Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Archived talk: 1

Contents

Merge CFD and VFD

Included in the archive was the poll ending in September, 2004, about whether or not to merge WP:CFD and WP:VFD. The final result was no merger with the following final tally:

  • No merger: 11
  • Merge CFD with VFD: 1
  • Merge with RfC: 1

The issues of unresolved votes and getting enough people to pay attention to WP:CFD were also raised.

If VfD could be moved to Wikipedia:Articles for Deletion, and then reuse VfD for anything for deletion linkage (just links into AfD, CfD, TfD, IfD, RfD...) that should boost traffic. 132.205.15.42 04:00, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Non-Wikipedia categorization systems

Discussion moved to: Wikipedia talk:Category schemes

Rules conflict for speedy delete, renaming categories

Jerzy(t) and I recently had a discussion about the rules for deleting categories. There seems to be a conflict between

  • CfD policy, which says misspelled, improperly categorized, or creator nominated categories can be deleted 2 days after listing on CfD, and
  • Speedy delete, which says "empty" categories can be deleted 24 hours after adding {{delete}} (with no mention of CfD).

I believe most people use CfD rather than Speedy to nominate categories for deletion for any reason including simple renames. To reduce the clutter in CfD, I propose we create a new category-based policy for "simple" category renaming similar to the speedy deletion policy. Template:Catmove and Category:Categories to be moved could be used for this purpose. With this approach, to rename a category {{catmove|New name}} would be added (with suitable text changes to catmove, including indicating that objections should be added to the category's talk page), and after 2 days with no objections anyone could recategorize the members of the old category to the new category and any admin could delete the old category after it's emptied. It would be convenient if there were a tool available at least to all admins to do the recategorizations, but until such a tool is widely available (Move this page should actually do this) Pearle can be used in the rare cases where a heavily populated category is renamed. In case it's not obvious, the essential advantage of a category-based approach is that it eliminates at least 2 edits of WP:CFD per category rename (one to list the request, one to remove the request when done). -- Rick Block 17:16, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

While I like the efficency implications of this, I wonder if such an extra page would get sufficent viewing to be fair. The current Cfd page probably does not get as much viewing as Vfd, and another page would get even less. As to the speedy delete issues, we have defacto rules here: deletions of obvious mispellings and renaming that follows precedented naming policies pretty much happen if the category is already empty. This is because such categories are trivial to recreate if deleted in error (by anyone), and unlike articles, typically do not have much written content. I think only populated categories and large automated changes really need extended consideration. As to two edits per delete, there does not have to be two edits per deletion. The deletions can be done all at once, and then the article can be edited to remove what is done later. This would mean (for instance) 1.05 edits per uncontrovertial delete, assuming we did only 20 at a time.

To summarize my views on this:

  1. Empty categories are trivial to recreate by anyone if wrongly deleted.
  2. Moving part of the process out of Cfd will reduce the number of eyes that see it.
  3. Category deletion and Cfd page cleanup are separate and don't have to be done lock-step.
--ssd 00:33, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is what I would propose:

  • We update speedy delete policy to include childless orphan categories which were blanked by their creators, regardless of who nominated them. If someone else blanked it, we should check when the blanking occured. If it was more than one week ago, then the creator of that category has had plenty of time to notice, and it's a speedy delete candidate. (Otherwise, it's easy to empty a category without it being noticed, so simply being empty is not sufficient for speedy deletion.)
  • We allow anyone to move small categories, leaving behind a redirect.

Anyone can move an article. The result is a redirect. If the original title for some reason absolutely should not exist, it can be nominated as a redirect for deletion. The reason categories are different is that, for a large category, if you move a large category and I disagree, it's not easy to restore the original category, since every article must be edited. I'd like to see a policy that for small categories (obviously we would have to define small—ten articles or less? fifteen? twenty?), anyone can simply move the articles to the new category and use Template:Categoryredirect on the old one. Since we have a more or less functional category "redirect", it shouldn't be necessary to go through Categories for deletion for simple moves. Redirects are "cheap" and don't need to be deleted unless there is something usually wrong with them. -Aranel ("Sarah") 18:17, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would say, drop the CfD rule to 24 hours for all cases, and change the speedy delete text to point to the CfD policy, and encourage people to use the CFD tag, not the "delete" tag. We previously discussed what to do with empty categories, and we said that people should be given a chance to populate them. This implies that they should not be deleted without being listed on WP:CFD. -- Beland 00:13, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Chopping the page size down

One thing that would really help get the page size down (which would make working on it a lot easier - saves, rendering, etc would all be faster) would be to deal with some of the old items which have accrued long lists of comments. I don't hang out here enough to feel comfortable tackling what are obviously tricky ones, but if one of the regulars could (while the rest of us do the mundane stuff) that would really be a help in getting the size down. Noel (talk) 05:58, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've started a new list at the bottom of the page summarizing the outdated page contents. Once we've started emptying the relevant categories, the corosponding discussions can be deleted. (More likely than not, if you delete the discussion first, people complain when you start emptying the category.) --ssd

A suggestion - would it be better if this page was organised like the article vfd page - individual subpages for each category deletion candidate, so that comments can be posted on the separate pages rather than having to edit the main page each time? Grutness|hello? 08:22, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This was already discussed above, at #Large page! on the front and at unresolved. Noel (talk) 14:24, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Ooops - sorry! Grutness|hello?

The reason this is particularly bad at the moment is that I have been out of town, and until recently I've been one of the only administrators to consistently work on taking care of this page. (There are some other folks who poke their heads in and some non-administrators who do excellent work.) I'll be back next week and then hopefully I can take care of the backlog.

If you want to get an old discussion off the main page and you're not sure what the consensus is, then you can archive it at unresolved (it is generally better to resolve an issue, but when we have this kind of backlog, it's good to be able to just get a discussion off the page). I even made a little personal template to use on the archive paegs. (See User:Aranel/unresolved.) Anyone can archive old discussions. -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:24, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

New template: Cfr

Since most of the nominations on this page are for renaming, I have made template:Cfr. Use it like this: {{cfr|newname}}

Comments? --ssd 07:22, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think this is brilliant. I don't know why we didn't think of it sooner. It's more useful to look at the CfD notice and know whether it is a request for deletion or renaming. Also, people tend to see the CfD notice and overreact because they interpret it as a request for deletion first. Hopefully this will cut down on that. -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:24, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Big thumbs up from me, too. Perhaps splitting the Cfd page into two separate pages (cfd and cfn) would be a reasonable extension of this idea, too, since the cfd page is so long (apologies if this has already been covered). Grutness|hello? 07:41, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
That's actually worth thinking about. It would help to avoid confusion about what is being proposed (e.g. the debate over Category:Jews which is difficult to unravel because it was nominated for a name change but many folks voted on whether or not it should even exist, which is a separate issue). I think it we'll be able to evaluate the size of the page more effectively if we can get the backlog down, though. (I'd really like to get that taken care of before making any big moves. It would also make the change much easier if this page were less of a mess.) -Aranel (logged out)
Would it be good to have a line after "The suggested new name is: " that said something like "The reason for the change is: "? gK ¿? 11:18, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Is this necessary to include in the template? If there is some complicated, non-obvious reasoning involved, it would be just as easy to add a note after the template. -Aranel (logged out)
There used to be one, Template:catmove, it was listed on TfD and subsequently deleted. 132.205.45.148 21:23, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Category:Categories to be emptied and Category:Categories to be moved?

Would it help, for organizational purposes here, to have tags to put on categories that are waiting to be emptied or moved? It might help to have a notice so that folks don't continue to use a doomed category. We could use the tags to create a sort of to-do list that would be independent of this page. This would be a lot easier to use for non-controversial moves and deletions—instead of removing an entry and adding it to the list at the bottom of the page requesting that it be emptied, then removing that entry later, we could just add the to-be-moved or to-be-emptied tag and remoev the entry here.

I would find this useful, but of course I'm a bit obsessive about organization. (Which, I suppose, is why I enjoy working on categories in the first place.) -Aranel ("Sarah") 01:24, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)


  • Mmmm...the {{cfd}} or {{cfr}} tag should be enough to warn people to think twice before using the category. Having the "move me" listing on WP:CFD is sometimes necessary because of unexpected complications. And people get all uppity if they don't see any listing on WP:CFD and a category looks like it's going away. So I'm for the status quo, I guess. -- Beland 23:57, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Is there a template for cats to be emptied? 132.205.15.43 01:02, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Sort order

Why does WP:CFD put the newest at the top yet WP:IFD, WP:RFD, WP:PUI, WP:VFD, etc. add the newest to the bottom? Cburnett 17:54, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • I think that the others put it on the bottom because MediaWiki software edits a specific spot on a page by its heading number. Thus newer topics get later numbers (until an entire day is removed, and all numbers shifted up to lower ones). CFD does it this way because it is easier to read, but causes headaches when a new topic is inserted at the top. 132.205.15.43 06:08, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

renaming

Now that there's a template:cfr (which replaced template:catmove), how about a differentiable header/title field for categories to be renamed?

=== [[:Category:original name]] → [[:Category:proposed name]] ===

132.205.15.43 06:18, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The problem is that the link from the template would no longer take you to the specific section where the renaming is being discussed. However, you could do something like this:
 ===[[:Category:original name]]===
 :→ [[:Category:proposed name]]
—Mike 03:00, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

If the template were changed to: [[Wikipedia:Categories for deletion#Category:{{PAGENAME}} → {{1}}|this page's entry]] wouldn't that work? 132.205.15.43 00:54, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Numerous listings

I've went through the entire list at Uncategorised categories and have found many categories that are childless and uncategorised. Since they neither have children and they are not categorised anywhere, is it safe to assume that the category does not need to exist? Apart from someone typing in the exact name of the category or looking on a list of categories, no one will ever find them. Do I have to list every entry one by one? Can these qualify for a speedy? The editable list with notes is here, if anyone is interested: User:Jag123/Uncategorised categories --jag123 15:36, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Any category that is empty and uncategorized with no edits in the history for at least a minimum time (3 months or maybe 6 months) should be automatically deleted. They could always be recreated later if necessary. (Creating a category is not a difficult thing.) —Mike 03:05, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

What's the minimum time? 3 months or 6 months? Is this 'policy' actually being observed by the people who participate in deleting categories? So what tag do I put in? --jag123 04:12, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The only way that I know of to get a category deleted is to list it on Cfd like any other category delete request. It will probably be deleted right away if it is an unused category. —Mike 08:53, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure how this list relates to the list Beland periodically creates and posts at Wikipedia:Orphaned categories. I just looked and the specialpages list is empty (which seems unlikely to reflect the current reality). There is some overlap between your annotated list and the current contents of Wikipedia:Orphaned categories, although based on a fairly small not exactly random sample numerous entries on your list are NOT on the current orphaned categories page. Various people (includng myself) slog through the orphaned categories page, ultimately categorizing or listing its entries for deletion. -- Rick Block 15:01, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't know it existed. That page should be listed on the special pages template as the editable version. --jag123 18:06, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

My list is created from a database dump; the Special list is real-time, I assume. Most of the childless orphans should be deleted; sometimes you do find one that you think should have articles added to it instead. When I clean them out, I usually put one header for a long list, and people pick off any that they want to keep. Then an admin comes by and deletes in bulk. -- Beland 01:04, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

ACCIDENTAL vandalism

I destroyed by mistake the English version of page ATC code A02 (overwrite to translate into french; I tought I was in the French section.
Please restore the previous English version
I am very sorry

Eras-mus 23:42, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Non-controversial renamings

For category titles that just have incorrect spelling or capitalization, I wonder whether if handling might be split off somehow from the more substantive changes. Some type of "speedy category rename" might be more efficient. Maurreen 06:07, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

  • Isn't this properly handled already under the speedy deletion guidelines at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion policies? I have noticed though that others have mis-interpreted the guidelines and speedy delete categories, where it does not apply, on a regular basis before waiting the usual 7 days required. RedWolf 16:25, Feb 21, 2005 (UTC)
  • I don't think we need a separate page for that sort of stuff. We already do it here, under existing policies. If the rename is obvious and uncontroversial after one or two days and is small, go ahead and do it yourself, and it'll be deleted when it is empty. If it's huge, just let it go, and it will be added to the bot's list in a week or so. However, don't start renaming too quickly, sometimes someone else has a better idea. And deletions should not occur until it is agreed on, as they are much harder to undo. --ssd 06:30, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Cleaning department

I just noticed the above mentioned page, and added the people who frequent here on that list. Go ahead and add/edit your entry there if you have nto already! --ssd 06:12, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Add the name of the new category?

What does "Add the name of the new category and {{cfd}} to the category page for deletion." means? Am I supposed to add the name of the category to it's article text? Paranoid 17:39, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • This only applies if you are requesting that a category be renamed, not just deleted. I've clarified the wording. -Aranel ("Sarah") 18:01, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Naming conventions reconciliations

The precedents accumulating under Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/resolved should probably be fed back into Wikipedia:Naming_conventions and subpages, at some point. -- Beland 07:31, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Where's Category:Czech weapons?

The [[Category:Czech weapons]] (enter in search box; using link puts this page in the category) page says it is listed here, but I don't see it. It has in fact been renamed.

Weapons of the Czeck Republic is an idiotic category name for at least a couple of reasons:

  • No "Czeck Republic" existed before 1993, yet the weapons slapped into this category did and most were gone before 1993.
  • It is normally spelled Czech Republic.
  • The Category:Czech weapons was already renamed with this silly name.

Gene Nygaard 14:12, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Request for comment

Mainland China

There are currently three strings of discussion over the use of the term "mainland China", namely Laws, Companies and Cities. They do demonstrate high degree of similarity, and many of the arguments are actually repeated in the three sections. I would like to suggest to have the discussions of these three sections to be combined and continued.

On the other hand, from the arguments and opinion that many contributors have provided, familiarity with the issue is far from satisfactory. Although everybody's opinion count and must be respected, Wikipedia is not a place for simple head counts. Collaboration and consensus building are based upon knowledge and familiarity. I am not saying it has now become mobocracy, but everyone knows it is undesirable, and we have to avoid it from happening. The issue is already on debate at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese), and I believe it will be better dealt with, before bringing up here. — Instantnood 17:03, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)

right, and you ignored concensus to rename "XXX of China" or "XXX of the People's Republic of China" to "XXX of Mainland China" and then after nobody liked the idea, you created and populated the new category anyways. A lot of this is cleanup after your mess. Besides that, these are NATIONAL articles. They belong to the nation, not some informal term that refers to one region. In every country there are jurisdictions that have exceptions to national policies. That doesn't mean that the entire nation gets pigeonholed into some sub-category. SchmuckyTheCat 21:07, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This is not the right location to continue the discussion. — Instantnood 21:48, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)
which is why you brought it here? SchmuckyTheCat 22:02, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I did not discuss on the definition and application of the term. — Instantnood 23:12, Mar 24, 2005 (UTC)
Do not combine but do take not of the fact that User:Instantnood fails to distinguish his arguments based on the merits of each case is a clear sign that he is pushing some other agenda. Gene Nygaard 06:50, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Take a look at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (Chinese)#A poll? and everyone can tell I do agree not every single case is the same. — Instantnood 12:04, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)
Every forum you go to votes you down by consensus, so you take it to another forum, shopping for a new consensus. When someone points this out to you, you say that this is the wrong forum to discuss it in??!? Well, we could have told you that. You were already rejected in the first three. --ssd 06:23, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Would you cast a vote in an election which all candidates are unheard? — Instantnood 12:04, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Industrialists

The following discussion has been moved here from cfd:delete me:

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

  • category:industrialists; category:industrialists by nationality; category:Italian industrialists; category:American industrialists. No objections were raised to merging these into the far more widely used category:businesspeople and its subcats. I have emptied them. Wincoote 23:16, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I am sorry I didn't pay more close attention to this, so I am lodging a protest against this. "Businesspeople" - apart from not being an English word - is too broad. An industrialist is not the same as a businessperson [sic]. Content has been lost due to this deletion. I can see that a lot of work is needed to fix the damange wincoote has perpetrated. --Leifern 02:49, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)
      • As much as you disagree with Wincoote, the proper procedure was followed. There was no opposition to his suggestion that was listed for a week. -Kbdank71 17:58, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
    • I acknowledge the procedure was followed, but it was still a stupid, uninformed move. WP is worse off for it. --Leifern 23:16, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)

China geography stubs

The following discussion has been moved here from cfd:delete me:

I deleted Category:China geography stubs yesterday - someone revived it, so I've just deleted it a second time. If it's revived again, it should be investigated... Grutness|hello? 00:27, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just user:Instantnood fighting the concensus again. --ssd 06:29, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I made it a disambiguation before Grutness delete it. It's now fine, anyways. — Instantnood 13:02, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
Actually, changing it to a soft redirect (similar to a disambiguation) is helpful as the message gets sucked into the delete log. However this one was already deleted. Anyway, gone now. --ssd 13:20, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Umm.. actually I made it a disambiguation to category:Mainland China geography stubs, category:Republic of China (Taiwan) geography stubs and category:Hong Kong geography stubs. — Instantnood 17:02, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Restructuring

CFD is now getting quite big. Uploading during peak hours often results in congestion and leads to the error message. Would it be possible to have this page restructured, like votes for deletion, with separate pages for each section? — Instantnood 06:51, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)

On the same note, I believe the page may become more legible if it is split into two pages - one for deleting categories and another for renaming them. The former is often subject to some discussion and the latter is usually pretty straightforward. Any thoughts on this? Radiant_* 13:39, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

  • I've noticed that renaming can be as contentious as deleting. -Kbdank71 14:43, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • However, is it necessary to have an actual vote on renaming for proper capitalization purposes? If the only reason a category is listed here is to change it from "Foo Bar" to "Foo bar", can't we just automagically put it in the "to be moved" section? I know there will be some people who will disagree with the category name, proper caps or not, and they can list it properly if they choose. -Kbdank71 14:48, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
      • I believe the reason is that only admins can rename a cat. Maybe, then, we should have a 'routine' section (capitalization renames, requests for deleting empty cats, stuff like that) and a 'contested' section (anything else, and of course anyone can move a CFD from routine to contested, but not back). The reason I'm suggesting this is because, unlike VfD and TfD, the CfD page is rather illegible in its layout. Radiant_* 07:58, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)
I agree with separating the renaming, and I agree that simple matters such as obvious capitalization or plurals shouldn't need a vote. But to broaden the topic a little, I don't understand why more of these questions are not handled on the individual category talk page. I don't really see a need for the consolidation we now have. Maurreen 15:53, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I also agree with separating CFD and CFR. — Instantnood 12:13, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

I like the idea of the vfd-style subpages. I think it would be a good thing for this page. Grutness|hello? 02:15, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Concur with that. Radiant_* 07:58, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

More restruct

Okay, the page is somewhat restructured thanks to the recent discussion and a bot by AllyUnion. Specifically, there is a subpage for each day (all transcluded) and one for speedy renames (also transcluded for now). However, there remains the question what should be done when an entry is finished - does it still get moved to /resolved or /unresolved? Should perhaps the bot move all transclude pages older than a week onto /unresolved?

Radiant_* 09:50, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

In prep for however we're going to do this, I put together two templates CfD top and Cfd bottom, to match the Vfd ones. It boxes off the discussion once it has been completed. At least that way, we don't have people voting on discussions that have been completed. You can see what it looks like on April 2nd and 3rd. I was going to archive those pages, a la Vfd, with a link on the top of CfD. Does anyone have an objection to that? --Kbdank71 18:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • Sounds good. AllyUnion is in charge of the bot - since you're one of the people closing CfDs, maybe you should discuss with him if CfD/Log/-date- pages of, say, a week old or more, should no longer be transcluded (otherwise this list will grow forever). Radiant_* 12:34, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)
  • Isn't the current wording misleading? Each nomination is not on its own separate page like VFD. RedWolf 06:45, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
    • Which wording are you referring to? The idea was to split by day, rather than by article (since on average, VfD votes get longer than CfDs). Radiant_* 07:52, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

/unresolved is supposed to be for pages that a cleanup person could not resolve. It used to be that discussions no one had bothered trying to resolve would just pile up at the bottom of the page. Where am I supposed to find the to-be-closed discussions now? -- Beland 01:39, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've closed everything from the 2nd to the 12th(?). I didn't move anything to /resolved or /unresolved from those dates. I just left them on the day pages, but removed the transclusion from CfD. The links to those pages are at the top of CfD, like on VfD. Is that what you mean? --Kbdank71 01:45, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • Would it work if the individual day pages were kept transcluded until everything there is dealt with? People can always use /Today to keep track of voting. Radiant_* 07:52, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)
That's what I've been doing, sorry if it wasn't clear. That is the reason there is more than 7 days on CfD... I'm only de-transcluding(?) pages once the listing is closed. --Kbdank71 13:09, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Popular songs

Popular songs was ignorantly deleted as it lacked a definition and non-music editors did not realize the obvious one, found at popular music. Perhaps the category should be renamed Category:Popular music songs, but it should not have been deleted. Hyacinth 01:15, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • With all due respect, the nomination was on CfD for seven days, and was not opposed. As for a definition, "popular", as in "widely liked", can indeed be seen as POV. "Popular" as defined at popular music, seems to me to be a catchall for everything not classical, an anthem, military, or children's music. In other words, everything you hear on every radio station. As such, I would think there would be better categories for songs to be in. --Kbdank71 01:35, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • I would have opposed that if I'd noticed it before it got deleted, for the reason Hyacinth gives. Kappa 11:53, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Speedy Rename

(moved from CfD) Category:Consonant --> Category:Consonants

Bot, please (again, thanks). --Kbdank71 16:10, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Not that this is a really controvercial change, but why is this in Speedy? I've looked at the original proposal discussion, and the policy page, and the only criteria that gained consensus were typos and capitalization. Pluralization wasn't agreed upon .. --Azkar 18:29, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I was cleaning out the last speedy, and had to add this for bot-work, and to be honest, I was too lazy at the time to put it in the section below. Don't worry, this has been listed for the required seven days. --Kbdank71 13:31, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Good point. Singular to plural was subject of some controversy. The aim was to list it for a week on Wikipedia talk:Category renaming to see if there were any objections or discussion. There weren't any. But I'm not sure if that should be taken as a sign for consensus, since arguably few people have read it. Bottom line - if we want more 'speedy renaming' criteria (which seems useful) we should put up an obvious section for discussion. Radiant_* 08:59, Apr 25, 2005 (UTC)

--

Is this something we want to bring up again for discussion and vote? --Kbdank71 13:21, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that a discussion and vote would be beneficial to establish consensus one way or the other. Thryduulf 13:38, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Soviet Union v USSR

(copied from CfD - Delete Me)

  • Category:American Olympians --> Category:Olympic competitors for the US
I thought the naming convention for USA category names is to use U.S.? RedWolf 01:47, Apr 28, 2005 (UTC)
It is? Should I change that? (and USSR, for that matter?) --Kbdank71 01:52, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I couldn't find a documented naming convention so I just may have seen some older comment on CFD about it. I would say rename. Looking at some of the subcats of Category:American sportspeople, I see U.S. although starting the name, not ending but that parent category is a mess of names. RedWolf 01:23, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
I did a wiki search on categories, and found this: 212458 results for United States, 53044 for U.S. I'll be bold and use United States. --Kbdank71 13:17, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
While the common use of the USA name in Olympic articles is United States or United States of America, the common use of the Soviet Union name is USSR see e.g. all medal tables of Summer/Winter Olympics (like 1960 Summer Olympics). This convention is also used by the IOC (e.g. [1]). In other words, Soviet Union should be replaced by USSR and United States should be left as is. Cmapm 19:12, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
All due respect, considering USSR redirects to Soviet Union, and that article states that, in part: The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), also called the Soviet Union, I don't think I'm out of line in keeping the category the way it is. --Kbdank71 19:55, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, you will know this, but only after you follow the link. And what if you don't follow? Then you may well consider them as two different countries. Why the mess of names should be introduced? Cmapm 20:35, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Your "wiki search" research on categories is worthless unless you distinguish the usage as an adjective from the usage as a noun. Gene Nygaard 21:23, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Thank you Gene. If you wish to distinguish between nouns and adjectives, then I won't stop you from doing your own research. I merely wanted to find usage, period. If you disagree with me being bold, then be bold yourself and change it back. --Kbdank71 01:37, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

News trade

I'm a little confused. It appears that "News trade" was taken off the "Delete me" list without being deleted. Maurreen 07:23, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What counts for consensus

A category is proposed to delete. Five people vote, 3 to delete, 2 to keep. The 2 to keep feel strongly about it. After seven days someone (who voted to delete) deleted it.

I thought policy was that underexposed, and controversial deletes should be kept until further votes got a clear consensus? I don't think five votes gets you consensus when a single vote would change it. SchmuckyTheCat 02:31, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I was also a bit surprised when Category:Female chess players was deleted with ten to delete and list, and six to keep, slightly short of a two thirds majority (but one can argue that replacing a category with a list is less drastic than outright deletion). Also, IMO a person who voted delete in a contentious debate ought to refrain from deleting the category. Which category were you thinking about? Sjakkalle 10:17, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
You'd think if it were a controversial nomination, more than five people would vote. Regardless, though, were you bringing up a theoretical situation, or were you alluding to an actual category that was deleted? --Kbdank71 13:22, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Category:Stinky Foods [2] I see the vote was four to delete, counting the nominator. Still I don't consider that overwhelming. SchmuckyTheCat 13:28, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
If you read the discussion, three of the four also feel strongly about it. Was it overwhelming? No, four votes to two certainly isn't overwhelming. It was up for seven days and got a grand total of six votes (at a 2 to 1 margin). How much longer would it need to stay listed? Would another week work? How about two? A month? Should we wait for a 3 to 1 margin? 4 to 1? And what is "overwhelming"? Ten votes? Thirty? One hundred? In my opinion, this wasn't controversial, not even close, and six votes at 2-1 was enough for a consensus. --Kbdank71 13:46, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
Maybe advertising the delete proposal should go to the articles in the category, where a lot more people have watchlists. SchmuckyTheCat 17:25, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

LGBT subcategories

I am EXTREMELY peeved that this was discussed and resolved without anybody ever even attempting to contact me, as the person who created most of these categories in the first place. My reasoning for creating the categories was as follows:

  1. The main GLB people category is too unwieldy as is; subcategories are unequivocally necessary to sort the information in more useful and relevant ways. A grouping such as "LGBT politicians" is necessary because this is, in and of itself, a topic with distinct research value that isn't adequately served by having no way to separate out politicians from actors from writers from criminals from singers from drag queens within a single "GLB people" category.
  2. "GLB people" now cannot include transgendered people; the categorization must include them as much as possible. The subcategories were, in part, a way to link transgendered people to appropriate subgroupings in a more manageable way. The existing category cannot stand; it must be made transgender-inclusive.
  3. There has to be a way to link artists who are LGBT directly to the "LGBT art" category; there has to be a way to connect writers who are LGBT directly to the "LGBT literature" category. Having no way to do this is absolutely unacceptable.
  4. The existing category now ghettoizes sexual orientation as a topic that can't be reached through other topics (e.g. "LGBT musicians" was not just a subcategory of "GLB people", but also a subcategory of "musicians". This effectively says that being LGBT can't be treated as just a fact of somebody's life, but instead has to be ghettoized and closeted and compartmentalized as much as possible.)

But above all else, the bottom line is that this should never have been discussed without somebody advising me that it was up for debate, and somebody owes me an explanation. Bearcat 03:57, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm with you. Its just polite (and I almost always do it myself) to notify whoever created an article or category that you've put up for deletion. It doesn't take long, its not difficult, and its just plain considerate. Doesn't matter if its required by Wikipedia rules or not. I'm also with you in being peeved about the obnoxious tendency some Wikipedians have of trying to eliminate all mention of homosexuality except when it is framed in the most negative possible light, and the use of "its just a political maneuver" or whatever as a reason for deletion has got to stop. This is classic ad hominem, its bad form, and its damn pathetic. -Seth Mahoney 05:49, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

Following discussion moved from CfD:

Can anyone point myself (and others) at where any discussion of this deletion took place please. There is no replacement or up-level category that will catch this information and it is a very useful categorisation. It is not empty (despite the CfD notice being in place some people are deleting entries which are being reverted by various people. This also raises the point that there is no easy way for an editor to become aware of new entries here (which seem to arrive in blocks) if they don't spot the change here (ie. not listed on pages with the category is actually used). --Vamp:Willow 22:18, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
I second this. Dysprosia 22:38, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
I came to this page when I noticed Category:LGBT artists and actors being stripped from articles on my watchlist, and I see it's happening to the other simular categories. This really has me concerned. What's happening with this? Jonathunder 00:54, 2005 May 5 (UTC)
The discussion took place here: Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 April 24 --Kbdank71 13:08, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

If you would like to receive notification that a given category has been nominated for deletion, I think the thing to is to watchlist the category. We here at CFD try very hard to make sure all categories nominated for deletion are tagged so that watchlists will trigger. We presume that this will notify anyone who cares strongly one way or the other. Occasionally, we need to use a bot to tag categories for bulk renames, and it's not really feasible to contact all the creators in those situations. Personally, I've created a lot of categories I'd prefer that I not be contacted about. If I do care, I watchlist. Otherwise, I don't. -- Beland 03:18, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

I think its a joke to insist that the CFD process always works and that categories are always tagged. If it where true you would have a point. Hyacinth 00:20, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Looking at the main GLB people category, it is now overpopulated. I suggested subcategorizing it by occupation, and then I noticed that this is precisely what has been undone. It might make sense to delete both the main category and the subcategories, but not to delete the subcategories while keeping the main category. ::sigh::. Can we do a vote for reincarnation? -- Beland 04:15, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
Oh, it gets better: I originally created the occupational subcategories partly because somebody else suggested finding ways to break the category down into more manageable groups the last time the main category came up for deletion. (Oh, and btw, the main category keeps coming up for deletion over and over again. How anybody can possibly think that having the category is a POV agenda, but repeatedly trying to delete it isn't, escapes me.) Bearcat 07:03, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
A problem with the CfD process is that category users, i.e. editors who add categories to articles, may never even visit the category pages themselves. It'd be helpful if categories would appear followed by an asterisk if they have been nominated for CfD. That way readers of articles would be alerted that a deletion is proposed, just like a VfD is visible. I personally don't think that the LBGT occupational categories are useful (actually, I don't agree with national occupational categories either) and I don't think I've ever added them to any article. But I have added scores of categories to hundreds of articles, and I would have no way of knowing if that work is going to be undone until the articles are edited to remove some successfully CfD'ed category. By then it is too late to do anything about it. Watching every single category that I have added to an article would be a big effort. Does anyone else see this problem? I think even templates are appended with a TfD notice, so that anyone visiting a page where one is used can particiapte in the vote. We need a similar system for CfDs. Cheers, -Willmcw 06:31, May 7, 2005 (UTC)
My original comment about it being good form and all to notify authors whenever possible when an article or category is going to be deleted was about something I do personally, and think everyone who puts an article up for VfD or CfD should do - I understand things get hairy when bots are involved, but it doesn't seem like a lot of the articles nominated for VfD and CfD are there because bots tagged them. Maybe I'm wrong? Anyhow, I agree with you people. There should be some way of knowing if a category is up for deletion (watching all the categories you use just isn't always an option), and a good way of doing it would be some small signal wherever that category shows up, so if, say, Category: Ethics were up for deletion, it might show up as *Ethics or the link could be in yellow or it could be italicized or something. Doesn't seem like a hugely difficult thing to do, but then again, what do I know? -Seth Mahoney 08:17, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

I too, am very upset that this happened, and more upset about HOW it happened. I don't know of any policy about RESTORING categories, so unless someone points me to a policy about this, I am going to BE BOLD and create one on the spot. My new policy is:

If there is a spontaneous outcry of five or more Wikipedians on THIS TALK Page, the category MUST be restored immediately.

Had this been merely an article edit, the changes would have been restored immediately. It seems reasonable that category changes have the possibility of a quick revert. If someone then wants to restart the CfD process they can, but there will obviously be more people involved the next time around.

I already count more than 5 votes to restore. The person who created the Bot says it can also be restored with a bot. I will wait 3 days for discussion here about my new policy and if there is no other resolution, I will assume there is consensus to proceed and ask him to implement the restoration. -- Samuel Wantman 19:17, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

That's not a policy proposal, that's an attempt to completely eviscerate CfD. If a category is important to you, it should have been on your watchlist, and then you would have seen that a CfD tag was added. I think this is pointing to a bigger problem with categories—they are treated as individual articles both in terms of the ability to add new ones, and by the process that deletes them, yet they really function as part of the Wikipedia system. They structure articles in ostensibly objective relationships.
I think we need to set aside this particular dispute for the moment and have a broader discussion about how much subcategorizing is proper for people categories. Even assuming for the moment that it is proper to categorize people by their sexual orientation (which I recognize I am on the losing end of), how far do you go within that to link sexual orientation with other characteristics of a person that may be a merely coincidental relationship? Why not Category:LGBT people from Massachusetts? Why not Category:LGBT writers from Massachusetts? Why not Category:Italian-American LGBT writers from Maine? These are not straw man comparisons, because where the line is drawn is a valid question. Not every intersection of an individual's characteristics is worthy of a category. In response to Bearcat's "ghettoizing" complaint above, is Category:Italian-Americans ghettoized because you cannot reach it from Category:Musicians, Category:LGBT, or Category:People from Maine? If so, then would an article on an Italian-American LGBT musician from Maine have the following categories: Category:Italian-American LGBT people, Category:LGBT musicians, Category:Italian-American musicians, Category:Italian-American people from Maine, Category:LGBT people from Maine? Or should those be combined, so that it is Category:Italian-American LGBT musicians, for example? Or, wouldn't the best solution for such narrow categories of people be to create list articles? Postdlf 20:06, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
If a category is important to you, it should have been on your watchlist, and then you would have seen that a CfD tag was added. As for the new "policy", don't forget about the several people who were for deleting the categories in the first place, and the ones who think they should remain deleted. An outcry of five people? Is that what you consider to be a consensus? --Kbdank71 20:30, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
Many categories and many articles are important to me. Up until now I never even thought about watching category pages because usually nothing happens to them. I spend quite a bit of time on Wikipedia (over 1500 edits), but some weeks I actually do other things! If this is a collaborative endeavor, you can't expect people to put a good deal of effort into it just to find that it was obliterated because they spent a week doing something else, and weren't watching the right pages.
There have been good reasons stated above for why these categories should exist. I have a friend who has taken a college course that was just about LGBT composers, and there are many courses and books that cover other LGBT subgroups of people. If a curriculum or book covers a category, I believe that it is a legitimate category for Wikipedia. Someday, Category:Italian-American LGBT musicians may in fact warrant its own category. It doesn't now, and it is highly unlikely that it ever will, so I don't think you have to worry that we are going to go crazy with subcategories.
As for the outcry of five people, I have many years of formal consensus training, and in formal consensus ONE PERSON CAN BLOCK CONSENSUS. It is the duty of the majority to listen to the concerns of a minority and take them into account. There has to be a policy for dealing with mistakes. Even if you don't consider this category to be a mistake, I believe my policy does deal with mistakes. If there is an outcry of people it means that their voices were not heard for whatever reasons. Had this been the original discussion, it is clear that there would not have been a consensus. To tell us to be quiet because we did not know about the original discussion is not a good model for democracy. -- Samuel Wantman 22:22, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
It's an encyclopedia, not an experiment in democracy. --Kbdank71 02:13, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
I think there is a VfD policy for restoring deleted articles, though I don't know what it is or where it is. Maybe CfD should adopt something like that? Anyhow, I'm with Samuel regarding how specific the people (and any other) categories should go. They should go exactly as far as the needs of wikipedians require they go. If there are enough articles and there is enough demand for this kind of scholarship, there should be a Category: Trans lesbian existentialist catholic feminist freudian anti-papist priests from Wisconsin who play the clarinet. Wikipedia is (to me) about facilitating information, not about controlling the channels it should pass through. -Seth Mahoney 23:04, May 7, 2005 (UTC)
In response to Bearcat's "ghettoizing" complaint above, is Category:Italian-Americans ghettoized because you cannot reach it from Category:Musicians, Category:LGBT, or Category:People from Maine? No, but it would be ghettoized if you couldn't reach it from Category:U.S. ethnic groups. You've used an invalid comparison here -- there's nothing about "Italian-Americans" that inherently intersects with the examples you chose here, whereas there is an inherent intersection between literature and a subcategory on gay writers. Gay literature is a distinct and significant phenomenon which merits special consideration beyond being just literature. Gay music is a distinct subject matter from plain old "music". Gay art is a topic in its own right. Gay politicians are a notable grouping of public figures. Which is why there were categories for those. There wasn't, conversely, a subcategory for "gay economists", because there really isn't a phenomenon of "gay economics" that's distinct in any meaningful way from the plain old sexless kind. That's where the distinction lays. Bearcat 17:38, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Why don't we just post a nomination for undeletion and on the main page? In fact, I'll do it right now. -- Beland 23:14, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Great idea! Simple, elegant, and democratic. Thanks! -Seth Mahoney 23:20, May 7, 2005 (UTC)
While you're at it, please create "Straight actors", "Straight writers", "Straight ancient Greeks", and a matching "straight" category for the obviously "relevant" LGBT ones. --Kbdank71 02:13, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Not to be too insulting here, but that argument doesn't work. I mean, its just weak. Why don't we create Category: White actors or Category: People who aren't feminists or Category: People who aren't transgender or Category: People who died natural deaths? Because there's no reason to. I mean, really, no reason. If there is a demand for, say, heterosexual scholarship I'd say go for it, but there just isn't. Part of the reason is that people are defined against an assumed norm (actually, IMHO the assumed norm is defined against possible deviations, but that's a tangent for another day). In a meaningful way, straight people aren't usually straight, they're usually just people. To illustrate: Unless you're in, say, a gay bar, no one is going to say, "hey, have you met Joe? You know, the straight guy?" whereas its entirely likely in most other situations that someone would identify Sam as "the gay guy" if he were gay. Hope that makes some sense. -Seth Mahoney 19:38, May 8, 2005 (UTC)
A/K/A "Why isn't there a Straight Pride Day?" The answer, "Because every day is already Straight Pride Day", pertains here: because "straight" is already the default assumption, it doesn't need a special designation to point it out. Non-heterosexuality, however, does need to be pointed out, because it gets airbrushed out of existence otherwise -- whether you believe it or not, there are still, in 2005, people who have no idea that Liberace was gay. I've met some. Bearcat 07:17, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Not to be confused with those people, who don't know who Liberace was. I didn't until I read his article just now. Thryduulf 09:50, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Bearcat, I've noticed you make alot of assumptions about what you think people "mean" vs what they actually "say". You might want to do something about that. I wasn't asking for a "straight pride day", I was asking for the categories. As for Liberace, I knew it, but who cares? He was a great musician. Being gay has nothing to do with it. --Kbdank71 13:10, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
And I was explaining why the categories aren't necessary, using an analogy. Whether you see it or not, "Why aren't there straight categories?" is, fundamentally, the same question as "Why isn't there a Straight Pride Day?" or "why should gay issues get special consideration?" If it's convenient for you to believe I'm making assumptions about your motivations and not just taking your words as they lay, then go right ahead. But if you can't see how you're doing exactly the same thing to me that you claim I'm doing to you, then there's nothing I can do or say to allay that. Bearcat 16:14, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

I note from the archived discussion that there were 5 votes to keep the categorisation and only 4 to delete (one changed from delete to keep). As such they should have been kept and at worst (if miscounted) it was not a clearcut decision. Deletion should never rely on just the votes, but on the validity of the reasoning behind them too. Yes, there are some people who will hate every category we use on here (probably just leaves us with "aniumal","vegetable","mineral","place", and "person") but these were clearly valid and very useful categories. Resinstate ASAP! --Vamp:Willow 23:43, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

You might want to recount. Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 April 24. For the main Category:Gay, lesbian or bisexual people, there was no consensus to delete, and therefore it wasn't. Look under the heading "LGBT subcategories" and you'll see there was a clear consensus to delete. Did everyone here vote? No, obviously not --Kbdank71 02:13, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Nope, but I would demand a re-run of the count (oh, sorry, that is what we are doing here.) The initial vote was on "Category:Gay, lesbian or bisexual people and subcategories" (my bold) but, it appears, when the initial vote didn't go someone's way they put up the second - unlinked - "LGBT subcategories" to which (not surprisingly) less than half of the people who had voted in the first vote were aware of. This smacks of outright anti-LGBT behaviour frankly. --Vamp:Willow 16:16, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Two other points from the above discusison. Most editors use categories, we don't create them, and this once we get used to using them we expect them to stay there and continue to be available for use. In respect of the sub-categories stupidity, many many articles have multiple category entries. An entry needing Category:Italian-American LGBT musicians would, of course, actually be tagged Category:LGBT people, Category:musicians and Category:Italian-Americans (or equivalents)! --Vamp:Willow 23:50, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Regarding editors of categories: Most articles have had at least several editors, and so will appear on a number of watchlists. By comparison categories, once created, are rarely edited. Further reducing the number of editors watching for changes is the incresaing age of the categorization scheme. The oldest, and presumably most important, categories may have been created by editors who have since left the project.
please sign contributions. thankyou. (Vamp:Willow)
  • Ok, they're back. Feel free to populate at will. --Kbdank71 14:16, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Voting; questions and subquestions; severability

There exists no consensus (so far as I'm aware—please point me at the relevant policy page if you disagree) as to what to do when presenting both a question (delete category) and subquestions (delete subcategories) for vote at the same time without specifying whether the question is controlling. In this case, it appears that the wording at the time assumed that:

  • If the question (delete the category) was approved, then the subquestion (delete subcats) would automatically be approved.
  • If the question was not approved, then the subquestion would be considered separately.

This is contrary to every rule of consensus or parliamentary procedure I've ever heard of. If you have subquestions, you consider them if and only if the overall question is approved. You can't have something happen because of the lack of response, but that's exactly what happened here. The folks who voted to keep the category just naturally assumed that they didn't have to vote on the subcategories, while the folk who voted to delete the category voted to delete the subcategories too. This is cockeyed and backwards. This—along with the overall issue of visibility of CfD—is why there's such an outcry—it just feels sneaky.

The other problem with this vote was presenting a passel of categories all at once and holding a single vote on them. In parliamentary law, as soon as the first person indicated that they wanted the question to be severable, as Deco did, the overall vote would no longer be valid. I understand that Wikipedia does not work under parliamentary law, but the principle holds: it's hard to imagine a reason to continue with the vote as a whole when someone had indicated that they didn't see the whole as a cohesive question.

The right thing to do would have been to have the first question ("delete cat and subcats"), and then after it failed, bring up the subquestion ("delete subcats"). To do otherwise is as senseless as a country voting on several resolutions "shall John be made President? Shall Alice? Shall Mary?" simultaneously, and just assuming that everyone knows what happens when more than one of the resolutions pass. TreyHarris 22:20, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Good thing we aren't under Parliamentary law. As for how the voting went, the subcategories were put up for deletion under their own header on the very same day the supercategory was. They were listed for a full seven days. Same as any other category. There was nothing sneaky about it. I'm curious, though. People are coming out of the woodwork to complain after several LGBT categories that were deleted, saying everything is broken. Why aren't you all complaining about every other category that was deleted in the exact same manner? Or is it simply because a few LGBT categories were deleted, and you could all give a flying rip about the process as it pertains to other categories? Tell you what: since all you seem to care about is the LGBT stuff, if anything LGBT comes up for deletion again, we'll make sure you all know about it, so you can come en masse to vote your keeps. And for everything else, it'll keep going just fine, the way it has been. --Kbdank71 01:53, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
"...the subcategories were put up for deletion under their own header on the very same day the supercategory was." Yes—that's precisely my point. Putting a question up with a dependent question up at the same time, without any explanation for how the dependency would be resolved, is exactly what I'm complaining about.
"Why aren't you all complaining about every other category that was deleted in the exact same manner?" I don't know about the other people who have objected, but this is the first time category deletion has affected a large swath of articles I've edited. The fact that it's LGBT isn't really relevant to my criticism. If it had happened with, say, Desserts, or Programming Languages, or any of the other categories I've contributed to, I would have objected for the same reasons. Like most Wikipedians, I only have time to devote to policy discussions when the policy affects the articles I care about. TreyHarris 02:28, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Come on Kbdank, I can understand your frustration, but that's a fairly obnoxious question. People are "coming out of the woodwork" because this decision affected articles they work on. They came out of the woodwork because they care about the articles they work on. They also don't come out of the woodwork on similar category deletions, because often the "delete cat and all subcats" is used for category trees that have been replaced or trees that are virtually empty, not categories a particular group of people find questionable for other reasons. -Seth Mahoney 02:35, May 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • My apologies if you thought that. But I don't think it was obnoxious at all. You say this was because "they care about the articles they work on". I disagree. So far, you're one of the only people to come forth with any valid reasons for bringing back those categories. Too many people seem to fall under the "something LGBT was deleted and we can't have that" crowd. They don't look any further than that. There are people that come to CfD every day trying to make Wikipedia categorizations something useful and better, and to see people join in the process once for personal reasons, yeah, you could say that's pretty damn frustrating. --Kbdank71 13:58, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
  • There's a big difference between "something LGBT was deleted, whine bitch moan whaaaaah" and "something LGBT that was both useful and necessary for those who study LGBT topics, and that was done at the request of a previous CfD discussion in the first place, was deleted on a questionable pretext". There's a very long history around here of LGBT topics and categories getting deleted or put up for deletion on the dubious claim that having any LGBT content at all is POV activism, without regard to the merits of the content itself, and the concerns that some people have about having to continually fight that battle are just as legitimate and just as frustrating as yours. So take your "I care about the quality of Wikipedia, but these rude interlopers don't care about anything except imposing their own agenda" speech and park it somewhere. And don't even bother accusing me of making assumptions about you again, because that's exactly what you just said. Bearcat 16:09, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
  • For the record, if Category: Existentialism and all subcats or Category: Dystopian fiction and all subcats or something similar (ie, a category I had created or worked on) came up for deletion, or was somehow deleted without my knowing, you can bet I'd be here doing the same thing, and I think the same goes for most of the people here. They're here because this is one of the topics they're interested in, these are categories they use, and suddenly these categories no longer exist. Admittedly, one of the reasons we're banded together on this is because there is, as Bearcat says, a history on Wikipedia of articles, categories, and references to homosexuality, especially when there's a chance they could be read favorably, being deleted, and none of us wants that to continue, but we're having this discussion because these are categories we use (if we didn't use them, there would be no point) and we want to continue using them. They apply to articles some of us have written and most of us have contributed to, and we don't want to see access to those articles diminish. -Seth Mahoney 00:21, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
  • Well, I don't think it's exactly what I said. I don't recall using the words "rude interloper". Regardless, though, you mention "without regard to the merits of the content itself". I was wondering if you could explain the merits of having the category of "LGBT Ancient Greeks"? Oh, and how you find that both useful and necessary? --Kbdank71 17:02, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Taking the most questionable of the categories (IMHO its the most questionable, anyway) and using it as an example for all the categories is a classic logical fallacy. In fact, its the same thing you accuse Bearcat of doing elsewhere - he says the people who want these categories deleted are homophobic, and in saying that he picks the worst of the people who want these categories deleted as representative of the entire group. See how that doesn't work? I'd really like to see this sort of thing avoided on both sides of the discussion, people. -Seth Mahoney 00:21, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Palestinian political parties

(Moved from CfD):

  • Category:Palestinian political parties Ok'ed on March 16, never deleted
I can't find where this was "OK'ed on March 16". I did find the discussion here , where there was a majority to keep it. -- uriber 19:57, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
It was part of a larger move: Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:Political parties --Kbdank71 21:05, 4 May 2005 (UTC)
This special case is fundamentally different than the other categories renamed as part of the larger plan, as Palestine is not a country, but a historical region. The political parties in question are not political parties in that region, but political parties established by Palestinians (in various places). This therefore deserved a separate discussion, which took place, with the result of a majority preferring to keep it as it is. Standards are good, but they should not be stubbornly applied where they are not applicable. -- uriber 21:25, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Category mergers

Since alot of the cfr renames are actually category mergers, I think that a new template may be in order template:cfm Categories for merging ; And jointly with this would be a template:cfmf Merge from notice at the destination, to allow navigation from there, and to alert destination's users about an influx of articles. What do you think? 132.205.15.43 21:58, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

CFMF:

[[:Category:{{{1}}}]]] has been nominated for merging into this category.
Please see [[Wikipedia:Categories for deletion#Category:{{{1}}}|that page's entry]] on the categories for deletion and renaming page for the proposal, justification, and discussion. Please do not remove this notice or empty Category:{{{1}}} while the question is being considered.

CFM:

This category has been nominated for merging into [[:Category:{{{1}}}]].
Please see this page's entry on the categories for deletion and renaming page for the proposal, justification, and discussion. Please do not remove this notice or empty the category while the question is being considered.

[[Category:Categories for deletion|{{PAGENAME}}]]

end templates

Visibility of CfD votes on categorized pages

As I understand it, the theory of CfD is that categories are just a special kind of article, and so the current notification on the category page should be sufficient.

But categories aren't, in general, used as articles; they're used within other articles. From that standpoint, they aren't so much like articles as like templates.

Note that Wikipedia:Templates for deletion specifies:

Marking templates to be voted on: Insert the text {{tfd}} to the top of templates you list here. This adds the following message:


I think it's clear that we desperately need such a visibility mechanism for CfD on categorized pages, too. I'd like to start a discussion here on what mechanisms might be available. Without changing MediaWiki source to allow for some new mechanism, the only one that immediately springs to my mind is a bot populating categorized talk pages with a CfD notice. Someone earlier suggested an asterisk next to the names of categories that are up for deletion. (I think that would require a new feature in MediaWiki, but maybe I'm wrong.) What are some other possibilities?

I think the qualities of such a mechanism should be:

  1. Will make the CfD activity visible to categorizers, whether or not they have watched the category itself
  2. Will appear on categorizers' watchlists.
  3. Will be relatively non-obtrusive to readers of the encyclopedia.

Any other criteria? TreyHarris 22:38, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for addressing this issue. I agree with your assessment of the need. As a suggestion for how to provide a notification, how about moving a CfD-nominated category to the same name, with an asterisk or other symbol appended. The bot would be tasked with editing the category names in the articles. Perhaps at the same time it could post a template at the bottom of the page that explains the symbol and links to the CfD page. I believe that it would meet your criteria. The downside is that it puts a burden on the nominating process. Cheers, -Willmcw 02:30, May 9, 2005 (UTC)
  • I also agree with the need for visibility. Perhaps if the MediaWiki software can be modified to include a banner at the bottom of article pages for every category undergoing CFD to indicate which category is under consideration? I'm not sure the asterisk thing is all that visible. Do any categories use the asterisk in their names? What about
Categories: *CFD*:CategoryName:*CFD*

? 132.205.15.43 22:56, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

    • I think any potential solution we come up with should avoid having to modify the software. the MediaWiki software is designed for multiple uses, and our procedures surrounding the deletion of categories and what-not shouldn't be built into that. Besides, I'm sure the developers are busy enough as it is. --Azkar 16:54, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Azkar, I agree in sentiment—but can you suggest a mechanism that doesn't? The bot proposal's the only one so far, and obviously someone will have to take responsibility for running the bot on every newly-propsed CfD, since we can't require everyone who wants to propose a CfD to learn how to run a bot. (If folks think this is a good idea, btw, I'm willing to write a bot and test it on a category or two—but I'm not able to make the time commitment to run the bot for every new CfD.) TreyHarris 22:21, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Would it not be possible to task the CfD bot with doing this for all the previous' days nominations? e.g. if category:Polish steam locomotive engineer family trees was nominated for deletion today, then when the bot had finished initiating tomorrow's page it could go through all categories nominated today (identified by a [[:Category:]] link in a heading, to avoid catching suggested replacements or merges, etc) and add the template to all the articles it links to. This would mean that by about 01:00 tomorrow that all articles in category:Polish steam locomotive engineer family trees would have the template.
In the cases where the voting was over, some method of removing the template needs to happen. Where the result is to delete the articles need to be removed anyway and so it won't be much more effort. Where the result is to keep, perhaps just add the category to a section of the CfD page and get the bot to remove the template from all entries in that section. Yes, it would be a bit of instruction creep, but I don't know a better way to do it. Thryduulf 22:39, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Sure, the bot could run as a daemon or cron, basically. It would still have to run somewhere, though. I'm assuming that it would just insert a template {{{cfd}} or some such, like for vfd; then it could easily delete it again when voting's over—luckily it could delete it regardless of the results, so the code wouldn't be too complicated.TreyHarris 22:56, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
A bot is not strictly required for category renaming. Categories that have few entries could be processed by hand. Also an asterisk is just an example of a symbol. A dagger (†) or a section mark (§) may be suitable alternatives. -Willmcw 22:40, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
Renaming a category would not show up on categorizer's watchlists, which I believe to be one of the essential criteria for addressing the issue at hand. TreyHarris 00:28, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
Sure it would. Renaming a category isn't an automatic process. It involves changing the category tag in every article and sub-category of the original category. --Azkar 00:41, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
As Azkar says, it would show up if the renamed category is also renamed in all of the articles that it categorizes. If the list if short then it would only take a few minutes to update them all by hand, and even to add a template at the same time. Perhaps adding the template to the categorized pages is all that's needed, without changing the category name itself. Articles that are categorized after the start of the CfD would not have any indication of the category status, unless someone thinks to check. -Willmcw 00:53, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
Ah, I see. So for large categories, instead of writing a bot to edit all the talk pages and insert a template, we'd have to edit all the article pages and change the category. I think I understand what's being proposed now, but why is this better than the template on talk page option? TreyHarris 01:19, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I was asked to participate in this discussion. Adding a template to all articles within a category that is going to be deleted seems unnecessary work. Because you'll have to go back to remove the template once the CfD voting is over with. -- AllyUnion (talk) 02:47, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but what other mechanisms exist or could exist for categorizers to see CfD proposals when they are not watching the category page? TreyHarris 02:52, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
Other than having a bot notifying a list of users what categories are up for deletion? -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:06, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
and someone (or a bot) has to go to each article to remove it from the category anyways. One extra step won't hurt. SchmuckyTheCat 14:14, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
Actually, you're talking about two extra steps. One step to add the template to all the articles, then one step to remove the template. A third step may be done if the category is deleted. -- AllyUnion (talk) 00:06, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I've thought about the suggestions put forward here, for a bit, and I think the best idea is simply to add a note to the talk pages of the articles / sub-cats in the category up for deletion / renaming. Something along the lines of, "One of the parent-categories of this article / category is currently being discussed for possible deletion / renaming. Comments from interested parties are welcome (here)." Changing the category name is a lot of work, and would also clutter up CfD as we would need to delete the modified category name after voting was done. It also would be of limited use, as many editors would have no idea why there was an asterik next to the category name. A template / bot for the talk-page comment is fine, but I don't think we should have a big box at the top, or anything. It's not that important, most of the time, and would need to be removed after voting. --Azkar 14:19, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Is there a reason people can't put categories on their watch pages? I'm just wondering if we're embarking on a project that most editors will neither know nor care about. --Kbdank71 15:04, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Personally, I'm just trying to offer non-intrusive suggestions for this proposed project. I'm not entirely sure of the merit of it, myself. I don't do a great deal of article editting, myself, so my perspective isn't going to be the same as thiers. I think the main concern being brought up is that editors don't, as a general rule of thumb, think about the category system, too much. It's just part of the background. So it may never occur to them to put it on their watch list. In that instance, they don't know anything's happening until thier articles start getting removed from said category. Basically, I guess it comes down to whether we want to try and educate editors about the value of watching the categories they use, or whether we want to try and find a non-intrusive, non-time consumming way of letting interested parties who haven't watched the category know that their articles may start being moved around. --Azkar 15:24, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
Not enough people put categories (or templates) on their watch pages. That doesn't mean they don't care. SchmuckyTheCat 15:37, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I didn't mean that as in nobody cares. But I'll guess the average editor cares more about the articles they wrote/helped write than the categories said articles are in. The ones that do care about the categories, though, I'll also guess that they have plenty of articles on their watch pages. So it's not like they are unaware of the watch system. I guess the most non-intrusive method is education. Is there a way to, when an article is watched, add to the message that comes up saying "you might also want to watch the categories this article is in"? --Kbdank71 16:07, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

CfD, Supercategories and Subcategories.

There has been a push to remove subcategories of people such as LGBT composers, Jewish American authors, etc... To quote Postdlf:

"Narrow categories ghettoize articles... So what happens when a host of articles are just found in identity-subcats? While the white male hetero articles are in the main, unqualified categories... Bob Straight Man White Boy Jones is a writer, while Rob African-American Gay Man Jones is either an African-American writer, a gay writer, or an African-American gay writer (good luck arguing over which should come first), but regardless he is separated and qualified by his race or sexual orientation. And all this time Rob Jones may not even care about identity politics and just write spy novels. "

I do think Postdlf has a valid argument here. However, I believe that part of the genesis for this conflict is because of the rigidly held view that articles cannot be in both subcategories and supercategories. I've been arguing for changing this rule for months at Wikipedia talk:Categorization, and I think we may have a compromise that says that articles CAN sometimes be in both super and sub-categories. This is an attempt to address just this concern.

This problem comes about because there are multiple category hierarchies in Wikipedia and sometimes the subcategories of one hierarchy can also be thought of as subcategories of another. In the LGBT case, the people working on LGBT categories were not attempting to ghettoize LGBT people, but just trying to create categories they find useful. Others think this makes the supercategories LESS useful. I don't believe the solution is to remove the subcategories. The solution is to make clear guidelines for when there can be duplication. Here is the compromise:

1) Ease up on the no Super/Sub-Category duplication rule. Duplications seem to arise naturally. We should agree to allow duplication when it makes the categories more complete, less confusing or in other ways more useful. I think the rule of thumb could be:
If there aren't subcategories for every member of a category, there can be duplication. Thus, Oscar winners could duplicate film actors, Film musicals could duplicate musicals, Toll bridges could duplicate Bridges, Actors could duplicate African-American actors, etc... This would also hold if the subcategories are more than one level below. So since the entries for (film) Directors by Nationality are two levels below Directors (and many directors are multi-national), there could be duplication.
2) When entries are duplicated, the duplication should be noted. See: Category:Bridges in New York City for an example of how this could be done.
3) Only bend "the rule" with restraint. We're not agreeing to include articles at more than two levels of a hierarchy. There should be a good reason for any duplication. Duplications should only happen if they make categories easier to use. Exceptions of a type that we haven't discussed should be brought up at the categorization talk page for discussion. --Samuel Wantman 07:02, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I think the solution is to keep the present system, and wait for the next software upgrade. See also Wikipedia:Categorization policy. There has been some talk about allowing crossreferencing, thus from that one could put a person in Cat:Actor and Cat:Greek, and Cat:Greek Actors would not actually exist as such but would be searchable as the crossreference of both. Advantage is that it allows one to seek for Lesbian Australian Olympic Oscar Winners. Radiant_* 08:42, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
Is there actually going to be a software upgrade? I haven't seen any reference that talks about what it will be and how it will be implemented. There is a bugzilla entry requesting it, but does this mean it will happen? When I have asked this in the past, no one has responded. If there is really going to be an upgrade, doesn't that change many of the debates that have been going on?
I am not even certain that having the capability to find the intersection of categories fully answers the questions about what makes an appropriate category. I believe that the main criteria for creating a category should be "Is it useful?" meaning that many people would find it handy for navigating through articles, and/or "Is this a legitimate field of study?" which I think can be answered "yes" if books and/or articles have been written about the topic, or courses are taught on the subject. That makes a legitimate category. The upgrade that has been requested is a research tool. It is not a quick navigation tool. This can be illustrated by the difference between "Lesbian Feminists" (a very large topic worthy of a category,) and "Lesbian Australian Olympic Oscar Winners" (which might never be needed.)
If there is in fact an upgrade on the way, shouldn't we be discussing how it will be designed, and how it should be used? If we did, we could put quite a few controversies to bed. -- Samuel Wantman 08:06, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Yes, there is going to be a software upgrade. It is uncertain what it will contain and when it will appear, but our software evolves continuously. I'm afraid that the developers have better things to do than talk about it, though :) In the meantime, we have WP:CFD et al to make decisions with. Radiant_* 10:00, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

Greek Currencies

I'm moving this discussion from the speedy rename section to preserve.

  • Category:Greek Currencies should be renamed to Category:Greek currencies
    • Why not Category:Currencies of Greece? RedWolf 02:04, May 5, 2005 (UTC)
      • One, a matter of semantics, the ancient currencies were Greek (of the Greek people) but not "of Greece" (because there was no Greek state, and because many currencies were used by colonies outside of Greece). Second, a matter of formatting; if all currency categories were in the "Currency of xxx" format, then "European currencies" would have all its subcategories grouped under "C".Sysin 20:42, 6 May 2005 (UTC)
      • If you wish to make that nomination, I'd say you should remove this from the speedy rename section, and list it in the main section. --Azkar 21:32, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Since no one moved to remove the entry from the speedy rename section, I went ahead and moved the articles to the originally proposed title. If anyone wants to propose an alternate title, they are - of course - still free to do so in the main section. --Azkar 00:43, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Speedy renaming of plurals

User:Azkar proposed ([3]) that "Conversions from singular to plural (or back)" be added to the Speedy Renaming criteria. I second the motion, and am listing it here for discussion and consensus. If there are no objections within one week, it should be instated as such. Radiant_* 08:33, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

  • No objection here. --Kbdank71 13:39, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Accepted, then. Radiant_* 09:52, May 18, 2005 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Cfd-howto

Template:Cfd-howto has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Cfd-howto. Thank you. — Xiong熊talk* 09:55, 2005 May 11 (UTC)

  • Yep. I did that. Reason is, it was only ever used in one place in WP:CFD, so I saw fit to SUBST it in to ease server load by a tiny amount. CfD used to be a long page, it now has subpages, so the subst is more appropriate. Radiant_* 10:49, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

Category:Gay, lesbian or bisexual people

The consensus from Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2005 May 4 is to rename the category, but there were a couple of different suggestions being bantered around. I thought one of the better ones was Category:Gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered people. This was by User:Kbdank71

Could discussion on this please continue further up this page where the matter is already being discussed. Part of the problem has been the number of different locations this to'ing and fro'ing has got on WP. Thanks. ps. "LGBT people" will work a lot beter than having it spelt out and possible capitalisation and ordering issues causing problems. --Vamp:Willow 14:05, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

My apologies. I thought that was for the subcategories. --Kbdank71 14:20, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Request consensus on American/U.S./United States people categories

Category:American people by occupation has 58 subcategories. Of these, 11 start with "U.S.", 3 start with "United States", and the rest start with "American." I am requesting a community consensus on coming up with a consistent naming of these categories. Personally, I would prefer "U.S." if we were starting from scratch, since it is less typing, but would be satisfied with "American" because it is in the parent category and also requires that fewer existing links be changed. —RussBlau 17:46, May 11, 2005 (UTC)

  • "U.S." gets my vote. --Kbdank71 17:52, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Concur with KBdank. "American" is clearly wrong since (pedantically speaking) several parts of the continent America aren't part of the US. I wouldn't mind "United States" as an alternative though, what is our policy on abbrev? Radiant_* 09:01, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
  • In the English language, "American" is the overwhelming adjective used for people from the United States. This is not only universal in the U.S., but is also reflected in foreign media such as the BBC. While the solitary co-opting of "American" may be politically incorrect, it is the reality, and an encyclopedia should follow established usage rather than trying to correct for global inequalities. What evidence is there that any english speakers are actually confused when someone says "I'm an American" into thinking they're merely from one of the two continents? In the alternative, "U.S." because "United States" is simply never used as an adjective. Postdlf 09:32, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Personally, I think an encyclopedia should reflect the truth. Established usage may change. If people started calling the U.S. "That Shithole over there", would we change it to that on Wikipedia? The name of the country is The United States of America, shortened to The United States. A proper abbreviation of that is The U.S. I've never looked at a map and saw simply "America". As for using it as an adjective, I don't think there is any evidence that anyone is confused by the term "U.S. artists" or "U.S. teachers", or any other "U.S. occupation". --Kbdank71 17:37, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
      • The truth, of course, is well and good. But the truth is that the adjective American is used all but universally to refer to the U.S. Virtually the only exceptions come when refering to the North or South American continents (or, even more rarely, the American continent). I believe this is true even for non-English speakers: ask a French speaker what they understand by the phrase "film americain", for example. I don't think you'll find they are thinking Mexico and Brazil. The fact that the word American can apply both to the country and to the continent(s) should not stop us from using it as it is universally understood, that is, as refering to the U.S. unless it is used in conjunction with "north", "south", "central" or "continent". -- Mwanner 23:25, May 12, 2005 (UTC)
        • The truth is well and good, let's just not use it. :) My point is, we should be using the name of the country. "America" is not the name of the country, no matter who will or won't be confused. --Kbdank71 17:14, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
Be honest-- there are two truths here. One is that the name of the country is the United States of America. The other truth is that in common usage, in English and in most other languages, the term American and its cognates refers to people and things of the U.S. Now, the article American argues that this is not the case in Spanish, and in naming universities and institutes this seems to be true. Nevertheless, if you do a Spanish language Google search for americano paired with a noun, especially a person-designating noun (politician, teacher, etc.) you will find that americano is predominantly used to designate people or things from the U.S., especially in the phrase futbal americano, but also in many other contexts (del actor americano Brad Pit, ex-presidente americano Ronald Reagan, el atleta americano George Simpson or del Rock Americano: Dylan, Springsteen...). Try muchacha americana or coche americano or cantante americano and see what you get.
Now, with all else equal, I would certainly agree that it would make sense to choose an unambiguous adjective over an ambiguous one. The problem is that United States is not an adjective, it's a noun phrase. You can kinda, sorta get away with using it as if it were an adjective, but the truth is (that word again), it's not. This is precisely why the Spanish word estadounidense (United-Statesian) exists. Note, however, that despite the existence of this word in Spanish, the word americano is still used as the adjective of choice for people and things of the U.S.
So until there is wide acceptance of United-Statesian, I personally think we're better off using American the way it is (almost) universally used. There are presently 120,003 uses of American in en.wikipedia; how many of them do you think are meant to refer to the continent? And how many readers are genuinely confused? -- Mwanner 19:54, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
Whew, good thing this isn't the Spanish wikipedia. Getting back to English for a moment, who says it needs to be an adjective? Is there a problem with using "People from the U.S."? I'm guessing only if you're insisting on using "American the Adjective, As Seen in Many Spanish Speaking Countries." That will also clear up problems with other countries like Trinidad and Tobago, which isn't an adjective either. Bottom line, though, America isn't the name of the country, and I don't think we should use it as if it was. --Kbdank71 20:40, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
Neither is "British" the name of a country, but it's obviously the established convention for referring to people from the UK. Neither is "German" or "Germany" the name of a country (it's "Bundesrepublik Deutschland") but it's the established English convention to refer to people from the BRD. The convention is to use the adjective form of the nationality. The adjective that is universally used for people from the United States is "American." The only reason not to use "American" is because of some activist concern that this is an unfair co-opting of an adjective that might otherwise belong equally to everyone within North and South America, but the fact is that co-opting happened and "American" as a nationality means someone from the U.S. regardless of how fair this may be. But I haven't exactly seen evidence of people marching in the streets in Canada and Ecuador claiming "we're Americans too." I think this is mostly a manufactured concern, however well-intentioned. Postdlf 21:17, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
That's the issue. An encyclopedia needs to pay attention to how people are going to be looking for information-- that's why wikipedia is loaded with redirects. But redirects don't work in categories. That's why I went to the trouble of trying to see how Spanish language speakers use americano. If it had been true that it was usually used to refer to people and things of the American continent, I would have been ready to say, OK, "Category:x of the United States" is the way to go. But that does not appear to be the case. In any event, I will say no more on the issue. Let's hear from some others. -- Mwanner 21:31, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Titles on CFD

Was there a reason for changing the titles on CfD? --Kbdank71 18:59, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)#Nesting. Plus to be consistant with WP:TFD et al - SoM 19:04, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Error in transcludes

There is an off by one error in the transcludes. Click on Edit for "Pseudo-protected" and I find myself editing "Navigational Rallying", etc. Some of the categories aren't listed on the main CfD page because of this. Please to be fixing.

  • Have you tried clicking on "Purge the cache" before trying to edit? I've noticed that sometimes a recent edit to a transcluded page won't show up for a while. Purging always fixed things for me. --Kbdank71 17:24, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Speedy category deletion

To counter instruction creep and repetitive discussion, I would like to propose the following:

if a category is generated by a template (e.g. Category:Foo Stubs to correspond with Template:Foo Stub), and that template is deleted by regular WP:TFD process, then the category can be deleted as well as long as it was nominated along with the template.

  • I would like to put this up for vote at WP:CSD, but first I'd like to garner some feedback here as to its appropriateness and wording. Radiant_* 07:56, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
    • Sounds reasonable to me, especially if the proposed Stubs for deletion get approval. Thryduulf 08:23, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I think it's a simple common sense application of existing policies, just as would be deleting a redirect to an VfD'd article without an independent discussion on the redirect. Postdlf 08:36, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
    • This is appropriate, but I'd prefer if we made it clear when nominating the template, listing any categories or redirects that are also under consideration. -- Netoholic @ 15:11, 2005 May 13 (UTC)
    • Agree this is appropriate but also list the categories and redirects. Trödel|talk 15:59, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Amended per Neto and Trodel's comment. Note that 'Redirects to a deleted page' already qualify for speedy deletion per WP:CSD. Radiant_* 17:36, May 13, 2005 (UTC)
        • We shouldn't say "category can be speedily deleted" ... because that isn't what's happening. We vote on deletion of the template and the generated category together (I've edited the text to phrase that). As for redirects, I mentioned it because I already insert a note about any redirects, mostly because I like to see that link go red too when the template is deleted, so I don't have to check back. -- Netoholic @ 18:53, 2005 May 13 (UTC)
          • The reason for my wording was, what if someone nominates Template:Foo and is unaware of the corresponding category, but this is pointed out really quickly by someone else? Radiant_* 16:05, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
            • Then that requires some extra work be done, perhaps a full CFD vote. Short-cutting is not the way here. -- Netoholic @ 15:08, 2005 May 18 (UTC)
    • Would an outcome of this be that template+category deletions would only need to be listed at WP:TFD? Or would the preference to be having a new heading on WP:CFD for the listing of categories that would be deleted under this guideline/policy (whichever it is)? I'm not sure right now which way I'd vote on this choice between listing formats if I had to vote right now. Courtland 16:18, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
      • Seems to me it doesn't happen all that often, so it doesn't really require a separate section on CFD. The point of this idea is to prevent the double discussion (presently, it gets discussed BOTH on TFD and CFD). I don't particularly care if the single discussion is put on CFD or TFD. Radiant_* 00:09, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
      • Maybe the speedy-rename section can be modified, somewhat, to accomodate category deletions that go along with another process' deletion (TfD, the proposed SfD I've heard reference to, etc). --Azkar 21:36, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
        • Yep. I'm not sure what happened to SFD, by the way, this would fit neatly in there. Radiant_* 00:09, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
      • Still in process - seems to be general agreement at VP (proposals)... it's back in the WP:WSS court after that, I think. Grutness...wha? 01:03, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
        • And here I thought WP was not meant to be a bureaucracy... - SoM 02:12, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Would be useful to indicate heading level for new entries

I finally worked out it should be

heading level 4

Paul foord 16:09, 14 May 2005 (UTC)


Change in NekoDaemon

This is a notification that NekoDaemon will now automatically archive the 7 day ago transinclude and turn it into a link into the Old infobox. -- AllyUnion (talk) 01:04, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

  • How will NekoDaemon know if the conversations from the last day have actually been taken care of or not? Some discussions require more than seven days to resolve, and there's a certain degree of manual process in determining the result of discussion, closing discussion, and listing apporpriate categories in the empty-me area. --Azkar 03:15, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I agree with Azkar. Sometimes discussions need to stay longer than seven days. --Kbdank71 13:05, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
    • It was an idea that I proposed to Radiant!, who agreed that 7 days was acceptable for minimal visibility on WP:CFD. You can create an on-going discussion section, I suppose. Or re-add the day back on to the main page. Well... there seems to be a difference of opinion here... -- AllyUnion (talk) 18:45, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Seven days is acceptable for minimal visibility, sure. The problem occurs when you need more than minimal visibility. Personally, I don't understand why this was changed from manual to automatic when we haven't had any problems or complaints doing it manually. --Kbdank71 19:20, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Just to add my two cents in. Discussions are posted for seven days. It's only on day eight that Kbdank71 starts closing the discussions. I don't think it's good to archive the day before the closure has been completed (decision declared, discussion boxed off, categories to be emptied listed, categories to be kept de-tagged, etc). Kbdank71's the one doing all this, so he's probably in the best position to comment on this, but I don't think it's that much extra work to de-transclude the day after all the discussions have been closed, and probably less hassle than wading through archives and determining what needs to be unarchived because it hasn't been dealt with, yet. --Azkar 19:29, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
        • Actually, that's true. Of all the work it takes, de-transcluding is probably the easiest and quickest thing to do, so doing it manually I don't mind. Plus, it is marginally easier to leave something on the main Cfd page if it needs to be there rather than bring it back. --Kbdank71 20:39, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
          • Reverted. The bot, however, will still edit the seventh day and add a "indexing" link. -- AllyUnion (talk) 03:35, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I just saw this discussion for the first time and I realize the bot operator has decided not to proceed given the comments above. Just to throw in my 2 cents, I agree with Kbdank71 that this task should not be automated as there are many discussions that take longer than 7 days. Having them being automatically archived after 7 days would not be the best solution IMHO. I sort of managed the CFD page for a few months I guess during the winter and while the majority of discussions could be cleared up in 7 days, it was rare for the entire day's nominations to be dealt with within the first 7 days. BTW, kudos to Kbdank71 for taking up this task as I was ready for a break. RedWolf 04:59, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

Confusion

Wikipedia:Categories for deletion policies has not been updated to document the newfangled transcluded way of doing things, so I'm confused as to where I can find "categories that it has been decided that they should be deleted but they haven't yet" and "discussions that have passed the normal closure period but haven't been adjudicated yet". -- Beland 01:41, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Nothing's really changed from the old way of doing things, in those regards. "Categories that it has been decided that they should be deleted but they haven't yet" would be under To be emptied or moved and Delete me. "Discussions that have passed the normal closure period but haven't been adjudicated yet" would be at the bottom of the discussions under a date heading older than one week. Currently, there is no back-log of such discussions. --Azkar 03:40, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Category:Islamic terrorist organizations

A number of weeks ago, after a lengthy vote and discussion, Category:Terrorist organizations was deleted. However, I have just noticed that there is still this category: Category:Islamic terrorist organizations, which would have been a subcategory of the other. Why wasn't this also deleted? Don't tell me we have to have a separate vote on every subcategory; there can't possibly be a rationale for deleting the parent category and not its offspring. -- Viajero 02:42, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

  • The other categories weren't nominated. There are currently six sub-categories of Category:Irregular military which use the word "terrorist", if you wish to nominate them. --Azkar 03:35, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Done :) Radiant_* 21:42, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

Cfd top misworded

Template:cfd top says: This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the category below, but it actually deals with the debate about the category listed above. I'd have changed the wording myself, but thought I'd bring it up for comment here first. Grutness...wha? 01:52, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Sorry, that was my bad. I found it easier to put the top template after the category and before the discussion, but forgot that's what the wording said. Go ahead and fix it. --Kbdank71 02:08, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

Stub messages for deletion

After a proposal for a "stub messages for deletion" page was met with generally positive sentiments on the Village Pump, I have written up a draft in my userspace:

User:Grm wnr/SfD draft

Since this infringes on the jurisdiction of this page (Stub messages consist of a template and a category), you might want to leave any comments/praises/flames/general disagreement on the talk page. -- grm_wnr Esc 05:27, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Closing

Hey, folks. I haven't seen Kbdank71 around in a few days, so I'm going to go ahead and close some of the older discussions. Just giving a brief look at the bottom of the page, there are a few discussions that don't really look like they're finished yet. Since we're getting quite a bit of clutter, though, with the discussions that are closed, I'm going to try and tidy things up a bit.

I'm going to create a new section called "Unresolved after seven days" (or something like that - I haven't decided). For the daily pages that have unresolved discussions, I'm going to move the unresolved discussions into a subpage of that subpage (for example, /Log/2005 May 20/Unresolved). I'll then transclude the unresolved subpages under the above mentioned section on the main CfD page, and also into the main daily log page. In theory, this will allow us to see the unresolved discussion on the main page without having to mess about with ones that are resolved, and will also allow someone viewing one of the daily logs to see all the discussions, resolved or not.

Just in case anyone is wondering what the hell I'm up to ... :) --Azkar 01:15, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Sorry about that, it's not easy for me to do much on the weekend. I was thinking about your unresolved thing above. It's not often that we'll have an discussion that needs to stay listed after seven days. I'd usually only leave them if the cfd notice wasn't placed on the category, or if I wasn't sure of what the outcome was. I only bring this up because I read through what you wrote and wasn't exactly sure what I'm supposed to do now. My own two cents is it would probably be easier to resolve everything that can be at seven days, even if it's a no consensus. --Kbdank71 13:20, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Well, don't worry about not being here 24/7. It was about time someone else did some of that work, anyway. As far as the unresolved section .. it was what worked for me, at the time, to clear out some of the clutter while leaving up stuff that was still ongoing. I guess for me, I'd prefer to see something resolved than to just say no consensus - no consensus means there's neither a consensus to delete it, nor to keep it. Let me know if you need some help, though, when it comes time to close the discussions that I separated out. I acknowledge that I didn't document in the most concise manner .. :). --Azkar 13:56, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
      • I'd rather see things resolved also, but I'd also rather not see CfD become bloated with unresolved discussions. I was also taking my cue from the CfD policies which state we can remove discussions that have no consensus. Granted, it also says to move them to the unresolved subpage, but I figured the index takes care of that by listing the no consensus discussions. Bottom line, I'm thinking ease of administration for CfD. The more we have to do, the longer it'll take. --Kbdank71 14:28, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
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