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Category:Scottish MPs who Twitter
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Nominator's rationale:Delete. Overcategorization of people by their use of a particular technology; not defining. Please, let's not go down this path. (We've gone through a
MySpace phase; let's hope Twitter ones aren't a new pattern.)
Good Ol’factory(talk)23:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete - For those who don't know what "Twitter" is this category would be redundant as all MPs twitter at their constituents. Also, this is definitely overcategorisation.
Beeswaxcandle (
talk)
07:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Yikes! I broke out in a sweat when I came upon this nom. All I could think was, OMG, does this mean there are sibling & parent cats for all of the other "British MPs who Twitter"?!? By all means, Delete - and bury it in an umarked grave! (Perhaps a list instead??)Notified creator with {{
subst:cfd-notify}}Cgingold (
talk)
09:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Reply. No! Please please please please please no list. It could spawn a proliferation of lists of politician users of every online service imaginable. Just put it in that unmarked grave, and let it rest in peace. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
12:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Retain Hi. (Not sure of protocol of putting one's case here.) Certainly happy to defer to due process for consideration of new categories. I've listed my reasons below for attempting to start the category. I'd appreciate any suggestions on a wiki-proved solution (if any). My vote is still "yes" though (if I get a vote)... My main thought processes (up for comment) were:
This is certainly not of the same type as: 'Politicans who look at themselves in the mirror', but followed as a response to an important question "Which Scottish MPs use Twitter?" which was not resolved linearly by Google, Tweetminster or (horrors) Wikipedia. I put in the work myself and compiled the (currently very small) list and created the category to fasttrack other searchers to the intel. Would a list have been more appropriate? The list pages in Wikipedia are great (I've made a few myself), but they can appear a little sterile compared to the slickness (and authority) of the cats.
My other reason is the vanity effect. After Titiangate, one might expect that even the most diehard technophobes have heard of 'that online encyclopedia thing' and have been getting their grandchildren to polish their biogs. My expectation is that there will be an upward pressure on the technically competent-but-lazy to get tweeting (if only to justify that they really were on the ecologically-more-friendly train, attending that important debate, meeting a highly relevant thought leader). Scottish MPs is a subset of that - no apologies for the extra work, but an important distinction. Now I've written all that out, it seems a little grand and pretentious (and indeed egomaniacal), but although these things happen anyway without the machinations of little people, I felt I might stake out my little part of the democratizing process. Cheers! :-) —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
MekQuarrie (
talk •
contribs)
21:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Ah. There's the protocol thing..! Thought it would have been auto-signed (whatever that is) as I was logged-in. Trying again. ;-)
MekQuarrie—Preceding
undated comment added
22:14, 28 April 2009 (UTC).reply
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Category:Oxford student societies
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Category:Number-one debut singles
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Nominator's rationale: Overly narrow criterion. Every song in this category is already in a Number-one singles category andCategory:Debut singles. While it is notable for an act to hit #1 with their debut single (and surprisingly not all that rare in country music, at least), is it really notable enough to have a category?
Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (
Many otters •
One hammer •
HELP)22:01, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep the charts are very important in country music. I see the category as notable just as the nominator admits, and I believe that a category is merited. I quote
WP:Overcategorization:
"In general, intersection categories should only be created when both parent categories are very large and similar intersections can be made for related categories"
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Category:University of Oxford Rowing Clubs
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Rename per nom. (I note that all the clubs themselves use the phrase 'boat club', but that would probably be too ambiguous, and wouldn't fit the parent category.)
Robofish (
talk)
05:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Belarus–Syria relations
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Nominator's rationale:Upmerge as an uneeded category and per the result of
this discussion. When the only page in the category is the main article, it is not needed. If by some chance new articles surface, it can always be recreated. Tavix |
Talk 21:09, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Facial moles
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Nominator's rationale: Per
WP:CATEGORY, "Do not create categories based on incidental or subjective features". I've always taken it that categories are to be used for defining features only. For example, we have no
Category:Left-handed people. I can't imagine this category being useful to anyone but dermatologists, and there is already a list of notable people with facial moles on the article
facial mole, which is where I might expect that readership to start. In short, it's unnecessary.
Rodhullandemu21:05, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete per nom -- I don't even see how this cat would be useful to dermatologists. This is far too trivial a characteristic to warrant categorization of people -- and without those articles there's nothing left but the main article, q.e.d. no reason for category.
Cgingold (
talk)
21:15, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete If it were to be retained, it would need to be something more on the lines of
Category:People with facial moles. While I agree that
Cindy Crawford's mole is one of her defining characteristics -- the second sentence of her Wikipedia article states that she is "Known for her trademark mole just above her lip" -- and I am familiar with the bit in
Austin Powers in Goldmember, I don't think that there is enough meat here to constitute a meaningful category as an aid to navigation.
Alansohn (
talk)
21:43, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete - I thought it was about the various morphologies of facial moles and as the morphologies are no different from those of moles on any other part of the skin this is overcategorisation. Then I discover it's about people with facial moles - surely this is a trivial intersection.
Beeswaxcandle (
talk)
07:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Sports broadcasters
Category:NBA Finals broadcasters
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Category:Stanley Cup Championship Finals broadcasters
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Category:World Series broadcasters
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Keep the category captures a strong defining characteristic in including those individuals who have been selected by their network to broadcast their coverage of the premier event in the sport.
Alansohn (
talk)
20:01, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
You assume that this is some great honor accorded the best and few. Well, the numbers of broadcasters of such events is legion. A broadcaster selected by the podunk network or the local ham operator is not notable for that reason.
Carlossuarez46 (
talk)
17:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Super Bowl broadcasters
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Keep the category captures a strong defining characteristic in including those individuals who have been selected by their network to broadcast their coverage of the premier event in the sport, consistently one of the most watched television programs in the United States.
Alansohn (
talk)
20:02, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
And many networks cover these events, not just the US-televised ones; the Super Bowl is a sporting event that will likely be covered by networks from hundreds of countries as a minor featured event- lots of little radio stations, ham operators, and this year, twitterers. Not very selective.
Carlossuarez46 (
talk)
17:05, 29 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Terrorists
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deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:Delete - The discussion was fairly evenly balanced with good articulate discussion from both sides in this discussion, however there are compelling arguments provided by those wishing for these categories to be deleted, arguments that simply cannot be overlooked. There are several problems described below that are persuasive here - those people currently categorised as terrorists are normally very well categorised anyway, frequently by their cause, political affiliation or proscribed group to which they belong, so I find the argument that by removing the category terrorists, it will make finding articles on terrorists more complicated very strong, but ultimately, there are other, neutral categories that can be used to find terrorists. "Terrorists" can also be categorised under a neutral system if they are indicted or convicted of an offence under a Terrorism law in a specific country, so instead of Category:Terrorists, we could categorise people under something like
Category:Persons convicted of Terrorism in the USA etc. Drifting slightly, but terrorism laws in many countries cover many different offences that would not be typically described as terrorism, such as taking a photo of a police officer in certain jurisdictions, so in BLPs, editors should be careful not to describe someone as a terrorist, rather, as someone convicted of an offence under, say, the Terrorism Act, 2008. The most persuasive argument for the deletion however is the absence of a neutral, unbiased, water-tight, non negotiable definition of who or what a terrorist actually is - that raises the spectre of legal action, edit wars, and perhaps as importantly, it makes the encyclopedia inherently biased in favour or against those who see a specific individual as a terrorist, but where they are, or are not categorised as one.
Nick (
talk)
20:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Nominator's rationale: While it was kept at CFD several months ago because it gave "a solid definition for terrorism", I still am not convinced that this category, and most of its subcategories, do more good than harm. For one, it's a libel landmine. The old adage of one man's terrorist being another man's freedom fighter. But secondly, and most importantly, the category introduces its own definition of terrorism and applies that label to people. This is an original research problem too, and while you can argue that it doesn't have libel problems, it really does have OR problems. See also:
CFD March 23: Fictional terrorists. However, the terrorism charges categories do serve purpose and are neutral, so should not be deleted but recategorised to
Category:Terrorism. Sceptre(
talk)19:21, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
week keep there are many problems with this category especially when the accusation is unqualified. But I think judging by past history its getting close to
WP:SNOW. --
Salix (
talk):
20:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Not necessarily; I would've closed the July 2008 as a no consensus (leaning to delete); and the 2006 nomination was closed as no consensus. There has never really been a strong keep consensus for this category. Sceptre(
talk)23:02, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete "Terrorist" is one of our
words to avoid simply because it cannot be
neutrally applied here. We always say "X is alleged to be a terrorist but this is disputed by Y" for that reason. We present the facts supported by
reliable sources and leave it up to our readers to decide for themselves. For us to do this with such a blunt instrument as a category, which does not admit to such nuances, must breach
WP:OR. I would even argue with a
Category:People alleged to be terrorists, because there would be bound to be a contrary source elsewhere to counter that, and the net result IMO is that they would cancel each other out and be of little use to our readers (assuming anyone still remembers that's the reason we are here).
Rodhullandemu21:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Strong keep The categories in question have precise and reasonably accurate inclusion criteria, require sourcing, and are definitely of interest to readers. RayTalk22:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
A definition that is a reasonable summary of definitions in common usage. No more OR than the inclusion criteria for murderer, or assassin. RayTalk00:00, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I don't want to dredge up the debate again, but "murderer" has a clear (legal) definition. "Terrorism" does not. Even the category admits that! Sceptre(
talk)00:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
If you don't want to dredge up the debate again, then don't dredge it up again by making nominations such as this one. It is my opinion that the removal of this category would do fairly serious damage to the value of Wikipedia for resarchers of terrorism, purely for the sake of what I see as a censorious political prejudice. Terrorist does have a clear meaning, the inclusion criteria are reflective of that meaning, and that's that. RayTalk00:42, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
(ec)"Murderer" is slightly problematic in itself, given that the term is applied to, say
Fred West, who was charged but not convicted of murder- but there is little doubt that he was guilty, and he isn't around to sue. There are other, more marginal cases, such as
Bodkin Adams. When it comes to "Assassin", we are on thinner ice still because the term implies a political dimension, and that is always dependent on the eye of the beholder. The real problem applies though, when we apply these terms loosely to living people, and having this, and such subjective categories, can have real-world consequences. There is a famous British libel case called Monson v Tussaud's where a man was given a verdict of "Not Proven" in a Scottish court- this basically means "We think you did it, but the prosecution haven't proved it"- Tussaud's waxworks displayed him in their murderers section, and IIRC, he successfully sued them for libel. That's only one reason why we should err, if at all, on the side of caution.
Rodhullandemu00:29, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I appreciate that it may be difficult to tell the difference between planets and other subplanetary bodies in orbit around a star, for example. The solution is to be more careful in the inclusion, not to deny the existence of planets based on confusion at the edges regarding their definition. RayTalk00:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep The real world exists, regardless of attempts to define parts of it out of existence. The NPOV problem with the category can be rectified through strict enforcement of the inclusion criteria. The same argument about definitions (Terrorist, Freedom fighter etc.) could be used to delete the article on
Terrorism! --
Mattinbgn\talk01:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Reply. Did you actually read the debate above before posting? An article can discuss definitional problems with a term, and the article
Terrorism just does that, at length. A category cannot accommodate those subtleties, because there is a binary choice between including an article and excluding it. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
02:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I did read the above, but thanks for inquiring anyway. It seemed mostly sophistry to me; an attempt to define terrorism out of existence. If there is a problem with the definition, then fix it. The same argument about binary choice applies to very many categories; boundary problems can be worked around without deletion. Ray's analogy with planets seems fairly apt to me. However, in the spirit of compromise, I would suggest the NPOV term
Category:Man caused disaster initiators.
[3] --
Mattinbgn\talk03:26, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I'm afraid that sophistry seems like a pretty good term for comparing an acknowledgement of the wide variety of competing definitions of terrorism with "an attempt to define terrorism out of existence". (Just for the record, I
opposed renaming or deleting the
Category:Terrorism). By the logic you are using here, you might as well support creating
Category:Nice food and
Category:Nasty food because we all agree that they exist ... and to resolve the POV problems, we'll arbitrarily choose of the many competing definitions and apply it rigidly.
Characterising this as a "boundary problem" is a gross misrepresentation of the issues at stake here. Some categories have clear boundaries (e.g.
Category:1931 births), others have fuzzy edges (e.g.
Category:Writers]: how much writing is needed to be included?), but the problem with this one is that the scope of the term is so heavily disputed that there are people who are clearly included under one definition but clearly excluded under anther definition. That's not a boundary problem, it's a clear conflict of definition at the core of the concept.
Take two examples from South Africa:
According to one definition,
Joe Slovo was clearly a terrorist, because he commanded
Umkhonto we Sizwe when it ran a
bombing campaign, but according to another definition that was a proportional use of force as part of a
just war against a tyrannical regime.
According to one definition, the
Sharpeville massacre was an act of terrorism, but according to another definition it could not have been terrorism, beause it was carried out under the authority of the state.
We could take a long list of similar examples from all over the world, but those two sum up the problem neatly.
WP:NPOV is summarised as follows "Each Wikipedia article and other content must be written from a neutral point of view, by representing all significant views on each topic fairly, proportionately, and without bias." But that's precisely the opposite of what these categories do: they take one definition of terrorism and exclude all others, most notably
state terrorism. This not only breaches one of our fundamental and non-negotiable policies, it's also entirely un-necessary, because as
Reuters has demonstrated for decades there are plenty of other ways of categorising the groups and individuals which some people describe as "terrorist". It's a disgrace that these POV-pushing categories have persisted for so long. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
04:14, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Strong delete. The term "terrorism" has no NPOV definition, and the definition applied to this category is a partisan one which excludes several types of activity such as
state terrorism, structural terrorism, quasi-Terrorism and non-political terrorism (see
Terrorism#Types -- most of the list there is excluded). The definition used in this category may be an honourable attempt to try to find some sort of middle ground between competing definitions or it may be an ideological attempt to promote a particular political view, but either way it's an unacceptable breach of NPOV. It makes no sense to have "terrorist" as one of our
words to avoid and then apply it without qualification to dozens of articles through the category system. These categories are also unnecessary, because the primary purpose of categories is navigation, and that could be achieved simply by categorising people through the organisations to which they belong -- e.g.
Andreas Baader is already in
Category:Red Army Faction, and anyone who wants to find others active in that group can use
Category:Red Army Faction rather than
Category:German terrorists. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
02:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Question' What do you means by "has proven not to be subject to all the flaws ascribed to it"? Do you agree that the category excludes
state terrorism, structural terrorism, quasi-Terrorism and non-political terrorism? And do believe that doing so meets
WP:NPOV's requirement of "representing all significant views on each topic fairly, proportionately, and without bias"? --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
13:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I meant "has proven not to be subject to all the flaws ascribed to it", nothing less, nothing more.
Are you seriously claiming that a category which is defined so as to exclude a whole class of people to whom the label is routinely applied is NPOV, or that those who fit the category's
WP:OR definition are unquestionably terrorists? That makes as much sense as excluding financial fraud from
Category:Criminals and claiming that the result is neutral. Even the
BI's 2001 definition of terrorism is wider than wikipedia's: they include only illegal use of violence, but don't apply a blanket exclusion to state actors as the wikipedia definition does. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
01:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)reply
keep No valid reason provided for deletion. Why is there no valid reason? Because terrorism is historical fact and that is what is referred to. The worries above have not proven to be true in the past and are not true now--but that does not stop the worriers apparently. Look at the category and its correctly many subcats for facts. Categories are supposed to provide navigation to articles; this category serves that purpose well.
Hmains (
talk)
03:28, 29 April 2009 (UTC)reply
No, i can't imagine any such uproar and i think it is inappropriate to make such sweeping and uninformed generalisations about a nation. --neon whitetalk09:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
WP is not a forum for interested parties to express their POV whether though articles or categories; arguments to cater to POV demands should be rejected on sight.
Hmains (
talk)
19:57, 1 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep consensus hasn't changed. The concept is notable, it gets more press than nearly any other category that we have here. And what is the rationale to delete it? Basically it's that "terrorist" is a loaded word. Well, yes, we generally don't like the word "terrorist", but what else are these? I think that "terrorist" is the word most commonly used in the press and if we want to politically correctly constain ourselves to some tongue-twister no one has proposed it.
Carlossuarez46 (
talk)
07:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC)reply
The concept of
sin is highly notable, which is why we have an article on it; but notability isn't the issue here. The problem is neutrality, and since "terrorist" is a label attached only by opponents of a particular use of violence, it is as biased a word as "sinner". If we keep
Category:Terrorists, why not also establish a
Category:Sinners? --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
02:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep. It's a tricky decision, as this category is perhaps the most controversial on Wikipedia, and the most prone to BLP violations; but nonetheless, I think it's worth keeping. Terrorists exist, and in many cases, that really is the best word for them. What are we going to do if this is deleted - recategorise these people into
Category:Guerillas,
Category:Paramilitaries,
Category:Freedom fighters, or something similar? The fact is, every possible term here is POV; not using 'terrorists' would be a POV choice as well. We should be extremely careful with this category, and default to removing it whenever the inclusion of a particular person is controversial; but the current definition is a reasonably good one, and is as close as we're going to get to an objective inclusion criterion.
Robofish (
talk)
05:04, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Absolute Keep. I don't really have time, nor would it be productive to go through all of the arguments. Here is what it boils down to, published reliable sources use the term terrorist all the time. As for the claim above that there is no "legal" definition of terrorism, that's wrong. There is a
legal definition in the US Code and similar legislation in other countries. Dictionaries and scholars also have all offered their own definitions, and yes there's some variance but they all express the same basic elements. Yes, terrorism can be used pejoratively or to express a point of view, but so can words like "murder" or "murderer (e.g., "Abortion is murder" or "US soldiers in Iraq are murderers.") Every introductory class on international relations today includes a section on terrorism, and every half-decent IR program in the world offers entire courses on terrorism. It is an important phenomenon documented to an incredible extent in academic literature. Categories exist for a reason, to help group similar articles, and that is exactly what this category does.
Cool3 (
talk)
05:29, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
I would also like to direct everyone's attention to the first chapter of Bruce Hoffman's book Inside Terrorism, entitled "Defining Terrorism". In that chapter, Hoffman, probably the world's leading scholar of terrorism, grapples with the issue of how to define terrorism and why it is so difficult to do so. I would love to quote the entire article here, but I think that might exceed the limits of fair use. In any case, most libraries have a copy of the article so you can take a look yourself if you'd liked, but I'll just draw attention to his conclusions:
“
By distinguishing terrorists from other types of criminals and irregular fighters and terrorism from other forms of crime and irregular warfare, we come to appreciate that terrorism is:
designed to have far-reaching psychological repercussions beyond the immediate victim or target;
conducted either by an organization with an identifiable chain of command or conspiratorial cell structure (whose members wear no uniform or identifying insignia) or by individuals or a small collection of individuals directly influenced, motivated, or inspired by the ideological aims or example of some existent terrorist movement and/or it leaders; and
perpetrated by a subnational group or nonstate entity
”
Hoffman's chapter has been widely reprinted in anthologies and edited volumes on terrorism, so if you don't have access to that book, pick up nearly any collection from the last few years, and you'll find it. Why? Because Hoffman does a very good and scholarly job of defining terrorism.
Cool3 (
talk)
05:53, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Please note, that what appears to be the full text of the chapter is available online
here. I very much encourage everyone to read the article.
Cool3 (
talk)
06:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
But we don't use Hoffman's definition. And even if we did, it'd still be OR because we're using that definition to categorise people without reliable sources that they are terrorists under that definition. Sceptre(
talk)15:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
note: this is about Category:TerrorisT not Category:TerrorisM. While many people will agree that terrorisM exists (and might be defined as Hoffman does), the inclusion of people into that so defined category might have some OR problem. Of course, a US court can convict a person because of § 2331; that person can be called a terrorist. So there seems to be a good NPOV and NOR criterion to establish category membership. As it is now, however, a court verdict does not seem to be required for inclusion, which might be a problem
Jasy jatere (
talk)
09:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep Providing it's well sourced i don't see a problem. There's plenty of persons who can be added without any controversy. Politically motivated denials of such should not be allowed to effect the project. Though this is an example of a subject where a list might be more informative, we just have to be careful with the entires. --neon whitetalk09:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep Per Robofish and Sceptre's arguments above. This reminds me of the pseudoscience page/category in that there is a heck of a lot of argument about inclusions/exclusions and it can get pretty heated but it fills an important void.
Sifakatalk20:07, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Several now well respected figures were in their day known as terrorists, and some branded terrorists by various governments are not considered so by large groups of people. It's asking for a POV war. (Note: I do believe certain people are terrorists but I am taking an objective line here as Wikipedia is the sum of all of us, not just one random guy's opinions :))
Orderinchaos01:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)reply
I, just like Orderinchaos, believe that certain people are terrorists. I also believe that wikipedia is not censored, so it should be possible to state that fact. However, there is relatively little added encyclopaedic value in stating "X is a terrorist" as compared to "Bolivia/US/Russia considers X a terrorist". From editing Sri-Lanka-related articles, I know how much time and energy it takes to quell "X is a terrorist" discussions and to get editors to actually improve the content of the encyclopaedia, instead of slinging mud at each other. I would invite everybody who thinks that this category is fine to spend a week or two editing on a topic where this question arises. Maybe this category is technically correct, but it is simply not worth the effort of filling MB of talk pages with discussions about it. My ! ote is thus weak delete, but I might be convinced to change if the definition of membership is changed in such a way that the inclusion criteria are hard and fast, e.g. conviction following § 2331 or similar paragraphs.
Jasy jatere (
talk)
05:08, 5 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Not with a ten foot pole. I've taken my turn in the terrorist freedom fighter dunk tank. So now that I'm on the discussing side of the discussion, I find that Orderinchaos said exactly what I was going to. Saves me from having to type it all in; a little copy and a paste, and voila! Delete One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Per Orderinchaos. --
Kbdank7114:23, 5 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Sure, there are borderline cases, but every category has those. For every Nelson Mandela there's a an
Ikuo Hayashi or
Osama bin Laden. What matters on Wikipedia is the view in reliable, published sources. It's not pushing a POV to say that Bin Laden is a terrorist; I can point you in the direction of hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed journals, thousands of stories in the news media, and hundreds of books that will make that claim. It is POV-pushing to say that Bin Laden is not a terrorist. Show me one reliable source (not just some jihadi website) that says bin Laden is not a terrorist. It's sort of like
Category:Pseudoscience, proponents won't like be grouped as pseudoscience, but when there's a broad consensus in the community of scholars, Wikipedia makes the call. Individual, borderline cases should be discussed on talk page until a consensus is achieved.
Cool3 (
talk)
12:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Wrong. Wikipedia should not make a call. It falls to the reliable sources to do that. And as each reliable source will use a different definition, we have an NPOV (and, by extension, a BLP) problem if we pick one. And if we have our own definition, there's an OR problem. And if we have "People designated as terrrorists", we have inappopriate categorisation. This is unlike psuedoscience, which has a much clearer and non-controversial definition. Sceptre(
talk)14:00, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
The precise wording may vary, but the result is the same. By any reliable source definition, Bin Laden is a terrorist. Really, provide me even just one article from a peer reviewed journal saying he isn't and I'll agree with you.
Cool3 (
talk)
19:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
I'm not going to because I've been through this before, and people invariably move the goalposts. It's not Bin Laden which is why I want the category deleted. It's the borderline cases. Take Nelson Mandela, for example, and the IRA.
Ken Livingstone was arguably famous for loudly disagreeing with the Thatcher government about those two. And by some definitions they are, and some definitions they're not. Sceptre(
talk)20:15, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Comment: As Sceptre has pointed out, there are likely a lot more questionable entries than there are indisputable ones. Most people would accept Bin Laden and Hayashi as simply insane religious fanatics without any truly attainable goals (I'm borrowing from Reza Aslan's "How to Win a Cosmic War" here). But a great proportion (likely a majority) of the individuals contained in this category have logical, albeit extreme, political goals, like independence. I would argue that to categorize them as "terrorists" is politically biased. I realize this is just my definition, but that's the problem: everyone has a different definition. That's why the category should go. -
TheMightyQuill (
talk)
20:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
I'm just wondering how
Al Jazeera and the other Islamic press characterize Bin Laden? Surely such press counts a reliable source which if we are to be truly neutral we should give as much weight to as the western press.--
Salix (
talk):
21:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
I went down that road months ago on
Talk:Osama Bin Laden. The answer is that he tends to have a relatively good approval rating in Islamic countries; way more than Bush's in America at the same time. However, that doesn't matter because public opinion apparently isn't a RS for opinions. Sceptre(
talk)23:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete "Targeting civilians" civilian and non-combatant are not the same thing. For example if a soldier was building a
sangar in Northern Ireland, was he a legitimate target of the IRA? If so what if the work was contracted out to civilian builders did the man building a sangar suddenly stop being a legitimate target? What happen if the contractor was a part time soldier in the UDR was he only a legitimate target when on duty? Is there a difference between attacking armed police in NI and unarmed police in the rest of the UK? What about the IRA
attack on Downing Street, were ministers in a war cabinet although civilians a legitimate or illegitimate target? What about targeting civilian infastructure that has dual use. What about targeting the City of London so that costs of the damage was so high that the insurance companies would not pay forcing the British government to cover the costs as war damage, hence forcing a political recognition of the action as a war action and not a criminal action (since the end of internment something the IRA had been fighting for --that their cause was more than a criminal conspiracy) etc etc. --
PBS (
talk)
21:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Graph models (statistics)
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deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:rename. Per nom, if this turns out to be problematic, we can rename it back to add a disambiguator.
Kbdank7114:25, 5 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Comment I'm a little concerned that the proposed name might be too broad. There are a lot of things which could be called a graphical model. For example this journal
Graphical Models covers a large numbers topics closer to computer-graphics than graph-theoretic statistics. --
Salix (
talk):
18:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)reply
That is true, but the
graphical model article doesn't have any disambiguation links, so this doesn't seem to have been a problem so far. Should it arise in future, I think we could rename it again. —
3mta3 (
talk)
15:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:People from Geneva
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Do not rename. While the canton and the city are different, the city dominates the entire canton. Geneva has about 185k population, the entire canton about 440k, but of the other 44 municipalities, only 1 has a population of over 30k and only about 5 are over 10k. So nearly half of the population of the canton is in the city and most of the rest are in neighboring cities. Historically, Geneva has dominated the region, and the villages in the canton mostly just fed into the city. The city was the canton and still is pretty much.
Tobyc75 (
talk)
18:41, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
As a general rule I would say no. This is the problem with shared place names in the same area. Las Vegas is a city and a brand. The mayor promotes events outside of the city where he is elected as being Las Vegas events. LA is a city and a county. So in my option we need to be
precise with category names to make it totally clear from the category name what is covered. Leaving it to opinions or interpretations is not a good idea.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
01:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Oppose rename Why make category names longer and more complex than needed? The term "Geneva" is generally understood to mean the city and as Tobyc75 points out, the canton and the city seem to be seen as virtually the same entity. Indeed the article
Geneva is about the city, not the canton and does not point to a disambiguation page. The category for the canton is already sufficiently disambiguated and further notes about the category can be added in prose to the category page. --
Mattinbgn\talk02:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:WHO people
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Category:Medical disasters
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Nominator's rationale: Medical disasters sounds like something that happens to an individual during surgery. A health disaster is something that affects the wider population which is what the articles in the category are about. --
Alan Liefting (
talk) -
09:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I have added the (only) sub-cat to this nomination. Rename both per nom - "health" is clearly the more appropriate term to use for these categories. Notified creator with {{
subst:cfd-notify}}Cgingold (
talk)
12:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete both - in the absence of any possible objective standard of what constitutes a "health disaster". Similar to various "crises" categories that were discussed a month or so ago and deleted on the same grounds.
Otto4711 (
talk)
17:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Rename per nom (with some tidying up needed as the category has started to bloat) - Otto, the disaster categories have been around for many years (since September 2005 in this case). One of the misgivings I have about the way CfD operates is that it can take years for those active at CfD to turn their attention to a particular set of categories. Would it not be better to discuss the overall structure of a particular area of categories in one go, and sort out what should and shouldn't be categorised and how, rather than chipping away piecemeal years after something has been around and used by many readers for over three years? If you are set on deletion for this category, can you suggest where the articles go instead so that people browsing
Category:Disasters can find things in logical places? Has anyone ever tried using the grok stats site to get an idea of how much certain categories are used - i.e. by the silent majority? For example, Category:Medical disasters has been viewed
1246 times in January 2009,
1460 times in February 2009 and
1364 times in March 2009. Now, we can't be sure why people clicked on the links, or where they arrived from, but surely that means something? Compare it to the traffic through Category:Disasters (
1124 times in January 2009). Here's an interesting one:
Category:Pandemics view stats for April 2009 - below 30 views per day for most of the month, then a sharp rise due to the news headlines about the
2009 swine flu outbreak - 319 views today alone. Of course, compared to the views of the article itself, that's peanuts. Three views yesterday (when it was created), and
6130 views today (actually, 319 compared to 6130 is pretty respectable - around 5%, which is probably a better ratio of article to category views than seen for some categories). Conclusion: categories are viewed much less than articles. But still, I hope I haven't gone too far off track. The medical disasters category structure as been around for a long time with no objections, and will likely be popular in the coming days, so whatever name it has, so the main category and its subcategories should, in my view, be kept.
Carcharoth (
talk)
21:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC) I haven't been active at CfD for ages, so if a vox populi argument like this is commonly made and has been rejected in the past, forgive me.reply
The problem remains that there is no objective criteria for what constitutes a "health disaster" which leads to the hodge-podge of stuff that's currently in the category. It's capturing everything from toxic waste sites which may or may not have had any effect on human health (which leads to questions of
original research) to disease outbreaks to the 1982 Tylenol murders. There's no unifying theme here, because of the subjectivity issues. I think these articles can find better homes in other more specific categories, for instance
2006 North American E. coli outbreak in
Category:2000s medical outbreaks, rather than the vague and subjective "disasters" structure. I haven't looked at the rest of the disaster category structures but whether they stay or go doesn't necessarily have any bearing on these categories.
Otto4711 (
talk)
02:03, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
It's at times like this that I wish I could point to what the category looked like when I created it. Kind of click a "revert back to the nice tidy category that used to be there". Is it acceptable to clean up categories during a CfD?
Carcharoth (
talk)
02:38, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
It's not at all unusual for categories to accumulate unwanted detritus over time, so a bit of judicious pruning would not be objectionable. (I would do it myself, but I don't have the time right now.)
Cgingold (
talk)
03:41, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete unless there is some consensus for a new name that is effective and not subjective. At this point, I suggest relisting to see if some kind of consensus can be achieved. I'm not sure that disasters is really the correct name there. I do wonder if these break down into some subcategories. One for malpractice types of events affecting large groups of people. Another for manufacturing caused health issues and another for inappropriate storage or release of chemicals.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
07:13, 9 May 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Sandboxes
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Nominator's rationale:Rename. This category name looks like articles about sandboxes, like
this, belong in it. This category is actually intended for Wikipedia sandboxes.
עוד מישהוOd Mishehu07:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete - Is there actually any benefit to grouping all user sandboxes in a category? What possible use is there to seek out other users' sandboxes? What benefit will keeping this category provide Wikipedia? If someone can come up with one, I'd be open to keeping. If no consensus to delete, I support the proposed rename.
VegaDark (
talk)
20:22, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Universities and colleges in Australia
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Nominator's rationale:Delete. This category is redundant, given the existence of
Category:Universities in Australia. The word "College" in Australian English is not a synonym for University, but means at least three entirely different things.
Conflating all these entities into this category is confusing, both to Australian readers and editors, who have misused this category and to readers elsewhere who are presumeably mislead by the incorrect use of this category. The category should simply be "Universities in Australia", the universal and generic term for these institutions in Australia.
Mattinbgn\talk06:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete per nominator - btw 'Institutes of Tertiary Education' no longer exist in Australia - we used to have 'Institutes of Technology' but they are now universities.
SatuSuro11:46, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete or merge per Occuli. "Tertiary institution" is correct, "university" is correct, "college" in Australian English is next to meaningless.
Orderinchaos13:53, 1 May 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Universities and colleges in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
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Nominator's rationale:Rename. This was the focus of a previous rename proposal that did not reach a consensus after the lead article was moved. This rename is more descriptive of the area covered by the category and mirrors the name of the lead article.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
06:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
The article and previous discussions do not make this totally clear. It appears that the name is actually 'The Research Triangle' and as such it should be capitalized. If the grammar experts find otherwise, it is not an issue for me.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
23:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Independent Subway System (New York City)
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Comment; I created this category for two reasons; 1)To distinguish the system from the BMT & IRT and 2)With the assumption that there may be or may have been another Independent Subway System somewhere in the world, even if it translates into some other language. If this isn't the case, I have no other choice but to reluctantly support the renaming. ----
DanTD (
talk)
17:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:IND Culver Line stations
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Category:Scottish MPs who Twitter
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Nominator's rationale:Delete. Overcategorization of people by their use of a particular technology; not defining. Please, let's not go down this path. (We've gone through a
MySpace phase; let's hope Twitter ones aren't a new pattern.)
Good Ol’factory(talk)23:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete - For those who don't know what "Twitter" is this category would be redundant as all MPs twitter at their constituents. Also, this is definitely overcategorisation.
Beeswaxcandle (
talk)
07:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Yikes! I broke out in a sweat when I came upon this nom. All I could think was, OMG, does this mean there are sibling & parent cats for all of the other "British MPs who Twitter"?!? By all means, Delete - and bury it in an umarked grave! (Perhaps a list instead??)Notified creator with {{
subst:cfd-notify}}Cgingold (
talk)
09:21, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Reply. No! Please please please please please no list. It could spawn a proliferation of lists of politician users of every online service imaginable. Just put it in that unmarked grave, and let it rest in peace. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
12:48, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Retain Hi. (Not sure of protocol of putting one's case here.) Certainly happy to defer to due process for consideration of new categories. I've listed my reasons below for attempting to start the category. I'd appreciate any suggestions on a wiki-proved solution (if any). My vote is still "yes" though (if I get a vote)... My main thought processes (up for comment) were:
This is certainly not of the same type as: 'Politicans who look at themselves in the mirror', but followed as a response to an important question "Which Scottish MPs use Twitter?" which was not resolved linearly by Google, Tweetminster or (horrors) Wikipedia. I put in the work myself and compiled the (currently very small) list and created the category to fasttrack other searchers to the intel. Would a list have been more appropriate? The list pages in Wikipedia are great (I've made a few myself), but they can appear a little sterile compared to the slickness (and authority) of the cats.
My other reason is the vanity effect. After Titiangate, one might expect that even the most diehard technophobes have heard of 'that online encyclopedia thing' and have been getting their grandchildren to polish their biogs. My expectation is that there will be an upward pressure on the technically competent-but-lazy to get tweeting (if only to justify that they really were on the ecologically-more-friendly train, attending that important debate, meeting a highly relevant thought leader). Scottish MPs is a subset of that - no apologies for the extra work, but an important distinction. Now I've written all that out, it seems a little grand and pretentious (and indeed egomaniacal), but although these things happen anyway without the machinations of little people, I felt I might stake out my little part of the democratizing process. Cheers! :-) —Preceding
unsigned comment added by
MekQuarrie (
talk •
contribs)
21:01, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Ah. There's the protocol thing..! Thought it would have been auto-signed (whatever that is) as I was logged-in. Trying again. ;-)
MekQuarrie—Preceding
undated comment added
22:14, 28 April 2009 (UTC).reply
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Category:Oxford student societies
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Category:Number-one debut singles
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Nominator's rationale: Overly narrow criterion. Every song in this category is already in a Number-one singles category andCategory:Debut singles. While it is notable for an act to hit #1 with their debut single (and surprisingly not all that rare in country music, at least), is it really notable enough to have a category?
Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (
Many otters •
One hammer •
HELP)22:01, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep the charts are very important in country music. I see the category as notable just as the nominator admits, and I believe that a category is merited. I quote
WP:Overcategorization:
"In general, intersection categories should only be created when both parent categories are very large and similar intersections can be made for related categories"
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Category:University of Oxford Rowing Clubs
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Rename per nom. (I note that all the clubs themselves use the phrase 'boat club', but that would probably be too ambiguous, and wouldn't fit the parent category.)
Robofish (
talk)
05:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Belarus–Syria relations
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Nominator's rationale:Upmerge as an uneeded category and per the result of
this discussion. When the only page in the category is the main article, it is not needed. If by some chance new articles surface, it can always be recreated. Tavix |
Talk 21:09, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Facial moles
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Nominator's rationale: Per
WP:CATEGORY, "Do not create categories based on incidental or subjective features". I've always taken it that categories are to be used for defining features only. For example, we have no
Category:Left-handed people. I can't imagine this category being useful to anyone but dermatologists, and there is already a list of notable people with facial moles on the article
facial mole, which is where I might expect that readership to start. In short, it's unnecessary.
Rodhullandemu21:05, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete per nom -- I don't even see how this cat would be useful to dermatologists. This is far too trivial a characteristic to warrant categorization of people -- and without those articles there's nothing left but the main article, q.e.d. no reason for category.
Cgingold (
talk)
21:15, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete If it were to be retained, it would need to be something more on the lines of
Category:People with facial moles. While I agree that
Cindy Crawford's mole is one of her defining characteristics -- the second sentence of her Wikipedia article states that she is "Known for her trademark mole just above her lip" -- and I am familiar with the bit in
Austin Powers in Goldmember, I don't think that there is enough meat here to constitute a meaningful category as an aid to navigation.
Alansohn (
talk)
21:43, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete - I thought it was about the various morphologies of facial moles and as the morphologies are no different from those of moles on any other part of the skin this is overcategorisation. Then I discover it's about people with facial moles - surely this is a trivial intersection.
Beeswaxcandle (
talk)
07:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Sports broadcasters
Category:NBA Finals broadcasters
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Category:Stanley Cup Championship Finals broadcasters
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Category:World Series broadcasters
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Keep the category captures a strong defining characteristic in including those individuals who have been selected by their network to broadcast their coverage of the premier event in the sport.
Alansohn (
talk)
20:01, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
You assume that this is some great honor accorded the best and few. Well, the numbers of broadcasters of such events is legion. A broadcaster selected by the podunk network or the local ham operator is not notable for that reason.
Carlossuarez46 (
talk)
17:03, 29 April 2009 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:Super Bowl broadcasters
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Keep the category captures a strong defining characteristic in including those individuals who have been selected by their network to broadcast their coverage of the premier event in the sport, consistently one of the most watched television programs in the United States.
Alansohn (
talk)
20:02, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
And many networks cover these events, not just the US-televised ones; the Super Bowl is a sporting event that will likely be covered by networks from hundreds of countries as a minor featured event- lots of little radio stations, ham operators, and this year, twitterers. Not very selective.
Carlossuarez46 (
talk)
17:05, 29 April 2009 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:Terrorists
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:Delete - The discussion was fairly evenly balanced with good articulate discussion from both sides in this discussion, however there are compelling arguments provided by those wishing for these categories to be deleted, arguments that simply cannot be overlooked. There are several problems described below that are persuasive here - those people currently categorised as terrorists are normally very well categorised anyway, frequently by their cause, political affiliation or proscribed group to which they belong, so I find the argument that by removing the category terrorists, it will make finding articles on terrorists more complicated very strong, but ultimately, there are other, neutral categories that can be used to find terrorists. "Terrorists" can also be categorised under a neutral system if they are indicted or convicted of an offence under a Terrorism law in a specific country, so instead of Category:Terrorists, we could categorise people under something like
Category:Persons convicted of Terrorism in the USA etc. Drifting slightly, but terrorism laws in many countries cover many different offences that would not be typically described as terrorism, such as taking a photo of a police officer in certain jurisdictions, so in BLPs, editors should be careful not to describe someone as a terrorist, rather, as someone convicted of an offence under, say, the Terrorism Act, 2008. The most persuasive argument for the deletion however is the absence of a neutral, unbiased, water-tight, non negotiable definition of who or what a terrorist actually is - that raises the spectre of legal action, edit wars, and perhaps as importantly, it makes the encyclopedia inherently biased in favour or against those who see a specific individual as a terrorist, but where they are, or are not categorised as one.
Nick (
talk)
20:22, 7 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Nominator's rationale: While it was kept at CFD several months ago because it gave "a solid definition for terrorism", I still am not convinced that this category, and most of its subcategories, do more good than harm. For one, it's a libel landmine. The old adage of one man's terrorist being another man's freedom fighter. But secondly, and most importantly, the category introduces its own definition of terrorism and applies that label to people. This is an original research problem too, and while you can argue that it doesn't have libel problems, it really does have OR problems. See also:
CFD March 23: Fictional terrorists. However, the terrorism charges categories do serve purpose and are neutral, so should not be deleted but recategorised to
Category:Terrorism. Sceptre(
talk)19:21, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
week keep there are many problems with this category especially when the accusation is unqualified. But I think judging by past history its getting close to
WP:SNOW. --
Salix (
talk):
20:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Not necessarily; I would've closed the July 2008 as a no consensus (leaning to delete); and the 2006 nomination was closed as no consensus. There has never really been a strong keep consensus for this category. Sceptre(
talk)23:02, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete "Terrorist" is one of our
words to avoid simply because it cannot be
neutrally applied here. We always say "X is alleged to be a terrorist but this is disputed by Y" for that reason. We present the facts supported by
reliable sources and leave it up to our readers to decide for themselves. For us to do this with such a blunt instrument as a category, which does not admit to such nuances, must breach
WP:OR. I would even argue with a
Category:People alleged to be terrorists, because there would be bound to be a contrary source elsewhere to counter that, and the net result IMO is that they would cancel each other out and be of little use to our readers (assuming anyone still remembers that's the reason we are here).
Rodhullandemu21:23, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Strong keep The categories in question have precise and reasonably accurate inclusion criteria, require sourcing, and are definitely of interest to readers. RayTalk22:12, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
A definition that is a reasonable summary of definitions in common usage. No more OR than the inclusion criteria for murderer, or assassin. RayTalk00:00, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I don't want to dredge up the debate again, but "murderer" has a clear (legal) definition. "Terrorism" does not. Even the category admits that! Sceptre(
talk)00:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
If you don't want to dredge up the debate again, then don't dredge it up again by making nominations such as this one. It is my opinion that the removal of this category would do fairly serious damage to the value of Wikipedia for resarchers of terrorism, purely for the sake of what I see as a censorious political prejudice. Terrorist does have a clear meaning, the inclusion criteria are reflective of that meaning, and that's that. RayTalk00:42, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
(ec)"Murderer" is slightly problematic in itself, given that the term is applied to, say
Fred West, who was charged but not convicted of murder- but there is little doubt that he was guilty, and he isn't around to sue. There are other, more marginal cases, such as
Bodkin Adams. When it comes to "Assassin", we are on thinner ice still because the term implies a political dimension, and that is always dependent on the eye of the beholder. The real problem applies though, when we apply these terms loosely to living people, and having this, and such subjective categories, can have real-world consequences. There is a famous British libel case called Monson v Tussaud's where a man was given a verdict of "Not Proven" in a Scottish court- this basically means "We think you did it, but the prosecution haven't proved it"- Tussaud's waxworks displayed him in their murderers section, and IIRC, he successfully sued them for libel. That's only one reason why we should err, if at all, on the side of caution.
Rodhullandemu00:29, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I appreciate that it may be difficult to tell the difference between planets and other subplanetary bodies in orbit around a star, for example. The solution is to be more careful in the inclusion, not to deny the existence of planets based on confusion at the edges regarding their definition. RayTalk00:44, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep The real world exists, regardless of attempts to define parts of it out of existence. The NPOV problem with the category can be rectified through strict enforcement of the inclusion criteria. The same argument about definitions (Terrorist, Freedom fighter etc.) could be used to delete the article on
Terrorism! --
Mattinbgn\talk01:59, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Reply. Did you actually read the debate above before posting? An article can discuss definitional problems with a term, and the article
Terrorism just does that, at length. A category cannot accommodate those subtleties, because there is a binary choice between including an article and excluding it. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
02:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I did read the above, but thanks for inquiring anyway. It seemed mostly sophistry to me; an attempt to define terrorism out of existence. If there is a problem with the definition, then fix it. The same argument about binary choice applies to very many categories; boundary problems can be worked around without deletion. Ray's analogy with planets seems fairly apt to me. However, in the spirit of compromise, I would suggest the NPOV term
Category:Man caused disaster initiators.
[3] --
Mattinbgn\talk03:26, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I'm afraid that sophistry seems like a pretty good term for comparing an acknowledgement of the wide variety of competing definitions of terrorism with "an attempt to define terrorism out of existence". (Just for the record, I
opposed renaming or deleting the
Category:Terrorism). By the logic you are using here, you might as well support creating
Category:Nice food and
Category:Nasty food because we all agree that they exist ... and to resolve the POV problems, we'll arbitrarily choose of the many competing definitions and apply it rigidly.
Characterising this as a "boundary problem" is a gross misrepresentation of the issues at stake here. Some categories have clear boundaries (e.g.
Category:1931 births), others have fuzzy edges (e.g.
Category:Writers]: how much writing is needed to be included?), but the problem with this one is that the scope of the term is so heavily disputed that there are people who are clearly included under one definition but clearly excluded under anther definition. That's not a boundary problem, it's a clear conflict of definition at the core of the concept.
Take two examples from South Africa:
According to one definition,
Joe Slovo was clearly a terrorist, because he commanded
Umkhonto we Sizwe when it ran a
bombing campaign, but according to another definition that was a proportional use of force as part of a
just war against a tyrannical regime.
According to one definition, the
Sharpeville massacre was an act of terrorism, but according to another definition it could not have been terrorism, beause it was carried out under the authority of the state.
We could take a long list of similar examples from all over the world, but those two sum up the problem neatly.
WP:NPOV is summarised as follows "Each Wikipedia article and other content must be written from a neutral point of view, by representing all significant views on each topic fairly, proportionately, and without bias." But that's precisely the opposite of what these categories do: they take one definition of terrorism and exclude all others, most notably
state terrorism. This not only breaches one of our fundamental and non-negotiable policies, it's also entirely un-necessary, because as
Reuters has demonstrated for decades there are plenty of other ways of categorising the groups and individuals which some people describe as "terrorist". It's a disgrace that these POV-pushing categories have persisted for so long. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
04:14, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Strong delete. The term "terrorism" has no NPOV definition, and the definition applied to this category is a partisan one which excludes several types of activity such as
state terrorism, structural terrorism, quasi-Terrorism and non-political terrorism (see
Terrorism#Types -- most of the list there is excluded). The definition used in this category may be an honourable attempt to try to find some sort of middle ground between competing definitions or it may be an ideological attempt to promote a particular political view, but either way it's an unacceptable breach of NPOV. It makes no sense to have "terrorist" as one of our
words to avoid and then apply it without qualification to dozens of articles through the category system. These categories are also unnecessary, because the primary purpose of categories is navigation, and that could be achieved simply by categorising people through the organisations to which they belong -- e.g.
Andreas Baader is already in
Category:Red Army Faction, and anyone who wants to find others active in that group can use
Category:Red Army Faction rather than
Category:German terrorists. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
02:52, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Question' What do you means by "has proven not to be subject to all the flaws ascribed to it"? Do you agree that the category excludes
state terrorism, structural terrorism, quasi-Terrorism and non-political terrorism? And do believe that doing so meets
WP:NPOV's requirement of "representing all significant views on each topic fairly, proportionately, and without bias"? --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
13:06, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I meant "has proven not to be subject to all the flaws ascribed to it", nothing less, nothing more.
Are you seriously claiming that a category which is defined so as to exclude a whole class of people to whom the label is routinely applied is NPOV, or that those who fit the category's
WP:OR definition are unquestionably terrorists? That makes as much sense as excluding financial fraud from
Category:Criminals and claiming that the result is neutral. Even the
BI's 2001 definition of terrorism is wider than wikipedia's: they include only illegal use of violence, but don't apply a blanket exclusion to state actors as the wikipedia definition does. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
01:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)reply
keep No valid reason provided for deletion. Why is there no valid reason? Because terrorism is historical fact and that is what is referred to. The worries above have not proven to be true in the past and are not true now--but that does not stop the worriers apparently. Look at the category and its correctly many subcats for facts. Categories are supposed to provide navigation to articles; this category serves that purpose well.
Hmains (
talk)
03:28, 29 April 2009 (UTC)reply
No, i can't imagine any such uproar and i think it is inappropriate to make such sweeping and uninformed generalisations about a nation. --neon whitetalk09:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
WP is not a forum for interested parties to express their POV whether though articles or categories; arguments to cater to POV demands should be rejected on sight.
Hmains (
talk)
19:57, 1 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep consensus hasn't changed. The concept is notable, it gets more press than nearly any other category that we have here. And what is the rationale to delete it? Basically it's that "terrorist" is a loaded word. Well, yes, we generally don't like the word "terrorist", but what else are these? I think that "terrorist" is the word most commonly used in the press and if we want to politically correctly constain ourselves to some tongue-twister no one has proposed it.
Carlossuarez46 (
talk)
07:29, 29 April 2009 (UTC)reply
The concept of
sin is highly notable, which is why we have an article on it; but notability isn't the issue here. The problem is neutrality, and since "terrorist" is a label attached only by opponents of a particular use of violence, it is as biased a word as "sinner". If we keep
Category:Terrorists, why not also establish a
Category:Sinners? --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
02:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep. It's a tricky decision, as this category is perhaps the most controversial on Wikipedia, and the most prone to BLP violations; but nonetheless, I think it's worth keeping. Terrorists exist, and in many cases, that really is the best word for them. What are we going to do if this is deleted - recategorise these people into
Category:Guerillas,
Category:Paramilitaries,
Category:Freedom fighters, or something similar? The fact is, every possible term here is POV; not using 'terrorists' would be a POV choice as well. We should be extremely careful with this category, and default to removing it whenever the inclusion of a particular person is controversial; but the current definition is a reasonably good one, and is as close as we're going to get to an objective inclusion criterion.
Robofish (
talk)
05:04, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Absolute Keep. I don't really have time, nor would it be productive to go through all of the arguments. Here is what it boils down to, published reliable sources use the term terrorist all the time. As for the claim above that there is no "legal" definition of terrorism, that's wrong. There is a
legal definition in the US Code and similar legislation in other countries. Dictionaries and scholars also have all offered their own definitions, and yes there's some variance but they all express the same basic elements. Yes, terrorism can be used pejoratively or to express a point of view, but so can words like "murder" or "murderer (e.g., "Abortion is murder" or "US soldiers in Iraq are murderers.") Every introductory class on international relations today includes a section on terrorism, and every half-decent IR program in the world offers entire courses on terrorism. It is an important phenomenon documented to an incredible extent in academic literature. Categories exist for a reason, to help group similar articles, and that is exactly what this category does.
Cool3 (
talk)
05:29, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
I would also like to direct everyone's attention to the first chapter of Bruce Hoffman's book Inside Terrorism, entitled "Defining Terrorism". In that chapter, Hoffman, probably the world's leading scholar of terrorism, grapples with the issue of how to define terrorism and why it is so difficult to do so. I would love to quote the entire article here, but I think that might exceed the limits of fair use. In any case, most libraries have a copy of the article so you can take a look yourself if you'd liked, but I'll just draw attention to his conclusions:
“
By distinguishing terrorists from other types of criminals and irregular fighters and terrorism from other forms of crime and irregular warfare, we come to appreciate that terrorism is:
designed to have far-reaching psychological repercussions beyond the immediate victim or target;
conducted either by an organization with an identifiable chain of command or conspiratorial cell structure (whose members wear no uniform or identifying insignia) or by individuals or a small collection of individuals directly influenced, motivated, or inspired by the ideological aims or example of some existent terrorist movement and/or it leaders; and
perpetrated by a subnational group or nonstate entity
”
Hoffman's chapter has been widely reprinted in anthologies and edited volumes on terrorism, so if you don't have access to that book, pick up nearly any collection from the last few years, and you'll find it. Why? Because Hoffman does a very good and scholarly job of defining terrorism.
Cool3 (
talk)
05:53, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Please note, that what appears to be the full text of the chapter is available online
here. I very much encourage everyone to read the article.
Cool3 (
talk)
06:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
But we don't use Hoffman's definition. And even if we did, it'd still be OR because we're using that definition to categorise people without reliable sources that they are terrorists under that definition. Sceptre(
talk)15:59, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
note: this is about Category:TerrorisT not Category:TerrorisM. While many people will agree that terrorisM exists (and might be defined as Hoffman does), the inclusion of people into that so defined category might have some OR problem. Of course, a US court can convict a person because of § 2331; that person can be called a terrorist. So there seems to be a good NPOV and NOR criterion to establish category membership. As it is now, however, a court verdict does not seem to be required for inclusion, which might be a problem
Jasy jatere (
talk)
09:44, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep Providing it's well sourced i don't see a problem. There's plenty of persons who can be added without any controversy. Politically motivated denials of such should not be allowed to effect the project. Though this is an example of a subject where a list might be more informative, we just have to be careful with the entires. --neon whitetalk09:48, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Keep Per Robofish and Sceptre's arguments above. This reminds me of the pseudoscience page/category in that there is a heck of a lot of argument about inclusions/exclusions and it can get pretty heated but it fills an important void.
Sifakatalk20:07, 4 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Several now well respected figures were in their day known as terrorists, and some branded terrorists by various governments are not considered so by large groups of people. It's asking for a POV war. (Note: I do believe certain people are terrorists but I am taking an objective line here as Wikipedia is the sum of all of us, not just one random guy's opinions :))
Orderinchaos01:56, 5 May 2009 (UTC)reply
I, just like Orderinchaos, believe that certain people are terrorists. I also believe that wikipedia is not censored, so it should be possible to state that fact. However, there is relatively little added encyclopaedic value in stating "X is a terrorist" as compared to "Bolivia/US/Russia considers X a terrorist". From editing Sri-Lanka-related articles, I know how much time and energy it takes to quell "X is a terrorist" discussions and to get editors to actually improve the content of the encyclopaedia, instead of slinging mud at each other. I would invite everybody who thinks that this category is fine to spend a week or two editing on a topic where this question arises. Maybe this category is technically correct, but it is simply not worth the effort of filling MB of talk pages with discussions about it. My ! ote is thus weak delete, but I might be convinced to change if the definition of membership is changed in such a way that the inclusion criteria are hard and fast, e.g. conviction following § 2331 or similar paragraphs.
Jasy jatere (
talk)
05:08, 5 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Not with a ten foot pole. I've taken my turn in the terrorist freedom fighter dunk tank. So now that I'm on the discussing side of the discussion, I find that Orderinchaos said exactly what I was going to. Saves me from having to type it all in; a little copy and a paste, and voila! Delete One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Per Orderinchaos. --
Kbdank7114:23, 5 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Sure, there are borderline cases, but every category has those. For every Nelson Mandela there's a an
Ikuo Hayashi or
Osama bin Laden. What matters on Wikipedia is the view in reliable, published sources. It's not pushing a POV to say that Bin Laden is a terrorist; I can point you in the direction of hundreds of articles in peer-reviewed journals, thousands of stories in the news media, and hundreds of books that will make that claim. It is POV-pushing to say that Bin Laden is not a terrorist. Show me one reliable source (not just some jihadi website) that says bin Laden is not a terrorist. It's sort of like
Category:Pseudoscience, proponents won't like be grouped as pseudoscience, but when there's a broad consensus in the community of scholars, Wikipedia makes the call. Individual, borderline cases should be discussed on talk page until a consensus is achieved.
Cool3 (
talk)
12:45, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Wrong. Wikipedia should not make a call. It falls to the reliable sources to do that. And as each reliable source will use a different definition, we have an NPOV (and, by extension, a BLP) problem if we pick one. And if we have our own definition, there's an OR problem. And if we have "People designated as terrrorists", we have inappopriate categorisation. This is unlike psuedoscience, which has a much clearer and non-controversial definition. Sceptre(
talk)14:00, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
The precise wording may vary, but the result is the same. By any reliable source definition, Bin Laden is a terrorist. Really, provide me even just one article from a peer reviewed journal saying he isn't and I'll agree with you.
Cool3 (
talk)
19:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
I'm not going to because I've been through this before, and people invariably move the goalposts. It's not Bin Laden which is why I want the category deleted. It's the borderline cases. Take Nelson Mandela, for example, and the IRA.
Ken Livingstone was arguably famous for loudly disagreeing with the Thatcher government about those two. And by some definitions they are, and some definitions they're not. Sceptre(
talk)20:15, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Comment: As Sceptre has pointed out, there are likely a lot more questionable entries than there are indisputable ones. Most people would accept Bin Laden and Hayashi as simply insane religious fanatics without any truly attainable goals (I'm borrowing from Reza Aslan's "How to Win a Cosmic War" here). But a great proportion (likely a majority) of the individuals contained in this category have logical, albeit extreme, political goals, like independence. I would argue that to categorize them as "terrorists" is politically biased. I realize this is just my definition, but that's the problem: everyone has a different definition. That's why the category should go. -
TheMightyQuill (
talk)
20:42, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
I'm just wondering how
Al Jazeera and the other Islamic press characterize Bin Laden? Surely such press counts a reliable source which if we are to be truly neutral we should give as much weight to as the western press.--
Salix (
talk):
21:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
I went down that road months ago on
Talk:Osama Bin Laden. The answer is that he tends to have a relatively good approval rating in Islamic countries; way more than Bush's in America at the same time. However, that doesn't matter because public opinion apparently isn't a RS for opinions. Sceptre(
talk)23:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete "Targeting civilians" civilian and non-combatant are not the same thing. For example if a soldier was building a
sangar in Northern Ireland, was he a legitimate target of the IRA? If so what if the work was contracted out to civilian builders did the man building a sangar suddenly stop being a legitimate target? What happen if the contractor was a part time soldier in the UDR was he only a legitimate target when on duty? Is there a difference between attacking armed police in NI and unarmed police in the rest of the UK? What about the IRA
attack on Downing Street, were ministers in a war cabinet although civilians a legitimate or illegitimate target? What about targeting civilian infastructure that has dual use. What about targeting the City of London so that costs of the damage was so high that the insurance companies would not pay forcing the British government to cover the costs as war damage, hence forcing a political recognition of the action as a war action and not a criminal action (since the end of internment something the IRA had been fighting for --that their cause was more than a criminal conspiracy) etc etc. --
PBS (
talk)
21:07, 6 May 2009 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:Graph models (statistics)
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:rename. Per nom, if this turns out to be problematic, we can rename it back to add a disambiguator.
Kbdank7114:25, 5 May 2009 (UTC)reply
Comment I'm a little concerned that the proposed name might be too broad. There are a lot of things which could be called a graphical model. For example this journal
Graphical Models covers a large numbers topics closer to computer-graphics than graph-theoretic statistics. --
Salix (
talk):
18:56, 29 April 2009 (UTC)reply
That is true, but the
graphical model article doesn't have any disambiguation links, so this doesn't seem to have been a problem so far. Should it arise in future, I think we could rename it again. —
3mta3 (
talk)
15:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:People from Geneva
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Do not rename. While the canton and the city are different, the city dominates the entire canton. Geneva has about 185k population, the entire canton about 440k, but of the other 44 municipalities, only 1 has a population of over 30k and only about 5 are over 10k. So nearly half of the population of the canton is in the city and most of the rest are in neighboring cities. Historically, Geneva has dominated the region, and the villages in the canton mostly just fed into the city. The city was the canton and still is pretty much.
Tobyc75 (
talk)
18:41, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
As a general rule I would say no. This is the problem with shared place names in the same area. Las Vegas is a city and a brand. The mayor promotes events outside of the city where he is elected as being Las Vegas events. LA is a city and a county. So in my option we need to be
precise with category names to make it totally clear from the category name what is covered. Leaving it to opinions or interpretations is not a good idea.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
01:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Oppose rename Why make category names longer and more complex than needed? The term "Geneva" is generally understood to mean the city and as Tobyc75 points out, the canton and the city seem to be seen as virtually the same entity. Indeed the article
Geneva is about the city, not the canton and does not point to a disambiguation page. The category for the canton is already sufficiently disambiguated and further notes about the category can be added in prose to the category page. --
Mattinbgn\talk02:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:WHO people
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:Medical disasters
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale: Medical disasters sounds like something that happens to an individual during surgery. A health disaster is something that affects the wider population which is what the articles in the category are about. --
Alan Liefting (
talk) -
09:36, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
I have added the (only) sub-cat to this nomination. Rename both per nom - "health" is clearly the more appropriate term to use for these categories. Notified creator with {{
subst:cfd-notify}}Cgingold (
talk)
12:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete both - in the absence of any possible objective standard of what constitutes a "health disaster". Similar to various "crises" categories that were discussed a month or so ago and deleted on the same grounds.
Otto4711 (
talk)
17:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Rename per nom (with some tidying up needed as the category has started to bloat) - Otto, the disaster categories have been around for many years (since September 2005 in this case). One of the misgivings I have about the way CfD operates is that it can take years for those active at CfD to turn their attention to a particular set of categories. Would it not be better to discuss the overall structure of a particular area of categories in one go, and sort out what should and shouldn't be categorised and how, rather than chipping away piecemeal years after something has been around and used by many readers for over three years? If you are set on deletion for this category, can you suggest where the articles go instead so that people browsing
Category:Disasters can find things in logical places? Has anyone ever tried using the grok stats site to get an idea of how much certain categories are used - i.e. by the silent majority? For example, Category:Medical disasters has been viewed
1246 times in January 2009,
1460 times in February 2009 and
1364 times in March 2009. Now, we can't be sure why people clicked on the links, or where they arrived from, but surely that means something? Compare it to the traffic through Category:Disasters (
1124 times in January 2009). Here's an interesting one:
Category:Pandemics view stats for April 2009 - below 30 views per day for most of the month, then a sharp rise due to the news headlines about the
2009 swine flu outbreak - 319 views today alone. Of course, compared to the views of the article itself, that's peanuts. Three views yesterday (when it was created), and
6130 views today (actually, 319 compared to 6130 is pretty respectable - around 5%, which is probably a better ratio of article to category views than seen for some categories). Conclusion: categories are viewed much less than articles. But still, I hope I haven't gone too far off track. The medical disasters category structure as been around for a long time with no objections, and will likely be popular in the coming days, so whatever name it has, so the main category and its subcategories should, in my view, be kept.
Carcharoth (
talk)
21:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC) I haven't been active at CfD for ages, so if a vox populi argument like this is commonly made and has been rejected in the past, forgive me.reply
The problem remains that there is no objective criteria for what constitutes a "health disaster" which leads to the hodge-podge of stuff that's currently in the category. It's capturing everything from toxic waste sites which may or may not have had any effect on human health (which leads to questions of
original research) to disease outbreaks to the 1982 Tylenol murders. There's no unifying theme here, because of the subjectivity issues. I think these articles can find better homes in other more specific categories, for instance
2006 North American E. coli outbreak in
Category:2000s medical outbreaks, rather than the vague and subjective "disasters" structure. I haven't looked at the rest of the disaster category structures but whether they stay or go doesn't necessarily have any bearing on these categories.
Otto4711 (
talk)
02:03, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
It's at times like this that I wish I could point to what the category looked like when I created it. Kind of click a "revert back to the nice tidy category that used to be there". Is it acceptable to clean up categories during a CfD?
Carcharoth (
talk)
02:38, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
It's not at all unusual for categories to accumulate unwanted detritus over time, so a bit of judicious pruning would not be objectionable. (I would do it myself, but I don't have the time right now.)
Cgingold (
talk)
03:41, 28 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete unless there is some consensus for a new name that is effective and not subjective. At this point, I suggest relisting to see if some kind of consensus can be achieved. I'm not sure that disasters is really the correct name there. I do wonder if these break down into some subcategories. One for malpractice types of events affecting large groups of people. Another for manufacturing caused health issues and another for inappropriate storage or release of chemicals.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
07:13, 9 May 2009 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:Sandboxes
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:Rename. This category name looks like articles about sandboxes, like
this, belong in it. This category is actually intended for Wikipedia sandboxes.
עוד מישהוOd Mishehu07:59, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete - Is there actually any benefit to grouping all user sandboxes in a category? What possible use is there to seek out other users' sandboxes? What benefit will keeping this category provide Wikipedia? If someone can come up with one, I'd be open to keeping. If no consensus to delete, I support the proposed rename.
VegaDark (
talk)
20:22, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
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Category:Universities and colleges in Australia
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:Delete. This category is redundant, given the existence of
Category:Universities in Australia. The word "College" in Australian English is not a synonym for University, but means at least three entirely different things.
Conflating all these entities into this category is confusing, both to Australian readers and editors, who have misused this category and to readers elsewhere who are presumeably mislead by the incorrect use of this category. The category should simply be "Universities in Australia", the universal and generic term for these institutions in Australia.
Mattinbgn\talk06:17, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete per nominator - btw 'Institutes of Tertiary Education' no longer exist in Australia - we used to have 'Institutes of Technology' but they are now universities.
SatuSuro11:46, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
Delete or merge per Occuli. "Tertiary institution" is correct, "university" is correct, "college" in Australian English is next to meaningless.
Orderinchaos13:53, 1 May 2009 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
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Category:Universities and colleges in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:Rename. This was the focus of a previous rename proposal that did not reach a consensus after the lead article was moved. This rename is more descriptive of the area covered by the category and mirrors the name of the lead article.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
06:10, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
The article and previous discussions do not make this totally clear. It appears that the name is actually 'The Research Triangle' and as such it should be capitalized. If the grammar experts find otherwise, it is not an issue for me.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
23:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)reply
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Category:Independent Subway System (New York City)
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Comment; I created this category for two reasons; 1)To distinguish the system from the BMT & IRT and 2)With the assumption that there may be or may have been another Independent Subway System somewhere in the world, even if it translates into some other language. If this isn't the case, I have no other choice but to reluctantly support the renaming. ----
DanTD (
talk)
17:37, 30 April 2009 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
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Category:IND Culver Line stations
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.