary" (it's easiest to search using onelook.com).
That having been said, here's my proposal ... that Category:Diseases be made a child of Category:Disorders and a new category Category:Psychiatric disorders be created as a child of Category:Disorders; this arrangement would allow particular entries in the new category to be subsequently categorized individually as a disease rather than as a disorder, with the default being the broader "disorder".
Next step? Ask @ the Doctors' Mess and/or look through the Clinical Medicine WikiProject discussions to find guidance.
*phew* lot of wind there to just say "ummm, let's ask that guy over there ..."
Courtland 18:25, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)
If Category:Disorders is redefined to be the precise medical term, I think that should be then be renamed Category:Medical disorders. This helps avoid us non-medical people adding things like as chaos, entropy, or the blues. --A D Monroe III 13:32, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
That sounds like a good idea. Courtland 03:54, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
I've put up a note asking for input @ Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Clinical_medicine#On_the_topic_of_.22Category:Disorders.22. Courtland 03:52, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)

In response to your request for input from the doctors' mess, may I respectfully suggest we all write articles and not waste our time on this argument? While certain conditions are more commonly called a disorder than a disease and vice versa, I honestly don't think there is the slightest difference when the terms are used by themselves as categories. When you think of a category as a guide to what articles you will find in this category, I can't think of any useful difference between category:endocrine disorders vs category:endocrine diseases, and the same for psychiatric disorders vs psychiatric diseases, etc. Is that helpful? alteripse 06:53, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Helpful in content but not in tone. Thank you. Courtland 23:45, 2005 Mar 9 (UTC)
Indeed, I appreciate the respectful assumption that I'm good at writing articles, but alas I'm not. Which is why I help out where I can. Personally, I don't think trying to get it right is a waste of time, but maybe that's just me. -Kbdank71 18:33, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
mc2w: As another view from the mess: I agree with all the above! Alteripse is right re the very blurry distinction between disorder and diseases. (the thing I love about Alteripse he's one of the few people less tactful than me!) I think the only purpose of having separate categories would be to confuse everybody (so good on you all for trying to sort it out!) To my mind, for the purposes of organising an enccylopedia the notion of disorders is the most usefull (because it is the most inlcusive, and least perjorative). I would lump all the diseases into disorders and if anything delete disease categories. hope that helps, best wishes Erich 01:16, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I apologize if anyone didn't like my tone. I am so aware of our woefully inadequate medical content, and have noticed how much the categories have changed and come and gone over the last year, that I am a bit dismayed to see people arguing over whether to call these streets or avenues when most of the buildings in our town are still shanties and somebody will come along and rename the street in 6 months anyway. Don't sell yourselves short at being able to start articles. And I agree exactly with gasboy. alteripse 14:51, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

February 24

Category:Botanists by nationality

This is an example of overcategorization. There is a relatively small number of botanists in Category:Botanists, and dividing them by country is not going to make it easier to look them up, especially as many botanists have done work in, for and with a multitude of countries. To make things worse, the subcategory 'English botanists' is subdivided into categories for British and Scottish ones... As below, with 'scientists by nationality', subdividing subfields produces too much overhead and reduces clarity. Delete Radiant! 21:02, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

  • Oppose The convention of dividing people by occupation and nationality is established beyond the point of return. It is essential as some users think in occupational terms and others in national terms. People in almost every field work internationally, but there nationality is still one of the most notable things about them. It is arbitary to attempt to make an exception for botanists. Wincoote 08:26, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete, but deletion has to be consistent with every other scientist subcategory to be meaningful. I think we should have categories for scientists by nationality and for scientists by discipline, but not for every intersection of these two (i.e. an oceanographer from Liechtenstein should be found both in Category:Liechtensteinian scientists and in Category:Oceanographers, but not in a Category:Liechtensteinian oceanographers, which will likely be far too small to be useful). / Tupsharru 16:02, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Agree with Tupsharru: not every intersectionof categories needs a category of its own. If an article belongs in two categories, put it in both categories. — Gwalla | Talk 20:48, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • I like Tupsharru's idea for consistence; it allows you to find someone if you know his profession or his nationality, whereas Wincoote's approach only allows you to find someone if you know both. Radiant! 10:23, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)
    • Oppose. occupation/nationality are major established classification everywhere. The fact that there are relatively few botanist in wikipedia says in disfavor of wikipedia, not of botanists. Mikkalai 21:42, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete — but I like Tupsharru's suggestion too. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:08, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • There are probably scores if not hundreds of people who have put a scientist in one of the detailed categories, so they are widely seen as having value. Some of the national scientist categories would be vast to the verge of uselessness. What about subcategories which have an non-academic interest, such as naturalists and astromers? Those articles would be lost to non specialists. Wincoote 01:17, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It looks like there is a consensus to delete this. However, the individual subcategories (which are obviously included in the discusison) were not tagged, so we should wait at least a few days before deleting them. -Aranel ("Sarah") 22:19, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Literary Suicides

Rename to Category:Literary suicides. Rhobite 22:16, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)

unofficial voting summary after 16 days: Oppose rename - 0, Support rename - 3, Delete without renaming - 1 Courtland 23:14, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

  • The title is vague—until looking at the contents, I couldn't tell if it was for writers who killed themselves or for literary characters who did, or literature about suicide. What is the use of this category anyway? What does grouping them together illustrate? Is there a suggested link between being a writer and committing suicide, so that it is a significant rather than a coincidental relationship? Postdlf 22:28, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
interpreted as a vote to rename
    • I agree, I don't really love this category. We may want to delete it. Rhobite 23:28, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)


Why not just rename it? It's useful, and also contains a number of people, not on the other list of "suicides"

The title is an attempt at a shorthand for "Writers who have killed themselves".

"What does grouping them together illustrate?"

What does listing people by causes of death elsewhere illustrate?

Keep but rename to Writers who have killed themselves. Put under a subcategory under suicides, under "Writers who committed suicide". Mandel 21:26, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete. I don't see the point at this category. Do we have "Writers who died from natural causes"? Or perhaps "Writers who are still alive"? -Kbdank71 17:40, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • Although since the proposal is for a rename, I'll agree with it for standards purposes. -Kbdank71 16:52, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Del. Vacuum c 04:43, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

February 21

Category:Australian Aborigines

Rename to Category:Indigenous peoples of Australia (another alternative is Category:Ethnic groups of Australia). When Category:Aboriginal Australians was proposed for deletion on February 1, there was some discussion about possible negative connotations of using "Aborigine" as well as issues dealing with Torres Strait Islanders. There has also been recent discussion about renaming Australian Aborigine (see talk) given similar concerns. Here was the discussion from Category:Aboriginal Australians:

You have ignored the fact that Torres Strait Islanders are *not* Aborigines - they are of Melanesian/Papuan origin. Therefore a separate category should be created (and cross-referenced) for the TSI people and transfer links to Christine Anu and the Meriam People. I'd do it myself, but haven't worked out how to go about it.--Mikeh 13:56, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Doesn't "aborigine" properly mean an indigenous person, or original inhabitant? It was applied to peoples in the Americas and elsewhere too, so, in its broadest meaning, the Torres Strait Islanders as natives are aboriginals.
A better solution might be to rename this category Category:Ethnic groups of Australia to contain categories on Australian Aborigines, Torres Strait Islanders, and - if needed - the various migrant groups that have been in the country in the last couple of hundred years. "Aboriginal Australians" as well as (to my non Koori ears) sounding slightly derogatory, is too easily confused with Australian Aborigines. Grutness|hello? 22:59, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This category really needs to become Category:Indigenous Australians not Category:Australian Aborigines as this is the currently preferred official terminology for peoples of both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander decent. Its a bit of bitch I know, but it does have to go that way.--ZayZayEM 00:35, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Please add your comments/votes after this line. RedWolf 05:55, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)

I support the move to rename the category. I think "Indigenous people of Australia" is best. Ethnic groups of Australia is a good category, but I think that Indigenous people of Australia would be a sub-category of that. --Peacenik 06:44, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

February 20

Category:People from Quebec stubs

Unnecessary. Can use Canada affiliated category. --Spinboy 06:09, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

unofficial voting summary after 20 days: Oppose - 2, Support - 2 Courtland 23:08, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

Agree in both cases - see arguments at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria and Wikipedia:Templates for deletion. Grutness|hello? 04:09, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I think Quebec is significantly different enough to merit it's own stubs, because of it's different civil laws, language, and the push to secede from Canada. (NOTE: because of Louisiana's different civil laws, it too should have a separate set of stubs.) 132.205.45.148 19:42, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Disagree. This sets a bad precident. There is a stub category: Category:Utah people stubs which is currently being used by Wikipedia:WikiProject Utah. This is used to sort stubs for this project. I don't know if Quebec has a project, but I wouldn't want to see the Utah cat up for deletion next... --[jon] [talk] 12:13, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • General consensus on WSS is that separate categories for stubs such as this are okay as long as there is a WikiProject. There is in Utah's case, so it is supported at WSS. There isn't for Quebec, and, again, general consensus on WSS seems to suggest that division should be primarily by nation, then by occupation if necessary (rather than by nation and then by subregion). Oh, and almost every country in the world has a region that is "significantly different" - stub sorting would get out of hand very rapidly if all of them were given separate stub categories (Nagorno-Karabakh-bio-stub, anyone?) Grutness|hello?
  • I don't feel particularly strongly about this either way. I can understand the value of a distinct stub category, so that the people who are most knowledgeable about Quebec-related topics have a central location for them. I do, however, have some concern about the way that Liberlogos (who created this) uses categories to create the misleading impression that Quebec sovereignty is already a fait accompli: eg. by filing Quebec-related categories as subcategories of "subject by country" categories (and sometimes reverting the inclusion of "subject by Canadian province" groupings), by removing Canadian categories from individual articles even when equivalent Quebec categories don't exist, etc. Bearcat 20:38, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • 'Delete - there are too many categories already. We don't need to start more for Provinces, Staes, Regions and so on.

February 19

University people categories

I want to suggest the deletion of existing categories of this type, and the policy that new such categories should not be created.

This issue has been up for discussion previously, in that case speifically concerning Category:People associated with Columbia University. I am now restarting the discussion. The old discussion was retired as "unresolved", and has been moved to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Universities. The main reason against using categories in this case is the unmanageable number of categorizations some people would get.

Just to take one example: Samuel Pufendorf, a 17th century historian and political scientist, was affiliated (in chronological order) with the University of Leipzig and the University of Jena, both in Germany, the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, the University of Heidelberg, again in Germany, and the University of Lund in Sweden. Today, with almost every student participating in exchange programs, academics holding various visiting professorships etc, I have no doubt that some academics can have up to a dozen affiliations with different unversities throughout their life. And anybody notable enough to get an article, will sooner or later be claimed by anyone who feels justified to do so.

At present the following categories of this type exist:

  • Category:Athabasca University also contains a fair amount of people associated with that university in some way, such as Pamela Wallin, whose only connection (as far as I can see) is an honorary doctorate. Using that as precedent, various heads of state or Nobel laureates will get half the universities in the world among their categories, which makes the category system rather useless.

I want to suggest the policy:

As a consequence of this I also suggest that the above-mentioned, already existing "university people" categories should be deleted. There are, I believe, already lists for the institutions concerned.

I am not against categories for very specific positions, such as presidents or rectors of universities, but even that may possibly be better handled with (succession) lists in most cases. / Tupsharru 21:43, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • Delete I agree that the people or alumi or whatnot categories should be deleted, but not necessarily a category primarily for the main University (ie Category:Athabasca University). --Spinboy 17:23, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Small clarification: I have not suggested deletion of main university categories, only those categories specifically for people affiliated with the university. But the main university category should not be used as a substitute for that either, but reserved for things like museums, research institutes etc. / Tupsharru 19:27, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep "...alumni" and main university categories (change vote to Keep 'alumni' categories and 'list of people...' articles, remove 'people' categories - as they are not categorising data. And of course all these categories should have See also pages for extra detail. Greg Robson 15:36, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)) - previous reaons include (and have been revised since):
    • University articles should have a list of those who represent the university's "achievements" [for lack of a better word] i.e. academics, researchers, nobel laureates etc.
    • Some others like comedians and those who got a degreee unrelated to their profession should be categorised as they are notable, but only by association through the category.
    • The rest of those categories can go (people, graduates) as they are going to be far too large and serve no purpose when it comes to categorisation - it would be far better to put people under a profession tag (i.e. Category:Chemists in the United Kingdom) as this relates to the person regardless of their location. Typically people at many institutions will study/research/teach the same thing and it is directly related to the person throughout their life. Categorising people for every place they've been and everything they've done would be unconcise.
  • If a lot of people are in a main university category then see if there is a theme - and then sub-categorise! Make it better! The category system is very underused. Greg Robson 18:58, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    To repeat what I wrote above: I have not suggested deletion of the main university categories, only those specifically for people affiliated with the university. As for telling who represents the university's "achievements", I think that may be difficult to define in the case of writers, for instance. In any case, lists have the advantage of allowing annotating and sorting according to area of work for the individuals, as opposed to the purely alphabetic sorting in categories.
    A question: you want to keep alumni categories, but then write that "the rest of those categories can go (people, graduates)". What difference do you see between a category of alumni and one of graduates? / Tupsharru 19:27, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    My mistake when reading about deleting universities! I'm not against listing alumni in the articles - I just think it should be concise rather than complete. Wikipedia tends to sort head in that direction anyway. I rather it didn't link to stubs of people who haven't become well known for what they do.
    Regarding the question: Graduates are technically alumni and what I should have said was that I think we should adopt alumni instead of graduates as it's the term commonly used by universities - so it's probably more an issue of consistency and perhaps renaming. As for "people" - it's too general - much better to narrow to fields of study or professions. I don't know what to do about the staff who work at a university? Category:Academics at the Uni... of X?, Category:Scientists at the Uni... of X? I'd like to avoid people as it includes both staff and students - so ideally Alumni for past students and something else for staff that isn't people. Greg Robson 21:45, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. James F. (talk) 20:12, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. —Lowellian (talk) 08:45, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC) Since I've already written several long accounts explaining my reasons why, I'll just requote parts of them:
    • "There is nothing wrong with list of Columbia University people, but this [alumni] category is very much a terrible idea. It will grow to be huge, and clutter up the category bar on everyone it affects. This category would set an unfortunate precedent for categories, because it can be extended to every other school. List articles are okay because they don't disrupt other articles, but categories like this are not because they will touch upon and affect so many biographies. And if you want to see what a monster this kind of category could become, just take a look at list of Harvard University people (which is, I think, currently the longest such list) and think about how bad it would be after being turned into a category. Just think about what will happen once every university gets a category like this: every biography article for someone who's been through college and grad school will probably have multiple such university categories."
    • "...an additional problem with a category in this case is that when we have list of alumni/faculty, we are also looking for additional information: what that person is known for, and that person's relationship to the institution (was the person an alumni, a faculty member, a donor, and so forth; what year did that person graduate; etc.). That is why, for example, list of Harvard University people (go take a look at it right now) is more useful than Category:Harvard University people. Perhaps—and this is a very conditional perhaps—in the future the category system is improved, we might consider then creating such categories, but right now, the net effect of these university categories on Wikipedia would be huge and disruptive to Wikipedia's biography articles. Consider, for example, someone who has only the slightest association with a university (for example, the person lectured at the university for a single year). It would be acceptable to list that person on the list version, because it would not disrupt the biography article of that person. But if we had a category, then we would have to add the category to the biography article. Now what if this person had lectured at or been a visiting professor at many universities, as indeed many distinguished academic scholars have? We could end up with something like eight or more university-related categories on a single biography page (one university-related category for the person's undergraduate study, one for the person's graduate study, two for the person's past teaching appointments, one for the person's current teaching appointment, one for where the person received an honorary degree, one for where the person made a significant donation, etc.)."
      • In the case of Harvard, it has a large number of prominent people connected with it - so I understand that page, there are a few others like it that are the main institutions globally that require them (University of Oxford, University of Cambridge). However I disagree that biographies will get crowded. Most of the time people only become alumni of one or two institutions (for a degree/diploma/PhD), and if you read about John Lithgow I'd much rather click Category:Harvard University alumni than read "see list of Harvard University people for others who graduated from Harvard". Even the most eminent academics like Stephen Hawking have only ever been an alumni of a few institutions - if people are academics all their life, they tend to settle down in one place and spend the last 40 years doing research at a single institution.
      • Yes I agree the category system isn't ideal for large numbers of entries (yet) - perhaps we could sub-categorise by decade or school that they graduated from? Grouping be decade/year would paint a wonderful picture of who was studying there at the same time.
      • Alumni is an easily definable domain that we can work with - categories with "people" in them can include just about anyone - Bill Gates has visited MIT, and has visited Cambridge - but that doesn't mean he should be listed as an MIT person or Cambridge person.
      • I really don't know what to do about staff? People working at the Uni of X? You could categorise that into departments at least?
      • Vote moved near to original comment - see above. Greg Robson 15:36, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep "alumni" and other easily quantifiable categories. Delete generic "affiliated with" categories. I would also support "Hiram Walker University professors" and "Hiram Walker University presidents", as these are easily quanitfiable. "affiliated with" is too far-reaching and hard to define. – flamurai (t) 01:02, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete all for the well-expressed reasons given above by Lowellian. We should always consider the mess that would result if certain categories are kept and how little is lost if they are deleted. Postdlf 07:26, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Also concur with Lowellian, Delete. Radiant! 21:02, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep I don't think it is a mess at all. It seems obvious to me that this type of category will be of wide interest. Incompleteness is no reason for deletion. Much will be lost if we don't make flexible use of the category system, and one type of category does not exclude or conflict with another. Wincoote 08:47, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Delete. Useless clutter, belongs in lists. Neutralitytalk 19:40, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)

February 18

China / Taiwan stub split

The discussion over with these three categories, together with the templates linked to them, continues at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria#Geo-stubs proposal. — Instantnood 11:14 Mar 6 2005 (UTC)

I think it is too soon to talk about these categories here. There is active discussion in the stub sorting and template forums that must complete before we do anything here. --ssd 14:37, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • Right. I've put up {{cdr}} on the categories pages, and therefore I put up a note here to tell people it was an ongoing discussion at WP:TFD. I did not expect anybody to vote or discuss here at this stage. Thanks Ssd. — Instantnood 20:56 Feb 26 2005 (UTC)

Category:China geography stubs

(see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:China-geo-stub) — Instantnood 21:01, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. Category is well populated. Courtland 00:14, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
Oppose. --Viriditas | Talk 08:57, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Oppose. gidonb 10:33, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please refer to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:China-geo-stub. It is not nominated for deleting, but spliting and renaming. — Instantnood 13:43, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)

  • That should be handled at requested page moves. Not here. -- AllyUnion (talk) 11:46, 24 Feb 2005 (UTC)

(see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:China-stub) — Instantnood 21:00, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)

Oppose. Category is well populated. Courtland 00:15, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
Oppose. --Viriditas | Talk 00:58, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Oppose. gidonb 10:33, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please refer to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:China-stub. It is not nominated for deleting, but spliting and renaming. — Instantnood 13:43, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)

(see Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Taiwan-stub) — Instantnood 19:25, Feb 18 2005 (UTC)

  • Strongly oppose all three deletions. You're joking, right? Three well-used categories that fit snugly into the way that stub-sorting works, all full of stubs where the editors working on these types of articles can find them. It ain't broke, don't try to fix it. Or, if you do want to fix stub-sorting categories, at least talk to the people working at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting about it before suggesting removing three important categories! Grutness|hello? 23:56, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Category is well populated. Courtland 00:16, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)
  • Oppose. --Viriditas | Talk 00:57, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Oppose. gidonb 10:33, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please refer to Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Taiwan-stub. It is not nominated for deleting, but renaming. — Instantnood 13:43, Feb 19 2005 (UTC)

    • In that case, amend my vote to: Strongly oppose all three suggested splits. As I said, these categories fit snugly into the way that stub-sorting works. Splitting them would disrupt that schema. It ain't broke, don't try to fix it. Grutness|hello? 23:52, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Oppose all suggestions for renaming Taiwan stubs. gidonb 10:33, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The discussion over with these three categories, together with the templates linked to them, continues at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Criteria#Geo-stubs proposal. — Instantnood 11:14 Mar 6 2005 (UTC)

Results of discussions 0n cfd, tfd and WP:WSS re:geo-stubs

After considerable discussion (which lasted for well over a month), the following compromise was reached on Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting as regards the geo-stub categories relating to the two entities referred to as China.

Category:China geography stubs is currently empty of articles (all that is left there is four Wikipedia template message pages), and just about ready for deletion.

China-related and Taiwan-related stubs are still to be dealt with. Grutness|hello? 07:16, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

February 17

Category:Terrorism

  • Current Vote Totals: 26 Delete, 5 Keep (as of Mar 11 21:00 UTC)

Moved discussion to here, as a consensus has been reached to delete. -Kbdank71 19:35, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A replacement category

I hope no one minds but I thought it might be useful to group peoples views on a replacement category together down here (Iota 17:39, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC):

  • Comment. Something really should be done to replace this category if it is to be deleted. I think Category:Non-governmental paramilitary groups (or Category:Non-governmental guerrilla organisations if we prefer) would capture most, if not all, of the groups currently categorised as "terrorist" organisations. Iota 19:45, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I'd have no problem with that. "Paramilitary" would cover most of these. "Terrorist" is inherently judgemental. And I agree that we should be explicit about nongovernmental. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:27, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)
  • Hmm, both "non-govermental military organizations" and "unconventional war tactics" translate to "irregular military" in military terms. Moving to Category:Irregular military is sounding better all the time to me. I'll look at focusing the Irregular military article to this effect, and creating this more NPOV category. --A D Monroe III 23:38, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Agree. This sounds like a good idea; it also allows one to move a group from "irregular military" to "regular military" depending on the outcome of a particular armed struggle. I think this is a good NPOV choice. Courtland 23:59, 2005 Mar 5 (UTC)
    • additional comment added late Since the Delete vote was solidified, I have looked at a couple of the articles with an eye toward re-categorization. In a couple cases I've looked at re-cat to Category:Activism seemed ok. "Activism" has a positive connotation but a neutral definition; it was this neutrality that led me to re-cat this way, and which helps to divert stigmatic interpretations based on the label applied. Now it would be appropriate, I think, to add a sub-cat to "Activism", something like Category:Violent activism which would include groups included right now in this terrorist category as well as some not included, such as environmentalists who drive spikes into trees, knowing that a broken chainsaw chain can possibly do severe bodily injury. Courtland 21:46, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)
  • I don't know much about military terminology but according to their Wikipedia entries irregular military and paramilitary seem to have similar meanings, so presumably either would be ok. However their articles also seem to suggest that an irregular/paramiltary force can be raised and maintained by the state. So maybe Category:Non-state irregular military or Category:Non-state paramilitary group is necessary? It would have to be made clear that what we mean is de facto state, because rebels often declare a state that is not de facto. Iota 17:39, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Support moving appropriate entries to Category:Irregular military. The state/non-state issue is too murky - what about rebel militias that are supported by an outside state? -Willmcw 22:49, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

There seems to be consensus that this category and its subcategories should be deleted, but there also seems to be some interest in moving some of the contents into a replacement category as appropriate. I don't know enough about paramilitary/irregular military groups to do this. Assistance from someone better qualified would be appreciated. -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:51, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Comment: Irregular military always, to my mind, refers to groups sponsored by and under the direction of a government. Paramilitary may refer to both government and non-government groups. Guerillas are almost always non-state, or sometimes the military of a weak nation when occupied by a stronger force. However, it is doubtful that al Qaeda, which I assume a lot of people are thinking about, would be considered a guerilla organization. Guerilla warfare is a subset of asymmetric warfare, which also includes tactics such as suicide bombings. People might want to consider something like Category:Organizations using asymmetric warfare tactics, which would be a subset of Category:Rebel groups and possibly Category:Warriors. (Something needs to be done with the tense of the verb though...) Obviously, it takes both a pair to have an asymmetric war, but the phrase "practitioner/user of the tactics of asymmetrical warfare", as far as I've seen, refers to the weaker of the two. It may be worth clarifying "non-state" as well. - BanyanTree 06:13, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Support Category:Irregular military. -Kbdank71 17:26, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

February 15

Category:Sexology

Keep:6 , Merge (or delete): 4 ...updated Courtland 21:11, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

Redundant with Category:Sexuality. The sex-related categories have a lot of redundancy...this is part of a general cleanup. -- Beland 02:10, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

as an aside, Template:sex-stub was recently made and is in use with the associated Category:Sex-related_stubs Courtland 16:14, 2005 Feb 19 (UTC)

  • Merge, as above. Radiant! 21:02, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
  • Merge -- with Sexuality. Longhair 14:17, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, Sexology and Sexuality are two different things. Sexology is a branch of psychology and medecine which study the human sexuality and has now a very precise meaning, I agree that some entries don't belong there but this category needs just to be cleaned a bit--Khalid hassani 14:57, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, definitely a difference in terms. Cburnett 18:53, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep, for same reasons as other supporters. -Willmcw 22:37, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

OK, so which articles belong in "Sexology" but not in "Sexuality"? I would think that they are all appropriate. One solution might be to make "Sexology" a subcategory of "Sexuality", but they are currently subcategories of each other. Perhaps someone could write clear charters which establish the boundaries of each? Then I'd be happy to help clean up. -- Beland 06:23, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm not an expert in this area, but I'll put in my thoughts anyway. My thinking is that something like Love-bite or Fart fetishism belongs in Category:Sexuality while things like AIDS and Adultery would stay in Category:Sexology. The criterion I would use is things that relate directly to sexual acts would go to 'sexuality' and those that relate to things that involve sex but are not themselves sexual acts would remain in 'sexology'; therefore, AIDS is a disease that may or may not involved sex, but even if it was wholly a sexually transmitted disease, it itself is a consequence of sex and not part of the acts. The same criterion should be used for, for instance, Pregnancy, which should probably be included in Category:Sexology, but it is restricted to Category:Obstetrics at present. Courtland 21:07, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

February 14

Category:Taiwanese political parties

The current official title of the country is Republic of China. And in fact most major parties take part in Quemoy and Matsu, which are not part of the Taiwan province of the ROC, and are not part of (and not near) the island of Taiwan. Renaming to category:Political parties of the Republic of China or category:Political parties of the Republic of China (Taiwan) will better reflect what this category is about. — Instantnood 19:02, Feb 14 2005 (UTC)

Please note that this request was based on the naming conventions on China-related topics. If you don't agree with the naming conventions, don't oppose here. See also the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#..of Taiwan → ..of the Republic of China. — Instantnood 20:05 Mar 6 2005 (UTC)

  • By nominating I support renaming. — Instantnood 19:04, Feb 14 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep where it is Most people outside the US and Taiwan have never heard of and do not understand the term "Republic of China" - they would confuse it for the People's Republic of China. "Taiwan" is accurate enough here, and the most widely understood term, jguk 13:01, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • Quoted from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese): "the word "Taiwan" should not be used if the term "Republic of China" is more accurate.". "Republic of China" (ROC) is the current official title of the government currently governing Taiwan, Pescadores Islands, Matsu Islands and Quemoy. The word "Taiwan" is not an accurate description in this case, as on Wikipedia "Republic of China" is preferred over "Taiwan" when referring to the government. And as I have mentioned, Quemoy and Matsu are neither part of the province of Taiwan of the ROC, nor near to the island of Taiwan. — Instantnood 19:26, Feb 16 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. The general direction nowadays is towards the word Taiwan, both inside and outside of Taiwan -XED.talk 20:00, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Keep. Agree with others. Maurreen 05:20, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Irrespective of the accuracy of the name, the format of the title is wrong, surely. At the very least it should be Category:Political parties of Taiwan Grutness|hello? 00:22, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • To keep is better than what has been suggested. However, I would prefer political parties of Taiwan. That is, until China and Taiwan reunite again, if ever. As for now, keep. gidonb 10:16, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Rename. Naming convention supports this. Penwhale 16:13, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please note that this request was based on the naming conventions on China-related topics. If you don't agree with the naming conventions, don't oppose here. See also the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#..of Taiwan → ..of the Republic of China. — Instantnood 20:05 Mar 6 2005 (UTC)



February 6

Cities in the United States

Most follow the format Category:Minneapolis, Minnesota, i.e. City Name, State Name, I have found the following exceptions (and suggest renamings):

  • Category:Philadelphia, PA -> Category: Philadelphia
    • Oppose - 0, Support - 1
  • Category:Seattle, WA -> Category:Seattle
    • Oppose - 0, Support - 1

I believe these should be corrected for consistency, so that editors will be able to categorize things into US cities without worrying about whether the state name belongs, whether the postal abbreviation is used, or whether it is dropped. dml 15:41, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Unofficial voting summary: See the list above for votes that apply to each individual example; blanket votes are included above. In all there were 4 blanket Oppose and 2 blanket Support. Two votes were for alternatives not shown and those have been added to the list. All this supports Sarah's statements at the bottom of this listing. Courtland 20:53, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC) disclosure - I voted on this

For future reference, there's a Template:Cfru that you should use to label changes like this. I'm tagging all except Category:Washington, DC, because I can't imagine what you would change it to. Washington, DC is the full name.
If we can have a Category:London, I don't know why we can't have a Category:New York City (which is very seldom referred to as "New York, New York"). I would recommend going with whatever the article is titled. (We should definitely change those that use abbreviations, though.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 23:41, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, I knew it was some template. The Washington DC article is actually Washington, D.C., with the periods, so the category should probaly match, the articles of US cities always are supposed to always be city, state (except apparently New York City) according to the Manual of Style dml 01:25, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • ISTR that when working on the cities of another country the consensus was keep the non-qualified name if the place was by far the best known example worldwide and unlikely to be ambiguous, and add the qualification if the name was not that well known or was likely to cause confusion. If that is the case I'd say Keep: Jacksonville, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Baltimore, Las Vegas, New York City, and Nashville; Fix Up the correct state/district name for Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington D.C.; and add the state name to Orlando*, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Laughlin. (*may be the best known place, but it's also a first name). Arguably San Francisco and Atlanta could do without, but I'm pretty sure there are also moderately sizeable places with those names outside the US. As for Laughlin, I doubt it's well enough known to do without its state moniker. Grutness|hello? 02:57, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't care either way on this, but hope that whoever is voting to change this plans to do the voluminious work themselves instead of expecting others to follow up. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:29, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)
    • I was hoping that someone had a bot that could do this (or we could wait until mediawiki was updated) dml 20:37, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • There's absolutely no need to change the category names of cities that don't need their states listed to be properly identified. At a minimum, this absolutely applies to L.A., San Fran, Chicago, Las Vegas, and New York City. Postdlf 09:10, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • That'll come as a big surprise to the residents of San Francisco, Texas, and the residents of San Francisco and Las Vegas, New Mexico. --Calton 02:01, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
      • Not to mention Atlanta, Illinois or Atlanta, Texas. Support for at least Atlanta, Georgia since the additional clarification certainly does more good than harm. -- uberpenguin 14:08, 2005 Mar 8 (UTC)
      • OpposeWell, in that case, you might as well start citing the mass lists of cities named after other cities-- London, Ontario, London, Kentucky, etc. There's only one famous San Francisco, and one famous Las Vegas. Las Vegas, New Mexico can have a category with the state name included... if it ever garners enough articles about it to merit that.siafu 01:18, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • As an alternative to changing the category names, should the articles be renamed to match the categories? Susvolans (pigs can fly) 17:27, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • The problem (aside from now having to rename the things that link to cities) is that it breaks the convention. It is much easier to link if you don't have to think about whether or not the state is in the name. dml 20:37, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I do support renaming the categories that have state abbreviations in them, btw: Seattle, WA and Philadelphia, PA (I believe both were my mistake originally, I'm afraid). Neither needs the state name included to clarify it. Postdlf 05:32, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Support for the reason that otherwise one has to remember which ones are 'special' enough to lack the state name. --SPUI (talk) 10:42, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • The state name, or the state name and the country name? Honestly, the special argument seems a little stretched to me at least; there are really only a handful of cities where this could really be an issue at all (e.g., Portland, Springfield, Salem), not a whole horde. Most of the time it's pretty obvious.siafu 00:01, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Category:Laughlin should even exist, as it has only one item within it. Looks like someone wants Laughlin to be more popular than it really is. -- Riffsyphon1024 05:49, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • oppose - I think that cities that are significant enough should be findable with just their name. While there are many Nashville's in the world, there is only one that is large enough to warrant a category. Best plan though is to do what we're doing at Category:New Orleans, Louisiana. Kevin Rector 15:19, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
  • The New York City category should be left as is; the current name at New York City was that favored after considerable debate.--Pharos 07:53, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Many of these cities are universally recognizable without the state name. There's no reason to add the state for cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, Nashville, etc, unless we're going to enact some kind of formal policy about it. Otherwise, it seems like a waste of effort. Kaldari 06:25, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I don't mean to sound rude, but this discussion of forcing something like "Chicago" to "Chicago, Illinois" is a bit ridiculous. If that is enforced then there is a broad swath to cut through Wikipedia in order to enforce policy ... New Delhi ... Cancun ... Geneva ... ad infinitum. I would suggest not opening that particular door by forcing policy where convention and convenience point in the opposite direction. That door leads to "should we call it Chicago, United States like we might Geneva, Switzerland?" and other monstrous places. Courtland 02:19, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC) P.S. I do realize that of the examples I gave, there is only a category for New Delhi
  • Support, except for Washington, DC, which was moved from DC to D.C. with only about 60% consensus, leaving undetectable double-redirs, so I believe should be moved back. The WA and PA are especially bad and should certainly be changed. New York, New York was moved arbitrarily to New York City with NO consensus, so I think that is an erroneous arguement. I believe Cats should follow the same rules as articles, so the state names should be included. That also prevents the problem of remembering which cities are 'special' enuf to stand without their states. And, yes, I am willing to help with the re-categorization. Niteowlneils 19:04, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. While I favor consistency in category names, I also favor conciseness. The Category:New Orleans, Louisiana example can be used by those who want to have it both ways. -Willmcw 22:28, Mar 10, 2005 (UTC)

There seems generally to be vague consensus to avoid making these moves. I recommend that we keep most of them as they are due to lack of clear agreement to change. (People seem to generally be in favor of retaining simple category names where they are fairly unambiguous.) In cases where duplicate categories exist, I recommend that we renominate them for individual discussion. I'll go ahead with this if no one objects within the next couple of days. -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:32, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

January 15

Category:Transportation_by_country

Subcategories are all "Transportation in Foo" except we have:

"Transport" is the term actually used in Ireland.

This is a precedent-setting decision. Should we have a universal form for this type of category, or should we vary the form to allow a more local flavor? Consistency might make navigation easier, but for article text, there is a precedent to use local terminology if applicable. I suspect that "Transport" is also used the UK and some other Commonwealth countries. If we decide to allow variation in this type of case, should we actively investigate usage in the countries for which categories exist, or allow passive changes over time? What should we do about non-English-speaking countries? -- Beland 02:25, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See also the next entry...

  • I would vote for Transport of Ireland, for the English forms, I think it is best to try to keep the international flavour of Wikipedia, we can easily add a category redirect for Transportation and Transport if there is confusion. But users in Ireland, England would look for transport and not transportation. Sortior 04:32, Jan 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • It doesn't bother me to mix them up a bit if there are folks who seriously object to using Transportation as the standard, although it does tend to cause confusion in assigning categories. (It would always be necessary to check before assigning a transportation category.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 03:41, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Perhaps an energetic youngster or bot can be convinced to create the alternative redirects for all transport/transportation categories. —Michael Z. 05:08, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)
  • "Transport" is the word used in most English-speaking countries, and the article on transport rests there. "Transportation" has very different connotations - particularly to an Australian! I'm guessing most Americans have no problem with understanding the Commonwealth English form of "transport", and, in the light of the different meanings of the word "transportation" (and that it's a much longer word!) it would be better if "transport" is used, jguk 18:08, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Attempting to impose the American word "transportation" on other English speaking countries is totally unacceptbale. Philip 03:27, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • I created most of the transportation in blah, as part of the Wikiproject airport stuff, but I will stick with the general consensus here, even though it looks wrong to me (I am a Canadian). Burgundavia 22:05, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)
  • What are the Australian connotations of "Transportation"? -- Beland 03:50, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Beland, see transportation :) jguk 19:31, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • What if we just say that the category should match the main article? (Whether "Transport in X" or "Transportation in X". Articles can easily be moved by folks familiar with local usage and categories can then be nominated for moving individually as necessary. -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:24, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:National_parks_by_country

(Mostly "National parks of Foo".)

This is a lot like the "transport" vs. "transportation" case, but in this case the vocabulary variation seems to have an even stronger justification. -- Beland 02:25, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Should we agree on a generic term, like protected areas or designated areas, for cases where a country has national parks, national wildlife refuges, national historic sites, national marine protected areas, etc, which will all be in one category? —Michael Z. 05:10, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)

"Designated" is too vague. "Protected areas" (which is the name of the Wikiproject) is probably best. "Conservation area" may imply things which are not true of all types of parks. Using small letters for "national parks" may imply that it includes all types of nationally owned parks, while capitalized "National Parks" indicates a specific designation. Rmhermen 21:52, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)

"Protected areas" it is. I can do:

...but the rest will have to be done manually. I guess the thing to do is to tag the parent category for attention and put a note with its talk page with the results of this decisions. -- Beland 05:15, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Apart from Category:Hong Kong country parks and special areas (which is backwards relative to its siblings), the subcategories look pretty good to me. Since we seem to be agreeing that it's okay to have subcategories with different names when different names are legtimately used, I think it's okay to leave things as they are aside from changing the parent category. -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:21, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Shooters_by_country

I'm not sure "shooters" is the best word, either. -- Beland 02:25, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

  • er... trappist, pistoleer, target shooter, marksman? 132.205.15.43 02:34, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • not "Trappist" - unless you want to confuse shooters and monks! I think it also depends what you want - people who compete at sporting events like the Olympics as shooters (in which case you can't use "Pistoleer" - since they use shotguns IIRC), or people who have used guns in military/paramilitary situations (in which case they're probably covered in other categories anyway). I think that if you're talking sport "Shooters" is correct, though. Grutness|hello?
    • Out of context, the phrase "German shooters" makes me think, "Murderers who shot their victims and who are from Germany". Perhaps "sport shooters" is closer to what is intended. -- Beland

Unless there are objections, I will do:

-- Beland 05:10, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

    • Good call! Those are much more clear. -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:19, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Category:Sportspeople_by_country

Change all "Fooian sportspeople" to "Sportspeople of Foo", especially Category:Northern_Irish_sportspeople -> Category:Sportspeople_of_Northern_Ireland.

voting summary: Oppose - 2 (4 if fuzzied), Support - 2 after ~1 month Courtland 20:10, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)

one opposition was to the group move but supportive of the specific move noted as an example

  • Oppose That sounds ridiculously precious to me. Philip 02:57, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Agree for reasons given in the Category:Cinema_by_country CfD below. Bryan 09:55, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Are any of you who are voting yes for these things actually proposing to make a huge contribution to the huge effort required to make the transfers which, even if you don't think they will make things worse as I do, will be at best trivial "improvements" to Wikipedia? At the moment virtually all of the people categories are in the adjective form. Changing a few will create a mess that we will be stuck with for who knows how long. Surely you can come up with real ways to improve Wikipedia, rather than this nonsensical project. Wincoote 14:35, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
interpreted as OPPOSE
There are bots that can easily perform the work required to move articles between categories. RedWolf 17:22, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
For thousands of people categories when there is so much else that needs to be done? How many are you offering to do yourself? Wincoote 18:45, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Given Wincoote's comments, I think the whole structure needs to be examined as performing this renaming will lead to other inconsistencies within related categories. RedWolf 17:27, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • Partial support I would not support moving categories en masse. However Category:Northern_Irish_sportspeople should be moved because in Northern Ireland this adjective is politically loaded. It is generally used by Unionists and abhorred by nationalists. It also just sounds odd to many people. As neutral terms the media in Northern Ireland tend to prefer the terms "Northern Ireland sportspeople/poets/etc" or "X from Northern Ireland". Category:Sportspeople_of_Northern_Ireland would be much better. Iota 02:05, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Agree. -Kbdank71 21:59, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I count only 2 clear oppose votes, plus the partial opposition as described. However, there is clearly no consensus to make this move at this time. Unless anyone disagrees in the next couple of days, I propose that we declare this unresolved and nominate the Northern Ireland category (since people from Northern Ireland appear not to call themselves "Northern Irish"). -Aranel ("Sarah") 19:18, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)


Cleanup overhead

Discussions moved off-page

Please see:

To be emptied or moved

The following categories meet the requirements for deletion but are not empty. You can still review discussions, which have been moved to archive pages (in particularly controversial cases, discussion may be left intact on this page instead). This section is meant to be a summary with no discussion. Discussion should go in the previous section.

Category delete keep other rename to / why
Category:Literary Suicides - 1 4 (rename) Category:Writers who committed suicide
Category:Terrorist organizations 25 4 2 delete (POV)
Category:Fantasy books
^^^no longer contains novels^^^		 - 4 2 move novels to subcategory Category:Fantasy novels
- - - - -


I am starting to construct a list of categories that will be renamed or de-populated shortly, on User:Pearle/on-deck. I will be moving discussions there temporarily, before archiving them on /resolved or deleting them. -- Beland 03:11, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Delete me

The below meet the eligibility requirements for deletion at the top of this page. These categories have been de-populated, and any documentation of this decision taken care of. Admins may delete these categories at will. If there is a particular category which is replacing the deleted category (if redundant, misspelled, etc.) as noted below, that should be mentioned in the deletion log entry.

The category to be deleted is listed first, followed by the proper category that renders it obsolete.

Category:Japanese Translation requests Discussion moved here.

Category:United States companies Discussion moved here.

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