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October 29

Category:American pescetarians

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. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:30, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Category:Pescetarians isn't so full that we need to start subdividing it by nationality. Bencherlite Talk 21:43, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Comment. One wonders if a diet you may have used is defining in any way, shape or form. Vegaswikian ( talk) 23:02, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
    • The only other related discussions I found were these two in 2008, one of which you in fact closed, VW! Bencherlite Talk 23:10, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
      • Closing does not express an opinion, it is simply an action based on the merits in the discussion. But my question still stands. Is this defining in any way? Vegaswikian ( talk) 00:23, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
        • I am well aware of the role of a closer, having closed many discussions at CfD and other venues in my nearly five years as an admin. I was just noticing the minor coincidence, that is all. Bencherlite Talk 08:21, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
          • Ah, I read that in a different way. I love how precise the English language is. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:56, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete diatery choices are ephemeral and changing, and not a worthwhile or notable way to categorize people. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:02, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per JPL. Also, BLP concerns and verifiability concerns. Benkenobi18 ( talk) 05:24, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • I have now nominated the parent category and two further by nationality subcategories, created since the onset of this discussion, for deletion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_October_30#Category:Pescetarians. Bencherlite Talk 08:21, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete - as valid and valuable as Category:Fooians who eat Marmite, and to be treated in the same manner as that one would. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 08:30, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete - I can think of a few notable vegetarians, but pescetarians? (I have never even heard the word mentioned on TV.) Oculi ( talk) 10:42, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete - not defining. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 03:55, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Nymf hideliho! 09:27, 4 November 2012 (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:Images of The Lovin' Spoonful

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: speedy rename WP:C2C. – Fayenatic L ondon 21:06, 4 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: That's what it is. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 17:06, 29 October 2012 (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:Jackie Jackson

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. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:28, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Too little content. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 17:01, 29 October 2012 (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:The Jazztet albums

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: Merge. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:29, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: The Jazztet is a redlink. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 16:57, 29 October 2012 (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:Political prisoners and detainees of China

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: merge. Essentially it boils down to this: can the community justify a category for political prisoners in China after deleting a general category for political prisoners, not just recently but in the past as well? The answer - based on the arguments below, primarily for the sake of consistency and avoiding POV - is "no". One person's political prisoner is another person's common criminal. Objective categorisation is possible in some respects, as mentioned during the discussion, but not using "political prisoner" terminology. This discussion is *not* the appropriate venue to call for the overturning of the result of the previous decision, let alone for me to overturn it. Bencherlite Talk 02:31, 7 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Merge, as a followup to CfD September 12 discussion on 3 similar categories.
There is no neutral and objective way of determining whether a prisoner is a " political prisoner"; the concept has a long history and is widely used in many contexts, but its application is frequently subjective. There are some extreme cases where such categorisation may appear straightforward, but there are many more where the application of the "political" label is POV.
That is why Category:Political prisoners has been deleted at two previous CfDs ( 2008 September 17 and 2006 November 22), and by-country categories have been deleted on many occasions, most recently at CfD September 12.
If any editors are inclined to argue for keeping this category, please may I ask that they first take the time to study the previous lengthy discussions, and explain what has changed since then or why they think those discussions were deficient. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:23, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep Political prisoners—people detained solely for their ideas—are different from people detained for other crimes, and there are loads of reliable sources that use this term and list these people (and thousands of others) as political prisoners. As such, this is a useful category, supported by good sources, and it aids in the navigation for a number of interested projects. And there is a neutral and objective way of determining who is a political prisoner: if a perponderance of reliable sources describe them that way and/or if they were charged for political crimes. This may be difficult for those born and raised in liberal democracies to grasp, but in China, there are laws criminalizing certain political positions and ideas. People charged under those laws are political prisoners. Ditto people detained without trial for being "counterrevolutionaries," etc. I don't think there is any dispute in reliable sources that the people listed in this category are anything other than political prisoners. Homunculus ( duihua) 17:12, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
    Hmomunculus, it sounds like you are trying to have a re-run of the CfD September 12, where similar arguments were rejected. The general principle is decided; at this point the question is the narrower one of whether China should be an exception.
    I think you would do better to avoid suggesting that other editors have difficulty grasping things. The points you make about China are not unique to China: the liberal democracies" (as you call them) also criminalise some positions (e.g. racial hated in the UK, Nazism in the UK) and they also detain people without trial (e.g. at Guantanamo Bay and in Northern Ireland). Using your own turn of phrase, can you grasp that?
    As to a lack of reliable sources, are you really trying to claim that Chinese media describe these people as "political prisoners"? Or are you just reading "counterrevolutionary" as "political"? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:10, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
First, don't assume that my comment above was directed at "other editors". It wasn't; it's a general observation about the attitudes of people who never had the misfortune of living under authoritarianism. Your comment was personalized, however, so I will address you now. I don't think it was at all obvious in the previous discussion that my arguments were rejected by anyone other than yourself. You've argued repeatedly that the labeling of these individuals as political prisoners is subjective and thus violation of NPOV, and it appears that you believe this consideration trumps all usefulness for the people who actually edit in this topic area. Yet neither you nor anyone else has produced evidence of reliable sources debating the application of the term to the Chinese prisoners listed. Similarly, I don't think any reliable sources could be found arguing that China's anti-sedition law—let along the labels "reactionary" or "counterrevolutionary"—are something other than political crimes. But you're welcome to try to prove me wrong—perhaps you can find a reliable source saying that Liu Xiaobo was incarcerated for something other than his political positions. Homunculus ( duihua) 19:32, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Homunculus, you are discussing things with other editors, so the the plain reading of your comments is that this is where they were directed.
Your suggestion that I "believe this consideration trumps all usefulness for the people who actually edit in this topic area" is significant, because it displays two very basic misunderstanding. Firstly, please do read WP:ITSUSEFUL. And secondly, Wikipedia is created for readers, not for the convenience of some its editors. WP:NPOV is a core policy, and cannot be set aside simply because some editors find it convenient to do so. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:54, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
My apologies if offense was caused. I have read WP:ITSUSEFUL. It states: "There are some pages within Wikipedia which are supposed to be useful navigation tools and nothing more—disambiguation pages, categories, and redirects, for instance—so usefulness is the basis of their inclusion; for these types of pages, usefulness is a valid argument." As to NPOV, you keep insisting there's a violation here and that the labeling of these individuals is subjective, but have still not produced any reliable sources that would support your position. Meanwhile, loads of reliable sources call them political prisoners or prisoners of conscience. The category represents the views of the reliable sources, so I see no problem. We're just going to have to agree to disagree. Homunculus ( duihua) 20:08, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
As above, navigational utility does not trump the core policy of WP:NPOV.
I'm not sure what you mean by saying what I have not produced RSs. What are you trying to do? To have a blow-by trading of references on a string of individual cases?
I'll illustrate the point with one example, that of Liu Xiaobo. He is described by the Chinese embassy in Washington as having been "convicted of the crime of inciting subversion of state power"; by Xinhaua as "a convict from China". I don't read Chinese, so I don't have access to the rest of the Chinese news media, but it's quite clear that there is more than one significant view here.
Categorising him as a political prisoner chooses one of those POVs to the exclusion of the other; but omitting from Category:Political prisoners and detainees of China wholly excludes the other POV. That is a flagrant breach of the principles of WP:NPOV ... and that's an internationally-reported high profile case. For every example of such prominence, there will be many more where there are fewer western sources, leading to a less clearcut balance ... and if the category exists, every single one of those cases becomes a POV battleground. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:00, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • You seem to think that being a "convict" and being a "political prisoner" are mutually exclusive. They are not. Liu, and others in this category, was convicted of a political crime. He is thus a political prisoner.
  • The consensus in reliable sources is clear that these people are political prisoners. NPOV means representing the opinions in RS in proportion to their weight and prominence, and that's what's happening here. There is no problem. Homunculus ( duihua) 21:14, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • This is getting worse all the time. It seems that unless the sources specifically says "not a political prisoner", you count that as having no weight against a source which says that someone is a political prisoner.
    By that logic, if twenty sources say "X is a criminal", and two say "X is a political prisoner", then the lack of denials means that you will claim that balance of sources label this prisoner as political.
    It seems that your version of NPOV amounts to sources which don't address the question in your terms. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:00, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
For the third and final time, calling someone a "criminal" and a "political prisoner" are not mutually exclusive. If someone is convicted under a political crime, they are both convicted criminals and political prisoners. Homunculus ( duihua) 07:30, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Exactly as I thought. No matter how many sources say "X is a criminal", Humunculous wants them categorised as a "political prisoner" unless the other sources explicitly deny that they are political, even if those sources use a different label. If applied more generally, this is a recipe for priveliging fringe views, because many claims are not specifically denied.
Try applying this to a common situation: disputed convictions. X is convicted, and plenty of sources report him as a convicted criminal. A few scholarly sources report that the conviction was unjust; then by Humunculous's logic we would categorise that person as "unjustly convicted" because the other sources don't deny it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:51, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Your argument here is getting very WP:POINTY. I would never propose such a category for the "unjustly convicted." I don't think you understand my position. You argued before that in the cases of Bradley Manning, Leonard Peltier, Pussy Riot, and others, "there is a consistent and reasoned set principles labeling their imprisonment as political ... and similarly consistent and reasoned set principles for denying them that label." That is true for those individuals, and there are indeed plenty of sources that dispute that their imprisonment is political. It is also true for the broader category of American political prisoners (for instance)—lots sources that can be found disputing the existence of political prisoners in the US. But this is not true of China, and is not true of a single one of the people named under this category. We need to follow what the independent, reliable sources say. Thousands upon thousands of high quality RS say that China has political prisoners. It is absolutely not a fringe view. Homunculus ( duihua) 06:14, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
You should read WP:POINT before referring to it.
This point is also fairly simple. Your claim that there is no dispute about them being political prisoners is based on two points of selection bias.
First, you rely overwhelmingly on sources based outside China. It is a country of over 1 billion people, with a huge range of media ... but the references you choose are from those outside that enormous pool of sources.
Secondly, you exclude all the sources which do not explicitly deny your hypothesis, even though they label the prisoners differently.
Thirdly, you repeatedly use as a source a partisan project set up by a legislature hostile to China. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:46, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep If the article shows substantial RS discussion of the person as a political prisoner or detainee, it would clearly qualify for this category--and I think almost all of the articles in the section seem to be quite clear about the matter. The most recent of the previous discussions asserted to be precedents discusses only one Chinese example, Liu Xiaobo, and asserts him without any opposition to have clearly been a political prisoner. The Sept 12 discussion did discuss China, but, as BHG said, it was asserted that China was a clear exception-- Hence this CfD. So I don't see how a mere referral to the arguments there is meaningful. We need arguments for deletion specifically based on the possible ambiguity for this instance. DGG ( talk ) 19:39, 29 October 2012 (UTC) . reply
    • DGG, if I understand your position correctly, it is a very odd one.
      You appear to be arguing that for one country only we should have a category political prisoners, but that we should not have similar categories for people imprisoned on allegedly-political grounds elsewhere. Is that really what you want? Or are you trying to reopen the wider question? It has to be one of the other, so which is it?
      Your claim that the question of the Chinese example was not addressed is wrong. I specifically addressed that question of high-profile individual examples, but noted that

      It's very easy to find extreme cases such as Aung San Suu Kyi or Alexander Solzhenitsyn where there is overwhelmimg agreement, but for every one of those high-profile hardcore examples there are hundreds of others where use of the term causes a huge POV dispute. For example, take any one of Bradley Manning, Leonard Peltier, Bobby Sands, Nicky Kelly, Mordechai Vanunu, Jonathan Pollard, Archbishop Makarios, and you will find that there is a consistent and reasoned set principles labeling their imprisonment as political ... and similarly consistent and reasoned set principles for denying them that label.
      The category system, with its unqualified binary choice between inclusion or exclusion, cannot present these different views in accordance with the core policy WP:NPOV, which explicitly requires us to present opposing views in a balanced way.


      In the specific case of Liu Xiaobo, the article says that he was imprisoned in the 1990s for "for disturbing public order” (a charge which exists in most countries) and in 2008 for "suspicion of inciting subversion of state power", a charge similar to those which exist in many other countries. Make what you will of those charges, but labelling them as "political" is just as POV as labelling it as "criminal". There is more than one view on these matters, and whichever view we personally hold, we should use the category system to apply an unqualified label of "political prisoner".
      DGG appears to be arguing that in China, none of these problems of nuance exist; that China is a unique case of a country where, unlike Russia or the Soviet Union or the United States or Chile or Argentina or South Africa or Egypt, there will rarely or never be any POV dispute as to whether someone is or is not a political prisoner. That's a weirdly extreme position to take, and a highly implausible one. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:26, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Liu Xiaobo is not exceptional among political prisoners; he's just very well known. About half the people in this category were charged under the same anti-subversion law as Liu. Many of the others were imprisoned for even more overtly political crimes. Where are these "consistent and reasoned set principles for denying them" the political prisoner label? Again, we're talking about China, not about Bradley Manning et al. Homunculus ( duihua) 20:40, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
You seem to reckon that because it's China, it's fine to exclude certain POVs, and to rely on the preponderance of non-Chinese sources. This logic is a million miles from WP:NPOV.
The principles for denying the Chinese prisoners the political label is simply that per my refs above they were convicted of charges such as trying to overthrow the state, which is a crime in many countries (I wish it wasn't a crime, but that's my POV) ... and the Chinese media and govt do not agree that they are political prisoners. We have already decided, in repeated discussions, that "political prisoner" categories should not exist either in general or for other for other specific countries because of the category systems... so why exactly do you want to make China an exception? What precisely is it that makes you think that it is acceptable for us to have "political prisoner" categories for some countries but not for others?
Homunculus, you come across as someone committed to a set of political values that places a high priority on freedom of expression. That's fine, and it's a widely-held POV which I happen to share ... but it it is not a neutral POV, and in this case it is leading you down a path of trying to use the category system as a vehicle to trumpet one political perspective. If you were genuinely seeking a neutral approach to categorising this people, there is a very simple solution: categorise them according to the charge under which they were convicted, rather than by a value-judgement. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:28, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
For the record, I am not at all opposed to having this category for other countries where appropriate (the Soviet Union is a good example). But I generally don't like staking positions on topics that I don't know too much about, so I'll leave that debate to the editors active in those topic areas. The point I'm making—and what I think DGG was trying to convey—isn't that China is exceptional. It's just that we should assess things on a case-by-case basis, and this discussion is about China. Homunculus ( duihua) 21:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
You are trying to have it both ways.
If China is not exceptional, why are you arguing for it to be treated as an exception to the 6-year-old principle that we do not categorise people as "political prisoners"? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:52, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
There is no such principle. Wikipedia is not governed by precedent, and consensus can change. Actually, It already did: in the previous CfD, there were 3 votes to delete the categories, and 6 votes to keep them. [1] Right or wrong, the closing admin's decision to delete related categories for other countries did not reflect consensus. Homunculus ( duihua) 00:06, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Sounds like you are vote-counting, but WP:NOTAVOTE. The keep arguments included the editor who asserted this argument also applies to people sent to Gulag on official political charges, like "spies, terrorists, saboteurs". If we go down that route, then every convicted spy would be categorised as a political prisoner, as would everyone convicted of an offence related to terrorism. That's gonna go down really well with our American readers, isn't it?
The question of exceptionalism is not complicated, so let me spell it out simply. There are two possible approaches here:
  1. We take a view on whether or not we have a global category for political prisoners, which may be sub-categorise as appropriate by country. That way either a) no prisoners anywhere get categorised as political, or b) any prisoner in any country can be categorised as political depending on the sources. Whatever the merits of either approach, that allows us to categorise prisoners from all over the world according to the same consistent set of principles.
  2. We decide that some prisoners of some particular countries may be categorised as "political", while prisoners of other countries may not.
Which approach do you support? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:31, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
I support the first option, but I don't think this discussion should be a referendum on the broader question. These categories should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Homunculus ( duihua) 01:23, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Reply That's a self-contradictory response. Either you support a general decision on whether we allow the categorisation of people as political prisoners, or you support a case-by-case approach to the by-country categories.
Note that the global Category:Political prisoners and detainees has already been deleted here, and has not been taken to DRV.
If we believe the first part of Homunculus's reply -- that zie supports a decision on the principle whether or not we have a global category for political prisoners, which may be sub-categorise as appropriate by country -- then Homunculus should be !voting to deleted this category in order to be consistent with the global decision.
This is a central point in this discussion, and it needs to be answered. C'mon, Homunculous -- which is it? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:00, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
I favor a global category, and believe that it should include sub-categories by country when the reliable sources support that classification. The reason I've been reluctant to allow myself to be dragged into the expanded debate with you is that it allows you to go into lengthy, off-topic theoretical debates without having to answer for the undeniable fact that there are political prisoners in China. You got the category for political prisoners in the USSR deleted (along with the global category) by pointing to the controversial status of American political prisoners. Those things should have been assessed separately. Homunculus ( duihua) 14:52, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Homunculous, either you have not been reading what I have written, or you are trying to misrepresent me. I have never disagreed with you that there are political prisoners in China. There are also political prisoners in many other countries. However, the reason that there has been a consensus to delete every other category of political prisoners which has ever existed on Wikipedia is that there is no neutral and objective test for what constitutes a political prisoner, so the term is WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE. Individual cases will be considered from different approaches in reliable sources. Those differing approaches and conclusions can be explained and attributed in body text, and contradictory view stated. That cannot be done in a category.
So we're back to the central issue. You say that people should be categorised as PPs if that is supported by a balance of reliable sources. I disagree, but let's take your view.
If prisoners can be categorised as political according to the evidence in the reliable sources, then I say that the only NPOV way of doing this is that the same reliable-source test should be applicable to any prisoner anywhere, whether in Belfast, Beijing, Brisbane, Banglaore, Boston, Buenos Aires, Baghdad, Bilbeis or wherever.
Do you agree with that proposition? Yes or no? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:24, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Another editor suggested that we need to divorce the questions of whether a category should exist from who should populate it. I agree that these are separate issues. On the existence of categories, if there is general agreement in high-quality RS that x country has political prisoners, then there should be a category for it. China easily satisfies that criteria, so it should have this category.
On establishing a criteria for inclusion within the category, it's unclear what you mean that the "same" reliable source test should be applied for all political prisoners. Maybe you can explain on my talk page and I can give a better response. Surely you don't mean that the same reliable source needs to be used to identify political prisoners across all countries. In the case of China, the best and most rigorous databases on political prisoners come from the Dui Hua Foundation and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China—both of them very well respected organizations, and neither of which reports on any other country. There may be similar databases that could be used for other countries—I understand there are official lists of Soviet political prisoners, for instance—but that's not my area of expertise. I think WP:RS, applied with common sense, should suffice to decide this issue. Homunculus ( duihua) 04:56, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Humunculous, you are making heavy weather of something which is not very complicated.
These discussions have thrown up 3 ways of approaching this:
  1. We categorise nobody anywhere as a political prisoner.
    (That has been the case for years, on grounds of subjectivity)
  2. Any prisoner anywhere may be categorised as political, if the reliable sources available in that case support it.
    (I dislike this because of the subjectivity, but it create no structural bias between countries)
  3. Prisoners may be categorised as political only if we have first taken a specific decision that prisoners of that particular country may be labelled as political.
Option 2 has been eliminated, because the decision to eliminate the global Category:Political prisoners and detainees has already been taken. That category is gone, and its existence is not up for grabs here; take it to DRV if you want to, but this discussion cannot restore it.
You therefore support option 3.
This means that even if there are lots of RS claims that a prisoner in another country is a political prisoner, we cannot categorise them that way unless we first make a prior screening decision that "x country has political prisoners".
That is blatant structural bias, laid bare by your desire that we "divorce the questions of whether a category should exist from who should populate it".
In other words, even if the reliable sources agree clear that a prisoner in some country is a political prisoner, that doesn't count in the world-according-to-Humunculous. In the Humuncilous plan, what we first do is to ignore all the evidence about any particular individual, and instead make a general abstract decision that "county X has political prisoners, who we may later identify."
The effect of this is blatantly biased. What it does is to single out those countries routinely denounced for having political prisoners, and allow their prisoners to be categorised as political ... while preventing the same categorisation of prisoners of other countries.
Your use of sources illustrates very neatly how selectively this works in effect. You referenced many articles to the Congressional Executive Commission on China, and you cite it approvingly here as evidence that China should be singled out. But as you say, it doesn't report on any other country ... so hey presto, we keep a category of political prisoners for China because the US Congress has decided that's the only country which it wants to study in this way. That's trampling on NPOV.
Humunculous, if you want any prisoners to be categorised as political, then go to DRV and try to reopen the case. But keeping this category without its global parent is an attempt to lock in structural bias. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:27, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
I have already stated my support for the global category. I have also stated that I support the categories for other countries when supported by reliable sources. But I am here to talk about this category, not others. The fact remains that the reliable sources are in overwhelming agreement that China has political prisoners. No independent, reliable source has been shown to argue otherwise, so I cannot agree that the category presents a NPOV problem. There are also many, high quality reliable sources that can be used to identify the individuals who should be named within this category. The category is therefore valid. If your sole concern is that it is unfair to have this category and not the others, then perhaps you should file the DRV to revive the global category. Homunculus ( duihua) 23:51, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Homunculus, your last sentence is a disgrace; please don't play such dishonest games. You know perfectly well that I have repeatedly stated that my primary concern is that we should have no such category, and that my secondary concern is that if we do have such categories we should not pre-select certain countries. It's set out clearly in the post you reply to, so there is no excuse for your mischief-making attempt at misrepresentation.
You may want to talk only about this category, but that's because you are quite happy to pursue the blatantly POV proposition that it is acceptable to apply the term only to certain pre-selected countries. That's a very neat way of locking out such categorisation of individual cases in countries which may not be reported as having a systemic set of political prisoners.
The NPOV problem is that you are trying to make China an exception to a broad principle. If you think the broad principle is wrong, then challenge it directly rather trying to make an end-run around it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 01:01, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Merge "political prisoners" is inherently an NPOV statement. Governments rarely if ever will describe their own prisoners in this way, so this is always going to be disputed. We should categorize by what is beyond dispute, that people are prisoners or detainees, not be the disputed question of whether they are part of some amorphous and undefined group known as "policial prisoners". John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:05, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
    • No, this is not the case. Consider Category:Communist rehabilitations (~200 pages). Those are essentially people who were officially recognized by their Communist or successor governments as unjustly imprisoned by the State for political reasons. And even Stalinist government officially considered them imprisoned for political crimes. A quick check of people included in the following categories: Category:Soviet dissidents, Category:Gulag detainees and Category:Sharashka inmates shows that almost all of them were described in RS as "political prisoners". Whether or not they were unjustly persecuted is not a matter of a controversy or historical debate, but mainstream view per multiple RS and usually officially admitted by their governments (e.g. in documents given to their relatives during Rehabilitation (Soviet)). If there are any concerns about any particular person, this should be discussed at article talk pages, and in the examples above the assignment would not be even a matter of serious debate. My very best wishes ( talk) 21:21, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Merge. The artificial and arbitrary distinction between the "political prisoner" and those detained for other crimes is an attempt to deny the legitimacy of the "political" prisoner's detention. That's why the term and its variations are primarily used by advocacy groups who campaign for certain prisoners' release. Some people are trying to create a "common sense" where we can all agree that Bradley Manning's imprisonment may be justified, but that Liu Xiaobo's imprisonment is never justified. But this is just a veiled appeal to Wikipedians' purported liberal politics and a codification of systemic bias. Subversion is not the only crime that advocacy groups call "political" in China: Amnesty called Tenzin Delek a "political prisoner" although he was accused of setting off a bomb; likewise Rebiya Kadeer although she was accused of leaking internal government reports to a foreign government agent.

    There is no neutral or systematic standard for determining whether somebody's imprisonment was "political" or not.There are cases where people are imprisoned "solely for their ideas" - or more accurately, their expression of them - such as Holocaust denial in Europe and inciters of racial and religious hatred in Malaysia and Singapore. The distinction between these crimes and that of subversion is blurry in those countries, because those laws are also designed to stifle the rise of political opposition - but from illiberal groups. Again, these people are only considered "political prisoners" by groups who agree with the ideals for which the prisoner was charged. If Wikipedia categornizes any prisoner as a "political prisoner", it makes a value judgment against or (by omission) for the imprisoning authority. That's not neutral. Shrigley ( talk) 02:36, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply

  • Keep. As previous. Should we now expect to see Alexander Solzhenitsyn listed as a prisoner of the Soviet Union? Benkenobi18 ( talk) 05:25, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
    • Reply. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is categorised as he has been for years: in Category:Soviet prisoners and detainees and various related categories such as Category:Sharashka inmates. His time as a Soviet prisoner is a well-sourced and uncontested point of fact, unlike the value judgements as to whether he was or was not a political prisoner. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:45, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
      • Comment. His arrest and imprisonment for political reasons is also well documented. As for this particular category I think it is a useful way to group people who share things in common with each other. If there are people that you believe should not qualify, the correct response is, "Keep, but prune", and go through on a case by case basis. That there are legitimate political prisoners is a reason to keep this category. That some listed are not legitimate political prisoners is not sufficient justification to warrant deletion. Benkenobi18 ( talk) 06:09, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
        • Benkenobi, you misunderstand the problem. My concern is not whether "some listed are not legitimate political prisoners"; my concern is that there is no stable and objective definition of what constitutes a political prisoner. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:24, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Comment: sourcing and false assertions. In the discussion above, User:Homunculus asserts in several places that this category is viable because it supported by "good sources". As above, I don't think that any number of sources overrides the essentially POV nature of the category, but I checked this assertion.
The are currently 16 pages in this category. I divided them into 4 groups:
Group Count Current version of articles
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, with multiple supporting references 0
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, with one supporting reference 0
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, but with no supporting references 2 Harry Wu, Liu Xiaobo
Pages which do not use the phrase "political prisoner" in body text 14 Zhou Decai, Hu Jia (activist), Zhang Zhixin, Zhang Xianliang, Yang Chunlin, Wei Jingsheng, Tan Zuoren, Shi Tao, Guo Quan, Jean Pasqualini, Lin Zhao, Zhao Lianhai, Li Zhi (dissident), Huang Qi
So, it turns out that Homunculus's assertions are false: not one of these articles is has a direct ref to a reliable source for the assertion that they are a political prisoner. As the articles currently stand, the category should be empty. The category was created by Humunculous and appears to have been populated entirely by Humunculous, so zie should have been well aware of the chasm between assertion and reality.
There are several possible explanations for why a category has been populated in this way, including; a) failure to cite available sources which confirm the assertion; b) synthesis (X was convicted of Y, and Y is cited elsewhere as a political crime); c) original research (X was convicted of Y, and an editor thinks that is political); d) POV-pushing.
I don't know which of those reasons apply in these 16 cases, but these 16 miscategorisations illustrate clearly how such a category can be abused. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
I'm quite confident that for every one of those 16 individuals (and for many more), there are multiple reliable sources that are a) already cited in the articles or b) that could be cited in the article to support the classification as political prisoners / prisoners of conscience. Admittedly it's not standard for each article to contain the phrase "x is a political prisoner," but if desired, someone could add that sentence to each page and then stack it with sources. It wouldn't be hard. For instance: Liu Xiaobo [2] [3] [4] [5] ; Hu Jia [6] [7] [8]; Huang Qi [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]; Lin Zhao [14] [15] [16](note that the library also uses 'political prisoner' as an indexing term); Jean Pasqualini [17] [18] [19] [20]; Shi Tao [21] [22] [23] [24]; Tan Zuoren [25] [26], etc.
Another note on the utility and appropriateness of this classification: in addition to libraries and news websites like the New York Times that use this same classification to aid in indexing and searches, there are several books and studies that make a point of examining the changing composition of China's labor camps and prisons in terms of the ratio of political prisoners. This indicates not only that these sources recognize the difference, but they even study it longitudinally. [27] [28] [29] [30] Homunculus ( duihua) 07:22, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply

Here's an updated table, by the way. I didn't spend too much time on this, and didn't finish updating all of them. Point is, these sources exist.

Group Count Current version of articles Updated versions of articles
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner with multiple supporting references 0 11 Hu Jia, Huang Qi, Zhao Lianhai, Liu Xiaobo, Jean Pasqualini, Guo Quan, Tan Zuoren, Wei Jingsheng, Shi Tao, Yang Chunlin (*note: including cases where people are described as prisoners of conscience, as they are a subset of political prisoners).
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, with one supporting reference 0 3 Li Zhi (dissident), Lin Zhao, Zhang Xianliang
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, but with no supporting references 2 1 Harry Wu, Liu Xiaobo Harry Wu
Pages which do not use the phrase "political prisoner" in body text 14 2 Zhou Decai, Hu Jia (activist), Zhang Zhixin, Zhang Xianliang, Yang Chunlin, Wei Jingsheng, Tan Zuoren, Shi Tao, Guo Quan, Jean Pasqualini, Lin Zhao, Zhao Lianhai, Li Zhi (dissident), Huang Qi Zhou Decai, Zhang Zhixin
  • Keep Having read the foregoing I find the arguments in favour of keeping by all proponents of the keep !vote outweigh those of those who wish to take the category down. I recognise that one may be both an 'ordinary' criminal and a political prisoner and that the terms are not mutually exclusive. I find the categorisation of 'political' to be not hard to determine, and suggest a requirement of this category, as with all categories, is that members must be declared in WP:RS to be political. Ideally that should also follow through to a verified statement in the article. However, we are discussing the category, not the articles within it. The category is valid and should remain. The articles placed in that category may be imperfectly categorised, a thing which is remedied on a per article basis. Those matters are separate matters. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
I wish these were separate matters; it would make the task much easier.
Unfortunately, this is not like Category:Living people, where there is an well-established set of objective criteria for whether people are alive, so we know that the RSs will be making the same assessment. Even for the theoretically more complex cases around brain death, most countries have a set of of procedures for determining whether someone is dead, so it is rarely a matter of dispute except for missing persons. If the RS assert that X is dead and Y is not, we know that they are talking about the same thing.
However, that is not the case for many other issues, which are subjective. That's why we have a long-standing guideline at WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE warning against the use of a subjective inclusion criterion, because the sources are call taking one POV or another.
In this case, we have a subjective category: there is no generally-accepted definition of what amounts to a political prisoner (PP), so when sources say that X is or is not a PP, we don't know that they are applying the same definitions. In a case such as this, where there is a clash of ideologies, the result depends entirely on which sources are selected. If we use sources from the liberal democracies, we will find often plenty of sources to say X is a PP ... but if we use Chinese sources, we will rarely find any which use that terminology.
The assessment here is even more complicated, because those who do not regard someone as a PP rarely go around trumpeting that fact. So we end up with the sort of position taken above by Homunculous, who demands sources to contradict the claims that someone is a PP despite knowing full well that such denials are rarely published.
There is a further problem here. We have repeatedly deleted the global category "political prisoners", and we recently deleted 3 similar per-country categories, so this is the only category for political prisoners on Wikipedia. If some RSs say that some someone is a PP in Russia or the USA, we can't categorise them as such, because there is no category for them.
That is blatantly and flagrantly biased. Can you imagine the outcry on Wikipedia if the situation was reversed, and we had a category system which was similarly biased against the United States? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 04:47, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
I have read your thoughts with care and considered my response to them. I consider that the arguments depend upon your statement: I wish these were separate matters; it would make the task much easier.
To me it is black and white. Those with WP:RS references that they are PP and PD in China are included in this category, one I believe to be valid. Those without are removed. And we make the absolute decision to separate the existence or not of the category form the membership of the category. A WP:RS reference is simply the door key for inclusion. I fear the deletion discussion is more about membership and politics per se than about pure 'Wikipedianess'
Of course we, the editors, determine what should and should not exist. In discussing it we must be very careful not to divert from the matter in hand when we discuss.
Putative anti US bias is a red herring, I fear. We must stand on different ground from that of a nationalist, patriot, Chauvinist (in its correct usage). Ours is to run an encyclopaedia with zero bias while documenting biases that exist if we can reference them.
There are often areas where I agree with your arguments. So far this is not one of them. I remain opposed to the deletion. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 18:08, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Our job is indeed to "run an encyclopaedia with zero bias", as you say. So why exactly do you support keeping a political prisoners category for China, when they have been deleted for every other country on earth? What is taht about, other than bias? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs)
Sorry to be dragging this out on other people's comments, your argument seems more appropriate as a reason to recreate categories for other countries than to delete this one. If reliable sources strongly support the concept of political prisoners in a given country, then the category should exist. There are some countries where the classification itself is controversial—not just in individual cases, but in general terms. Eg. plenty of reliable sources dispute the existence of American political prisoners, noting that the United States does not imprison people for the peaceful expression of their beliefs (though there may be politicized trials). But in the case of China, no such debate exists in reliable sources; the irrefutable consensus in independent, reliable sources is that this category of people exists. There are multiple databases tracking their existence, and there are thousands upon thousands of references to them in news article and scholarly works. The same holds true for some other states (North Korea and the Soviet Union spring to mind), and there should be categories for those people too.
You got the previous categories deleted largely by arguing that the classification of American political prisoners was controversial and failed NPOV. China is not the same as the United States, and the circumstances here need to be assessed independently. Simply pointing to the deletion of other categories is not a valid reason to delete this one. Homunculus ( duihua) 01:15, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Well, BHG, I support keeping this category because it is precise, defined to categorise member articles with precision, and precisely the class of category this encyclopaedia is intended to have, should have and does have unless there is a mistaken push to delete it. I will not rerun my comments about policing the article that are members. The category is distinct from its members. Your arguments do not convince me that you are correct. If the USA has no political prisoners, (a) good and (b) it does not require this category. If Foo has them then Foo needs this category. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 07:44, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
I don't think anyone is asserting that there are no American political prisoners. BHG's argument, as I understood it, is that the classification of political prisoners in certain cases is controversial and vigorously contested (she gave examples from the United States, Ireland, and Israel). Because categories offer only a binary choice—Foo either has political prisoners or it doesn't, x is a political prisoner or is not—they are not appropriate to represent issues where there is a wide spectrum of opinion. But even if one finds that argument compelling (I reserve judgement), what's true in Ireland, Israel and the United States is not true of China, the Soviet Union, Iran, or North Korea; in those cases, the consensus in independent, reliable sources is very clear: they have political prisoners, and lots of them. Homunculus ( duihua) 14:48, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nearly, Homunculous, but not quite; my view is not that "the classification of political prisoners in certain cases is controversial". Since there is no clearcut objective test for what constitutes a political prisoner, there is no way of resolving any dispute as to who goes in such a category, nor is there any way of ascertaining whether sources that use the term are talking about the same thing. That's why Category:Dictators was deleted: we can all agree that there is such a thing as a dictator, and in some cases we can find an overwhelming balance of sources to support that view. However, there are plenty more cases where the label is disputed, and we don't adopt the Humuculous approach of salami-slicing off the cases in countries which we believe to be clearcut, while preventing the categorisation in other cases.
In the Humunculous version of NPOV, if a country has lots of political prisoners, then we should categorise them as political ... but in cases where the sources don't claim that the country has lots of them, Humunculous is happy to leave us with no mechanism for categorising them that way.
However, H interrupted my reply to Fiddle Faddle. FF argues that if foo has political prisoners, then it requires a category for them. Not so; that's not how categories work. Categories are hierarchical, and for broad concepts we have a global category which may be subdivided by country. We don't have to have a by-country sub-category for everything; many categories such as Category:Gay politicians are not subdivided by country.
But if we decided that it was inappropriate (for whatever reason) to have a global Category:Gay politicians, then it would be POV to decide that some countries should categorise their politicians in this way, but not others. - BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:41, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete - whether or not categorizing people as "political prisoners" on not is a good idea is not at issue here. What is at issue is whether China should have such a category when the rest of the tree has been deleted. The answer is no. If someone wants to initiate a discussion at an appropriate forum to discuss the larger issue of categorizing "political prisoners" then I'm sure it would be lively. This isn't that discussion. Delete the sole remaining outlier. Buck Winston ( talk) 23:38, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
That's not an argument to delete this category. It's an argument to revive similar categories for other countries. I agree that, where supported by reliable sources, such categories should exist. A majority of editors in the last CfD discussion felt similarly, but they were deleted anyway. Homunculus ( duihua) 23:50, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Big Strong Keep and I'll explain why. References to Chinese political prisoners are found extensively in government reports, major news organizations, and scholarly writings—even in library indexing, as has been pointed out. Several reputable research organizations keep databases of Chinese political prisoners, not to mention groups like Amnesty International, so there are plenty of sources that can help determine inclusion in the category. It is a categorization of crime (or "crime" if you prefer), just like any other type of categorization of crime. What's the difference?
The argument to delete seems based on the fact that the Chinese government denies that there is such thing as political prisoners. The Chinese government also denies the Great Famine and Tiananmen Square Massacre; they deny engaging in espionage or cyberwarfare, and all sorts of other things despite irrefutable proof to the contrary. These denials are so far from mainstream understandings that they constitute WP:FRINGE theories. Ignoring them isn't a violation of WP:NPOV.
Here's a good example to make the point clear. We have a category for "LGBT people from Iran". By our friend BrownHairedGirl's reasoning, we should delete that category because the government of Iran denies the existence of LGBT people. That's obviously not how Wikipedia works. (Thank goodness.) TheSoundAndTheFury ( talk) 21:00, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep if Political prisoners don't exist, please delete that article then come back. Given that there are political prisoners, classifying them by country of detention seems the norm. We cannot dumb down the Wiki solely to give solace to dictators (which probably also don't exist under the logic espoused above). Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 03:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
    • Reply'. That's a straw man. AFAIK, nobody in any of the many CFDs on these categories has argued that there is no such thing as a political prisoner. The reason that such categories have been repeatedly deleted is that a) the classification of any individual as a political prisoner is subjective, and b) categories permit only a binary choice of inclusion or exclusion, which means that the category cannot reflect the divergence of views which exist in many cases, contrary to the requirement of WP:NPOV to present divergent views in accordance with their weight. We have similarly deleted categories for Sate terrorism and freedom fighters on grounds of subjectivity, despite having a whole article on state terrorism and a well-referenced section on freedom fighters. And one deletion of a freedom fighters category was supported by Carlossuarez46.
      Carlossuarez46 is also demonstrably wrong to say that "classifying them by country of detention is the norm". There is no other category of political prisoners, either globally or by country. If editors want to argue that case, it belongs in a discussion about a global Category:Political prisoners, not in a discussion about a unique category which exists for no other country. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:47, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
The majority consensus here, as with in the previous CfD, seems to be that the global category was valid. I support bringing it back. Homunculus ( duihua) 14:52, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
This discussion is not about that global category. If you want to restore it, then go to WP:DRV. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:18, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Comment wikipedia is not a democracy and not governed by majority rule. The problem is that "political prisoner" is a POV pushing term that is always meant to pass a value judgement on the inprisonment, while the fact that someone is held as a prisoner by a certain government does not pass any value judgement on the validity of the inrisonement, only state th fact that says it is done. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 16:17, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
It would certainly be a problem if we were to use a subjective, value-ladden term such as "virtuous prisoner" or "innocent prisoner." That's not what we're doing. Political prisoner is a term widely used by respected, reliable sources. The term 'political' itself is not inherently biased, and it does not to imply that a person's politics are noble or correct per se. It's really quite simple: a person imprisoned for their political ideas—such as for being a "rightist"—is a political prisoner. When reliable sources are in agreement on that fact, then we can say the same on Wikipedia. Homunculus ( duihua) 04:39, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Currently Merge, but I have a suggestion that it would be less POV if one make a category based on whatever the dissident was convicted of, eg Category:Chinese people convicted of subverting state power -- PCPP ( talk) 04:18, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
That is not a bad suggestion, but there's a problem: a significant number of Chinese political prisoners—both historically and today—were never criminally convicted. Many are imprisoned administratively through the reeducation-through-labor system, so we can't identify them by the charge they're imprisoned under. Homunculus ( duihua) 04:39, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Then what about "Category:People held under Reeducation Through Labor", similar to categories like Category:People held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp? There are plenty of other suitable category titles that avoids terms containing POV judgment.-- PCPP ( talk) 10:43, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • I reject that using the term "political prisoner" entails a POV judgement. Again, it is used by the most reliable and neutral sources (even libraries use it for indexing purposes), and there is extremely strong support in reliable sources for the concept of political prisoners in China. Reflecting that fact adheres to NPOV. It is the unsubstantiated POV of Wikipedia editors that the term is subjective in this case.
  • There's nothing wrong with having a category for Chinese RTL prisoners, but it doesn't solve our problem here. People held in RTL are not all political prisoners, just as people held in prisons are not political prisoners. At least half of the RTL population is petty criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes and the like. The whole purpose of this category is to group together people who are imprisoned for their political beliefs. A political dissident imprisoned in the RTL system has more in common with a dissident held in a prison than they do with the drug dealers. If we adopted your proposal, we would not have a category where all such political prisoners can be found together; people would need to search through at least six different categories of criminal charges, and then sift through the RTL prisoners as well, just to find all the people who share this easily identifiable characteristic of being political prisoners. Homunculus ( duihua) 14:11, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
May I suggest that you keep your own POV in check? "Political prisoner" itself is an inherent POV term, usually used to describe people who are imprisoned on false or trumped up charges, and can just be well used for people like Julian Assange or Mumia. And besides, one person's political prisoner is another person's criminal, and per WP:LABEL, such loaded words should be replaced in favor of more neutral wording. Furthermore, the Category:Chinese dissidents category already suffice, and there is nothing wrong with categorizing the prisoner by the offence he is convicted of, as similar categories exist for other crimes eg Category:People convicted of murder by the People's Republic of China.-- PCPP ( talk) 15:51, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
I support keeping categories of people by the actual charge under which they were convicted or detained. Whether that charge is "inciting subversion of state power" or "aiding the enemy", "subversion", being a "member of an illegal organisation", or "stirring up racial hated", categorisation in this form is NPOV. The reader can make up their own mind about whether to regard any of these charges as political, assisted by the various opinions in reliable sources which may referenced in the article. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:45, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Do you have any idea how many different statues and criminal and administrative provisions have been used to sentence political prisoners in China? There are 87. This is the number of unique charges that have been used to detain people recognized in reliable sources as political prisoners. Do you really think we should have that many separate categories just to identify political prisoners? And what would you name these categories? It's one thing to have a "Category:Chinese people imprisoned for subversion of state power." Quite another to have "Category:Chinese people detained for gathering to disturb order at railway stations or bus terminals, wharves, civil airports, marketplaces, parks, theaters, cinemas, exhibition halls, sports grounds or other public places, or to block traffic or undermine traffic order, or resist or obstruct public security administrators of the State from carrying out their duties according to law." (That's what Chen Guangcheng was sentenced under, and independent reliable sources agree that he was actually imprisoned for his activism against forced abortions. This is a NPOV concern, whereby we'd be giving credence to the Chinese government's narrative, even when reliable sources agree that the charge is bogus. Another example: the Chinese government calls Tibetans who travel to India without permission 'terrorists,' and sometimes sentences them as such. Should we really categorize those people are terrorists, even when no reliable sources would use the term? That is far more problematic than labeling them political prisoners per the RS). Or would you name the articles after the statute number, eg. 'Category:Chinese people sentenced under article 291'? This is an option that sounds nice in theory, but insofar as categories are designed to be useful navigational tools, not very practical or helpful. Homunculus ( duihua) 00:03, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Thanks, Humunculous. That clarifies your POV purpose much more than you realised.
  1. You want someone categorised as political for being "detained for gathering to disturb order". But people are imprisoned for similar offences in the United Kingdom
  2. Your alternative claim is that it was political because the charges were bogus, according to reliable sources. Check out the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four: imprisoned on bogus charges.
  3. You say that "the Chinese government calls Tibetans who travel to India without permission 'terrorists' and sometimes sentences them as such". And the UK uses terrorism laws against peaceful protestors, even arresting an individual heckler.
I selected the UK because it is the country most convenient to me for sourcing these things, but similar issues arise in many many countries. They nicely illustrate the subjectivity inherent in these categories, because the same charges against political activity are labelled as "political" in some countries but not in others. This is the core problem with any "political prisoner" category: there is no stable, neutral and consistently-applied definition of who is or is not a political prisoner.
Your fear that "we'd be giving credence to the Chinese government's narrative" is misplaced. We have Category:People convicted of murder, Category:People convicted of treason, Category:People convicted of treason, Category:People convicted of racketeering etc ... all of which are neutral because they record the fact that they were convicted under those charges (whether rightly or wrongly). Those categories do not pass judgement of the verdict, they just record the fact. (See for example Cameron Todd Willingham: he was convicted of murder, and is categorised accordingly. Despite overwhelming evidence in reliable sources that he was wrongfully-convicted, the category is accurate: he was indeed convicted. Concerns that the category would "be giving credence to the Texan government's narrative" would be similarly misplaced, because the category does not pass a value-judgement on the verdict.
Similarly, you object to categorising some of these people a "terrorists". If you had done a little more checking, you would have found that we have no Category:Terrorists: it was deleted in 2009 because, like "political prisoner" it is a subjective term. What we do have is Category:People imprisoned on charges of terrorism, which groups people by the fact of the charge rather than the subjective value placed upon it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:19, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
So, you think it's a problematic to use a term that is widely used in independent, reliable sources (political prisoner), but you see no such problem in uncritically adopting the accusations employed by the Chinese government, even though independent reliable sources vigorously dispute the legitimacy of those charges and the fairness of the trials. I think there would be some serious NPOV and BLP concerns with labeling someone a convicted terrorist when the reliable sources say they were imprisoned solely for their political or religious beliefs. It's a fact that Tibetans have been convicted of terrorism for traveling to India without a permit, sure. But it's also a fact that they're described in reliable sources as being political prisoners. If we want to follow WP:NPOV (and I do), then we should adopt the terms used by the preponderance of independent, reliable sources, and reflect the understandings of the expert community on these issues.
I should also say something about China's criminal justice system, as it might be useful for observers. In cases that are deemed political sensitive by Chinese authorities, the courts do not adjudicate independently. Judicial authorities are instead made to defer to the Communist Party's Political and Legislative Affairs Committee—a political organ—in making decisions on these types of cases. The former head of that organization makes statements to the effect of "All law-enforcement activities should be led by the Party. All reform measures should be conducive to the socialist system and the strengthening of the Party leadership." The head of the courts declared that "The power of the courts to adjudicate independently doesn't mean at all independence from the Party. It is the opposite, the embodiment of a high degree of responsibility vis-à-vis Party undertakings." The president, Hu Jintao, has declared that the country's "grand judges and grand procurators shall always regard as supreme the party’s cause." Now, there are plenty of cases where political authorities don't intervene in the legal process. But when we're talking about the people charged for their political ideas (aka political prisoners), the party takes the lead, and it's not even really fair to say anymore that they were convicted by a court of law; they were convicted by a back-room panel of party apparatchiks. The specific charges that are levied against these individuals—disrupting traffic, tax evasion, etc.—are often just concocted for PR purposes. And to be clear, this isn't just my opinion. This is what Chinese legal scholars say. I hope that's helpful. Homunculus ( duihua) 04:31, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Homunculus, there are huge problems with the fairness of the trials of many of the people executed in the United States; there are plenty of cases which have demonstrated in numerous reliable sources to have been wrongful convictions leading to the death of an innocent man. But we don't use the category system to make any editorial judgement on those convictions. What we do is per WP:NPOV, we explain and attribute the different views in the article per WP:WEIGHT, and we categorise those people according to the fact that they were convicted. That's all: just the verifiable fact that a conviction was made, without using the category system to judge whether it was right or wrong. If the conviction was overturned by a court, we categorised by the fact that he conviction was overturned, in Category:Overturned convictions by country.
But your latest reply goes even further than you have gone before. You are now setting your views on the Chinese judicial system as the basis for opposing even categorising people according to the fact of what verdict the courts hand down. You aren't content to simply let the reader decide from the sources cited in the article whether or not they think the verdict sounds plausible; you are insisting on an editorial pre-judgement that in China, we should not categorise convicted people according to the charges under which they were convicted.
How far do you want thus to go? Do you want to do this consistently, and examine every country to see whether the judicial process's conforms to Humunculous's view of due process before we categorise the fact that a conviction has been registered? Or do you just want to approach it like you approach the "political prisoner" category, and happily treat China differently to every country on earth? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:13, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
I have never proposed treating China differently from other countries; to the contrary, I've said repeatedly that I do not hold it to be exceptional, but that this discussion is about China. I would appreciate if you stopped misrepresenting my position.
My stance has consistently been that we ought to follow WP:RS and WP:NPOV in determining both which categories should exist and who should be placed within them. NPOV holds that we need to follow what the preponderance of independent, reliable sources says on a given subject. In this case, that means that the category for political prisoners in China should exist.
In determining other categories that should exist, we should examine the discourse in the best reliable sources to assess whether those proposed categories could present problems in terms of neutrality or BLP violations. I am not optimistic that an evidence-based discussion of that nature is possible in this forum, and in any case, this isn't actually the place for it. There are plenty of reasons why the proposal of listing political prisoners by the charge they were imprisoned under is potentially problematic (again, we're dealing with as many as 87 different statues for political prisoners. I have no idea how we would name them. Many political prisoners were never formally charged, and in other cases, the reliable sources can't quite figure out what provision someone was charged under. And then there's the inconvenient fact that they were not convicted by independent judicial authorities, but instead by a political party.) That's my opinion. Ultimately these are separate discussions. Homunculus ( duihua) 05:59, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
A politicised judicial system which upholds the status quo at the expense of justice? How completely unlike the system elsewhere.
I'm not misrepresenting your position; the problem is that you are trying to have it both ways.
We have already decided repeatedly that there should be neither a general category for political prisoners, nor a by-country category for any other country on earth. Whether or not any of us agrees with that decision, it stands as the context within which this decision is made.
You want to keep a category for political prisoners in China, so you are demanding that China remain an exception to the wider principle.
You can deny this all you like, but it remains true. If you don't like it, then stop defending China as an exception to the wider principle, and challenge that wider decision directly rather than trying an end-run around it.
You are also trying to have it both ways wrt to whether individuals can be categorised as political prisoners. At the outset of this discussion, on 29 October you argued that the categorisation should be applied " if a preponderance of reliable sources describe them that way and/or if they were charged for political crimes" ... but now you are saying that this should happen only if there is a separate decision as to whether we allow that form of categorisation for prisoners of that country. That creates the possibility that the RS point to an individual being a political prisoner, but we can't categorise them as such because a separate decision didn't allow the category to exist for that particular country.
So, which Humuculous should the closing admin believe? The one who argued at the outset that we decisions about categorising a person as a political prisoner be taken on a case-by-case basis? Or the one who argues now that this should depend on a separate screening decision about that country? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:46, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
WikiProject China has been notified.
Sorry, I should have done this when I made the nomination. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:38, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. According to nominator, There are some extreme cases where such categorisation may appear straightforward, but there are many more where the application of the "political" label is POV. Yes, indeed. So, what's the problem? Use the category in cases when it is clearly straightforward per multiple sources, rather than per anyone's subjective judgement. For example, these Chinese dissidents do belong there per sources. Even Chinese government considers them convicted for political reasons. Or consider many victims of Stalinist repressions. Even Stalin called them "terrorists" and "saboteurs" meaning "politicals", and of course all later Soviet and Western sources agree that the people were prosecuted for political reasons. My very best wishes ( talk) 21:08, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Merge. The categories for political prisoners have been deleted at least twice. Those voting keep are arguing that there are pure crimes of political opinion and that these crimes are unique to China and that there are sources which label these people political prisoners. This doesn't work. Political crimes don't punish opinion; China's legal code punishes proscribed expression or advocacy, and such limitations on the content and form or expression existed virtually everywhere. In the United States, people have been imprisoned for these political crimes. Clement Vallandigham was imprisoned during the American Civil War for the crime of advocating peace with the South. Emma Goldman was repeatedly imprisoned and eventually deported to Russia for advocating anarchism during the Palmer Raids in the First Red Scare. Gus Hall was imprisoned for years on charges of seeking the overthrow of the United States government for teaching – in the abstract – the ideas of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin during the Second Red Scare. Are there reliable sources referring to "American political prisoners"? there are. A country that did describe the people it captured as "political prisoners" was the British Empire: it issued so-called "political prisoners ordinances" - the Political Prisoners Ordinance of 1882 [31], the Ashanti Political Prisoners Ordinance of 1896 [32], the West Africa Political Prisoners Ordinance of 1900 [33] and so on. But China has never issued any "political prisoners" ordinances like that. Are there categories for American or British political prisoners? No. We just deleted a bunch – now we are supposed to make an exception for China, because it is our enemy? The participants voting to keep are actually introducing a systemic Western bias into Wikipedia and disregarding multiple instances of previous consensus. Zloyvolsheb ( talk) 02:28, 7 November 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:The Band of Blacky Ranchette albums

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. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:27, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: The Band of Blacky Ranchette redirects to Howe Gelb. Cf. Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_October_5#Category:The_Band_of_Blacky_Ranchette_albums. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 16:19, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:LGBT atheists and related categories

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. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:24, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply

Nominator's rationale: # Category:LGBT atheists was deleted in 2009 at this discussion per WP:CATGRS ("Do not create categories that are a cross-section of a topic with an ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, unless these characteristics are relevant to the topic"), and it has been twice speedily deleted since then as recreation of deleted content. This one should be salted.
  1. Category:LGBT agnostics was deleted in 2011 at [[ this discussion and breaches the CATGRS principle quoted.
  2. Category:Gay atheists has the same problem about the irrelevant grouping of topics in a category.
  3. Category:Gay agnostics – ditto.

Bencherlite Talk 12:44, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply

  • Delete Per nom and recreation of deleted content. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 16:22, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete; appears to be unencyclopedic cross-categorization. I was initially hesitant to delete because it seemed like part of the Category:LGBT people by religion tree, and LGBT Christians, Jews, Muslims are definitely relevant, but we have articles on homosexuality in those religions and no article on homosexuality and atheism or agnosticism. – Roscelese ( talk ⋅ contribs) 16:58, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Categories too far. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 21:44, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete because such cross-categories of religion and unrelated characteristics are discoraged. As it stands there are lots of trivial intersect categories we need to get rid of. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:08, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete and Salt to prevent further recreations. Benkenobi18 ( talk) 05:26, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. This gay/LGBT thing in categories is getting out of hand. Not every cross-section should have its own category. Nymf hideliho! 09:12, 4 November 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:Australian rules biography, pre-1880 birth stubs

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: no consensus.-- Mike Selinker ( talk) 23:46, 23 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Delete. Outlived usefulness. Propose migrating category and both templates up to parent ( Category:Australian rules biography stubs) Dawynn ( talk) 11:17, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep Please explain how it's "outlived usefulness"? The parent cat is only used for people with unknown birth dates. We still have 100s and 100s and 100s of articles not yet created, a few hundred would be pre 1880s, and are likely to be stubs to start. The-Pope ( talk) 11:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. Didn't we just go through this a month or two ago? What's changed since then? Jenks24 ( talk) 12:50, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Comment -- This has 20 articles, which is perhpas too small for a stub-category, but its sub-cat on 1870s births, has many more. This looks like a case for merger to me. However, categorising sportsmen by date of bith seems odd to me. Would it not be better to do it by the date when they became active in sport, or retired form it? Peterkingiron ( talk) 15:39, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • I just realised that the nominator created the 1870s cat a couple of days before this nomination. Having done that, this cat should be renamed pre-1870s, not pre-1880s. As to why we use date of birth and not date of activity, I guess it's a nice fixed date, compared to the possibly contentious decision of when they become "active". Also remember it's only stub sorting, which is just a convenient way to split up big cats. And I'm not going to be bothered going through all of them and changing them away from decade of birth. The-Pope ( talk) 12:54, 3 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • as the main group of bios to be created are ex players, and the most notable league only started in 1897, the number of notable pre 1870s births will be minimal. There is no reason to keep creating more 18#0s cats, nor to create a two level hierarchy. The-Pope ( talk) 16:46, 17 November 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:Gay dancers

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: Merge. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:22, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Added the one below now. Bencherlite Talk 13:02, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: I am sure we have had the discussion before about over-granular categorisation of LGBT people, and that this discussion was closed as migrating the populations of Gay Fooians back to LGBT Fooians and removing the over granular categories. If I am mistaken please speedy close this as a mistaken nomination. I cannot trace the prior discussions easily so I may be having a memory malfunction. There are some categories where subdividison is required, but I submit that this, while well meaning, is not one such. I can, of course, be persuaded otherwise. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 10:30, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • I'm indebted to you for finding that. I'm not sure about the Queer dancers category, but I believe that it should be included in your !vote. I am hazy about the significance of 'queer', as are many people. If I am incorrect in including it I hope for someone's opinion to justify its retention. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 12:37, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Request Can someone please point me to the discussion referred to by the nominator ("discussion before about over-granular categorisation of LGBT people... closed as migrating the populations of Gay Fooians back to LGBT Fooians and removing the over granular categories"). Thanks in advance Ottawahitech ( talk) 13:25, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • I have a hazy recollection that it was started by or included User:BrownHairedGirl if that helps. It feels as if it was a couple of months ago. My apologies if I am mistaken, the recollection is hazy at best. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 13:36, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
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Transport categories for China ex-PRC

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: Speedy rename/merge C2D. Timrollpickering ( talk) 14:27, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Propose renaming or merging
Nominator's rationale: Further stages in changing PRC categories (except PRC stub categories) Hugo999 ( talk) 12:11, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Merge or Rename all, since in general we use China to designate the country in question. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 04:14, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Rename as China is the common name for the country. Arsenikk (talk) 12:22, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:SONiA & disappear fear albums

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: Merge. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:21, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Artist is a redlink--it's the same group — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 08:06, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Note: Target is tagged for speedy renaming due to caps. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 08:07, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:Lists of major league baseball 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.
The result of the discussion was: Speedy rename C2C. Timrollpickering ( talk) 14:40, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Major League Baseball is the name of a league/organization so it should be capitalized similar to Category:Lists of Major League Baseball owners and executives and Category:Lists of Major League Baseball Opening Day starting pitchers Astros4477 ( talk) 02:01, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
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Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_October_29&oldid=1084319618"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< October 28 October 30 >

October 29

Category:American pescetarians

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. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:30, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Category:Pescetarians isn't so full that we need to start subdividing it by nationality. Bencherlite Talk 21:43, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Comment. One wonders if a diet you may have used is defining in any way, shape or form. Vegaswikian ( talk) 23:02, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
    • The only other related discussions I found were these two in 2008, one of which you in fact closed, VW! Bencherlite Talk 23:10, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
      • Closing does not express an opinion, it is simply an action based on the merits in the discussion. But my question still stands. Is this defining in any way? Vegaswikian ( talk) 00:23, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
        • I am well aware of the role of a closer, having closed many discussions at CfD and other venues in my nearly five years as an admin. I was just noticing the minor coincidence, that is all. Bencherlite Talk 08:21, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
          • Ah, I read that in a different way. I love how precise the English language is. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:56, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete diatery choices are ephemeral and changing, and not a worthwhile or notable way to categorize people. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:02, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per JPL. Also, BLP concerns and verifiability concerns. Benkenobi18 ( talk) 05:24, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • I have now nominated the parent category and two further by nationality subcategories, created since the onset of this discussion, for deletion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_October_30#Category:Pescetarians. Bencherlite Talk 08:21, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete - as valid and valuable as Category:Fooians who eat Marmite, and to be treated in the same manner as that one would. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 08:30, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete - I can think of a few notable vegetarians, but pescetarians? (I have never even heard the word mentioned on TV.) Oculi ( talk) 10:42, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete - not defining. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 03:55, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Nymf hideliho! 09:27, 4 November 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:Images of The Lovin' Spoonful

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: speedy rename WP:C2C. – Fayenatic L ondon 21:06, 4 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: That's what it is. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 17:06, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:Jackie Jackson

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. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:28, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Too little content. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 17:01, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:The Jazztet albums

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The result of the discussion was: Merge. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:29, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: The Jazztet is a redlink. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 16:57, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:Political prisoners and detainees of China

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: merge. Essentially it boils down to this: can the community justify a category for political prisoners in China after deleting a general category for political prisoners, not just recently but in the past as well? The answer - based on the arguments below, primarily for the sake of consistency and avoiding POV - is "no". One person's political prisoner is another person's common criminal. Objective categorisation is possible in some respects, as mentioned during the discussion, but not using "political prisoner" terminology. This discussion is *not* the appropriate venue to call for the overturning of the result of the previous decision, let alone for me to overturn it. Bencherlite Talk 02:31, 7 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Merge, as a followup to CfD September 12 discussion on 3 similar categories.
There is no neutral and objective way of determining whether a prisoner is a " political prisoner"; the concept has a long history and is widely used in many contexts, but its application is frequently subjective. There are some extreme cases where such categorisation may appear straightforward, but there are many more where the application of the "political" label is POV.
That is why Category:Political prisoners has been deleted at two previous CfDs ( 2008 September 17 and 2006 November 22), and by-country categories have been deleted on many occasions, most recently at CfD September 12.
If any editors are inclined to argue for keeping this category, please may I ask that they first take the time to study the previous lengthy discussions, and explain what has changed since then or why they think those discussions were deficient. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:23, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep Political prisoners—people detained solely for their ideas—are different from people detained for other crimes, and there are loads of reliable sources that use this term and list these people (and thousands of others) as political prisoners. As such, this is a useful category, supported by good sources, and it aids in the navigation for a number of interested projects. And there is a neutral and objective way of determining who is a political prisoner: if a perponderance of reliable sources describe them that way and/or if they were charged for political crimes. This may be difficult for those born and raised in liberal democracies to grasp, but in China, there are laws criminalizing certain political positions and ideas. People charged under those laws are political prisoners. Ditto people detained without trial for being "counterrevolutionaries," etc. I don't think there is any dispute in reliable sources that the people listed in this category are anything other than political prisoners. Homunculus ( duihua) 17:12, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
    Hmomunculus, it sounds like you are trying to have a re-run of the CfD September 12, where similar arguments were rejected. The general principle is decided; at this point the question is the narrower one of whether China should be an exception.
    I think you would do better to avoid suggesting that other editors have difficulty grasping things. The points you make about China are not unique to China: the liberal democracies" (as you call them) also criminalise some positions (e.g. racial hated in the UK, Nazism in the UK) and they also detain people without trial (e.g. at Guantanamo Bay and in Northern Ireland). Using your own turn of phrase, can you grasp that?
    As to a lack of reliable sources, are you really trying to claim that Chinese media describe these people as "political prisoners"? Or are you just reading "counterrevolutionary" as "political"? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:10, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
First, don't assume that my comment above was directed at "other editors". It wasn't; it's a general observation about the attitudes of people who never had the misfortune of living under authoritarianism. Your comment was personalized, however, so I will address you now. I don't think it was at all obvious in the previous discussion that my arguments were rejected by anyone other than yourself. You've argued repeatedly that the labeling of these individuals as political prisoners is subjective and thus violation of NPOV, and it appears that you believe this consideration trumps all usefulness for the people who actually edit in this topic area. Yet neither you nor anyone else has produced evidence of reliable sources debating the application of the term to the Chinese prisoners listed. Similarly, I don't think any reliable sources could be found arguing that China's anti-sedition law—let along the labels "reactionary" or "counterrevolutionary"—are something other than political crimes. But you're welcome to try to prove me wrong—perhaps you can find a reliable source saying that Liu Xiaobo was incarcerated for something other than his political positions. Homunculus ( duihua) 19:32, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Homunculus, you are discussing things with other editors, so the the plain reading of your comments is that this is where they were directed.
Your suggestion that I "believe this consideration trumps all usefulness for the people who actually edit in this topic area" is significant, because it displays two very basic misunderstanding. Firstly, please do read WP:ITSUSEFUL. And secondly, Wikipedia is created for readers, not for the convenience of some its editors. WP:NPOV is a core policy, and cannot be set aside simply because some editors find it convenient to do so. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:54, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
My apologies if offense was caused. I have read WP:ITSUSEFUL. It states: "There are some pages within Wikipedia which are supposed to be useful navigation tools and nothing more—disambiguation pages, categories, and redirects, for instance—so usefulness is the basis of their inclusion; for these types of pages, usefulness is a valid argument." As to NPOV, you keep insisting there's a violation here and that the labeling of these individuals is subjective, but have still not produced any reliable sources that would support your position. Meanwhile, loads of reliable sources call them political prisoners or prisoners of conscience. The category represents the views of the reliable sources, so I see no problem. We're just going to have to agree to disagree. Homunculus ( duihua) 20:08, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
As above, navigational utility does not trump the core policy of WP:NPOV.
I'm not sure what you mean by saying what I have not produced RSs. What are you trying to do? To have a blow-by trading of references on a string of individual cases?
I'll illustrate the point with one example, that of Liu Xiaobo. He is described by the Chinese embassy in Washington as having been "convicted of the crime of inciting subversion of state power"; by Xinhaua as "a convict from China". I don't read Chinese, so I don't have access to the rest of the Chinese news media, but it's quite clear that there is more than one significant view here.
Categorising him as a political prisoner chooses one of those POVs to the exclusion of the other; but omitting from Category:Political prisoners and detainees of China wholly excludes the other POV. That is a flagrant breach of the principles of WP:NPOV ... and that's an internationally-reported high profile case. For every example of such prominence, there will be many more where there are fewer western sources, leading to a less clearcut balance ... and if the category exists, every single one of those cases becomes a POV battleground. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:00, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • You seem to think that being a "convict" and being a "political prisoner" are mutually exclusive. They are not. Liu, and others in this category, was convicted of a political crime. He is thus a political prisoner.
  • The consensus in reliable sources is clear that these people are political prisoners. NPOV means representing the opinions in RS in proportion to their weight and prominence, and that's what's happening here. There is no problem. Homunculus ( duihua) 21:14, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • This is getting worse all the time. It seems that unless the sources specifically says "not a political prisoner", you count that as having no weight against a source which says that someone is a political prisoner.
    By that logic, if twenty sources say "X is a criminal", and two say "X is a political prisoner", then the lack of denials means that you will claim that balance of sources label this prisoner as political.
    It seems that your version of NPOV amounts to sources which don't address the question in your terms. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:00, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
For the third and final time, calling someone a "criminal" and a "political prisoner" are not mutually exclusive. If someone is convicted under a political crime, they are both convicted criminals and political prisoners. Homunculus ( duihua) 07:30, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Exactly as I thought. No matter how many sources say "X is a criminal", Humunculous wants them categorised as a "political prisoner" unless the other sources explicitly deny that they are political, even if those sources use a different label. If applied more generally, this is a recipe for priveliging fringe views, because many claims are not specifically denied.
Try applying this to a common situation: disputed convictions. X is convicted, and plenty of sources report him as a convicted criminal. A few scholarly sources report that the conviction was unjust; then by Humunculous's logic we would categorise that person as "unjustly convicted" because the other sources don't deny it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:51, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Your argument here is getting very WP:POINTY. I would never propose such a category for the "unjustly convicted." I don't think you understand my position. You argued before that in the cases of Bradley Manning, Leonard Peltier, Pussy Riot, and others, "there is a consistent and reasoned set principles labeling their imprisonment as political ... and similarly consistent and reasoned set principles for denying them that label." That is true for those individuals, and there are indeed plenty of sources that dispute that their imprisonment is political. It is also true for the broader category of American political prisoners (for instance)—lots sources that can be found disputing the existence of political prisoners in the US. But this is not true of China, and is not true of a single one of the people named under this category. We need to follow what the independent, reliable sources say. Thousands upon thousands of high quality RS say that China has political prisoners. It is absolutely not a fringe view. Homunculus ( duihua) 06:14, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
You should read WP:POINT before referring to it.
This point is also fairly simple. Your claim that there is no dispute about them being political prisoners is based on two points of selection bias.
First, you rely overwhelmingly on sources based outside China. It is a country of over 1 billion people, with a huge range of media ... but the references you choose are from those outside that enormous pool of sources.
Secondly, you exclude all the sources which do not explicitly deny your hypothesis, even though they label the prisoners differently.
Thirdly, you repeatedly use as a source a partisan project set up by a legislature hostile to China. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:46, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep If the article shows substantial RS discussion of the person as a political prisoner or detainee, it would clearly qualify for this category--and I think almost all of the articles in the section seem to be quite clear about the matter. The most recent of the previous discussions asserted to be precedents discusses only one Chinese example, Liu Xiaobo, and asserts him without any opposition to have clearly been a political prisoner. The Sept 12 discussion did discuss China, but, as BHG said, it was asserted that China was a clear exception-- Hence this CfD. So I don't see how a mere referral to the arguments there is meaningful. We need arguments for deletion specifically based on the possible ambiguity for this instance. DGG ( talk ) 19:39, 29 October 2012 (UTC) . reply
    • DGG, if I understand your position correctly, it is a very odd one.
      You appear to be arguing that for one country only we should have a category political prisoners, but that we should not have similar categories for people imprisoned on allegedly-political grounds elsewhere. Is that really what you want? Or are you trying to reopen the wider question? It has to be one of the other, so which is it?
      Your claim that the question of the Chinese example was not addressed is wrong. I specifically addressed that question of high-profile individual examples, but noted that

      It's very easy to find extreme cases such as Aung San Suu Kyi or Alexander Solzhenitsyn where there is overwhelmimg agreement, but for every one of those high-profile hardcore examples there are hundreds of others where use of the term causes a huge POV dispute. For example, take any one of Bradley Manning, Leonard Peltier, Bobby Sands, Nicky Kelly, Mordechai Vanunu, Jonathan Pollard, Archbishop Makarios, and you will find that there is a consistent and reasoned set principles labeling their imprisonment as political ... and similarly consistent and reasoned set principles for denying them that label.
      The category system, with its unqualified binary choice between inclusion or exclusion, cannot present these different views in accordance with the core policy WP:NPOV, which explicitly requires us to present opposing views in a balanced way.


      In the specific case of Liu Xiaobo, the article says that he was imprisoned in the 1990s for "for disturbing public order” (a charge which exists in most countries) and in 2008 for "suspicion of inciting subversion of state power", a charge similar to those which exist in many other countries. Make what you will of those charges, but labelling them as "political" is just as POV as labelling it as "criminal". There is more than one view on these matters, and whichever view we personally hold, we should use the category system to apply an unqualified label of "political prisoner".
      DGG appears to be arguing that in China, none of these problems of nuance exist; that China is a unique case of a country where, unlike Russia or the Soviet Union or the United States or Chile or Argentina or South Africa or Egypt, there will rarely or never be any POV dispute as to whether someone is or is not a political prisoner. That's a weirdly extreme position to take, and a highly implausible one. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:26, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Liu Xiaobo is not exceptional among political prisoners; he's just very well known. About half the people in this category were charged under the same anti-subversion law as Liu. Many of the others were imprisoned for even more overtly political crimes. Where are these "consistent and reasoned set principles for denying them" the political prisoner label? Again, we're talking about China, not about Bradley Manning et al. Homunculus ( duihua) 20:40, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
You seem to reckon that because it's China, it's fine to exclude certain POVs, and to rely on the preponderance of non-Chinese sources. This logic is a million miles from WP:NPOV.
The principles for denying the Chinese prisoners the political label is simply that per my refs above they were convicted of charges such as trying to overthrow the state, which is a crime in many countries (I wish it wasn't a crime, but that's my POV) ... and the Chinese media and govt do not agree that they are political prisoners. We have already decided, in repeated discussions, that "political prisoner" categories should not exist either in general or for other for other specific countries because of the category systems... so why exactly do you want to make China an exception? What precisely is it that makes you think that it is acceptable for us to have "political prisoner" categories for some countries but not for others?
Homunculus, you come across as someone committed to a set of political values that places a high priority on freedom of expression. That's fine, and it's a widely-held POV which I happen to share ... but it it is not a neutral POV, and in this case it is leading you down a path of trying to use the category system as a vehicle to trumpet one political perspective. If you were genuinely seeking a neutral approach to categorising this people, there is a very simple solution: categorise them according to the charge under which they were convicted, rather than by a value-judgement. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:28, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
For the record, I am not at all opposed to having this category for other countries where appropriate (the Soviet Union is a good example). But I generally don't like staking positions on topics that I don't know too much about, so I'll leave that debate to the editors active in those topic areas. The point I'm making—and what I think DGG was trying to convey—isn't that China is exceptional. It's just that we should assess things on a case-by-case basis, and this discussion is about China. Homunculus ( duihua) 21:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
You are trying to have it both ways.
If China is not exceptional, why are you arguing for it to be treated as an exception to the 6-year-old principle that we do not categorise people as "political prisoners"? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:52, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
There is no such principle. Wikipedia is not governed by precedent, and consensus can change. Actually, It already did: in the previous CfD, there were 3 votes to delete the categories, and 6 votes to keep them. [1] Right or wrong, the closing admin's decision to delete related categories for other countries did not reflect consensus. Homunculus ( duihua) 00:06, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Sounds like you are vote-counting, but WP:NOTAVOTE. The keep arguments included the editor who asserted this argument also applies to people sent to Gulag on official political charges, like "spies, terrorists, saboteurs". If we go down that route, then every convicted spy would be categorised as a political prisoner, as would everyone convicted of an offence related to terrorism. That's gonna go down really well with our American readers, isn't it?
The question of exceptionalism is not complicated, so let me spell it out simply. There are two possible approaches here:
  1. We take a view on whether or not we have a global category for political prisoners, which may be sub-categorise as appropriate by country. That way either a) no prisoners anywhere get categorised as political, or b) any prisoner in any country can be categorised as political depending on the sources. Whatever the merits of either approach, that allows us to categorise prisoners from all over the world according to the same consistent set of principles.
  2. We decide that some prisoners of some particular countries may be categorised as "political", while prisoners of other countries may not.
Which approach do you support? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:31, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
I support the first option, but I don't think this discussion should be a referendum on the broader question. These categories should be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Homunculus ( duihua) 01:23, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Reply That's a self-contradictory response. Either you support a general decision on whether we allow the categorisation of people as political prisoners, or you support a case-by-case approach to the by-country categories.
Note that the global Category:Political prisoners and detainees has already been deleted here, and has not been taken to DRV.
If we believe the first part of Homunculus's reply -- that zie supports a decision on the principle whether or not we have a global category for political prisoners, which may be sub-categorise as appropriate by country -- then Homunculus should be !voting to deleted this category in order to be consistent with the global decision.
This is a central point in this discussion, and it needs to be answered. C'mon, Homunculous -- which is it? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:00, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
I favor a global category, and believe that it should include sub-categories by country when the reliable sources support that classification. The reason I've been reluctant to allow myself to be dragged into the expanded debate with you is that it allows you to go into lengthy, off-topic theoretical debates without having to answer for the undeniable fact that there are political prisoners in China. You got the category for political prisoners in the USSR deleted (along with the global category) by pointing to the controversial status of American political prisoners. Those things should have been assessed separately. Homunculus ( duihua) 14:52, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Homunculous, either you have not been reading what I have written, or you are trying to misrepresent me. I have never disagreed with you that there are political prisoners in China. There are also political prisoners in many other countries. However, the reason that there has been a consensus to delete every other category of political prisoners which has ever existed on Wikipedia is that there is no neutral and objective test for what constitutes a political prisoner, so the term is WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE. Individual cases will be considered from different approaches in reliable sources. Those differing approaches and conclusions can be explained and attributed in body text, and contradictory view stated. That cannot be done in a category.
So we're back to the central issue. You say that people should be categorised as PPs if that is supported by a balance of reliable sources. I disagree, but let's take your view.
If prisoners can be categorised as political according to the evidence in the reliable sources, then I say that the only NPOV way of doing this is that the same reliable-source test should be applicable to any prisoner anywhere, whether in Belfast, Beijing, Brisbane, Banglaore, Boston, Buenos Aires, Baghdad, Bilbeis or wherever.
Do you agree with that proposition? Yes or no? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:24, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Another editor suggested that we need to divorce the questions of whether a category should exist from who should populate it. I agree that these are separate issues. On the existence of categories, if there is general agreement in high-quality RS that x country has political prisoners, then there should be a category for it. China easily satisfies that criteria, so it should have this category.
On establishing a criteria for inclusion within the category, it's unclear what you mean that the "same" reliable source test should be applied for all political prisoners. Maybe you can explain on my talk page and I can give a better response. Surely you don't mean that the same reliable source needs to be used to identify political prisoners across all countries. In the case of China, the best and most rigorous databases on political prisoners come from the Dui Hua Foundation and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China—both of them very well respected organizations, and neither of which reports on any other country. There may be similar databases that could be used for other countries—I understand there are official lists of Soviet political prisoners, for instance—but that's not my area of expertise. I think WP:RS, applied with common sense, should suffice to decide this issue. Homunculus ( duihua) 04:56, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Humunculous, you are making heavy weather of something which is not very complicated.
These discussions have thrown up 3 ways of approaching this:
  1. We categorise nobody anywhere as a political prisoner.
    (That has been the case for years, on grounds of subjectivity)
  2. Any prisoner anywhere may be categorised as political, if the reliable sources available in that case support it.
    (I dislike this because of the subjectivity, but it create no structural bias between countries)
  3. Prisoners may be categorised as political only if we have first taken a specific decision that prisoners of that particular country may be labelled as political.
Option 2 has been eliminated, because the decision to eliminate the global Category:Political prisoners and detainees has already been taken. That category is gone, and its existence is not up for grabs here; take it to DRV if you want to, but this discussion cannot restore it.
You therefore support option 3.
This means that even if there are lots of RS claims that a prisoner in another country is a political prisoner, we cannot categorise them that way unless we first make a prior screening decision that "x country has political prisoners".
That is blatant structural bias, laid bare by your desire that we "divorce the questions of whether a category should exist from who should populate it".
In other words, even if the reliable sources agree clear that a prisoner in some country is a political prisoner, that doesn't count in the world-according-to-Humunculous. In the Humuncilous plan, what we first do is to ignore all the evidence about any particular individual, and instead make a general abstract decision that "county X has political prisoners, who we may later identify."
The effect of this is blatantly biased. What it does is to single out those countries routinely denounced for having political prisoners, and allow their prisoners to be categorised as political ... while preventing the same categorisation of prisoners of other countries.
Your use of sources illustrates very neatly how selectively this works in effect. You referenced many articles to the Congressional Executive Commission on China, and you cite it approvingly here as evidence that China should be singled out. But as you say, it doesn't report on any other country ... so hey presto, we keep a category of political prisoners for China because the US Congress has decided that's the only country which it wants to study in this way. That's trampling on NPOV.
Humunculous, if you want any prisoners to be categorised as political, then go to DRV and try to reopen the case. But keeping this category without its global parent is an attempt to lock in structural bias. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:27, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
I have already stated my support for the global category. I have also stated that I support the categories for other countries when supported by reliable sources. But I am here to talk about this category, not others. The fact remains that the reliable sources are in overwhelming agreement that China has political prisoners. No independent, reliable source has been shown to argue otherwise, so I cannot agree that the category presents a NPOV problem. There are also many, high quality reliable sources that can be used to identify the individuals who should be named within this category. The category is therefore valid. If your sole concern is that it is unfair to have this category and not the others, then perhaps you should file the DRV to revive the global category. Homunculus ( duihua) 23:51, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Homunculus, your last sentence is a disgrace; please don't play such dishonest games. You know perfectly well that I have repeatedly stated that my primary concern is that we should have no such category, and that my secondary concern is that if we do have such categories we should not pre-select certain countries. It's set out clearly in the post you reply to, so there is no excuse for your mischief-making attempt at misrepresentation.
You may want to talk only about this category, but that's because you are quite happy to pursue the blatantly POV proposition that it is acceptable to apply the term only to certain pre-selected countries. That's a very neat way of locking out such categorisation of individual cases in countries which may not be reported as having a systemic set of political prisoners.
The NPOV problem is that you are trying to make China an exception to a broad principle. If you think the broad principle is wrong, then challenge it directly rather trying to make an end-run around it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 01:01, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Merge "political prisoners" is inherently an NPOV statement. Governments rarely if ever will describe their own prisoners in this way, so this is always going to be disputed. We should categorize by what is beyond dispute, that people are prisoners or detainees, not be the disputed question of whether they are part of some amorphous and undefined group known as "policial prisoners". John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:05, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
    • No, this is not the case. Consider Category:Communist rehabilitations (~200 pages). Those are essentially people who were officially recognized by their Communist or successor governments as unjustly imprisoned by the State for political reasons. And even Stalinist government officially considered them imprisoned for political crimes. A quick check of people included in the following categories: Category:Soviet dissidents, Category:Gulag detainees and Category:Sharashka inmates shows that almost all of them were described in RS as "political prisoners". Whether or not they were unjustly persecuted is not a matter of a controversy or historical debate, but mainstream view per multiple RS and usually officially admitted by their governments (e.g. in documents given to their relatives during Rehabilitation (Soviet)). If there are any concerns about any particular person, this should be discussed at article talk pages, and in the examples above the assignment would not be even a matter of serious debate. My very best wishes ( talk) 21:21, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Merge. The artificial and arbitrary distinction between the "political prisoner" and those detained for other crimes is an attempt to deny the legitimacy of the "political" prisoner's detention. That's why the term and its variations are primarily used by advocacy groups who campaign for certain prisoners' release. Some people are trying to create a "common sense" where we can all agree that Bradley Manning's imprisonment may be justified, but that Liu Xiaobo's imprisonment is never justified. But this is just a veiled appeal to Wikipedians' purported liberal politics and a codification of systemic bias. Subversion is not the only crime that advocacy groups call "political" in China: Amnesty called Tenzin Delek a "political prisoner" although he was accused of setting off a bomb; likewise Rebiya Kadeer although she was accused of leaking internal government reports to a foreign government agent.

    There is no neutral or systematic standard for determining whether somebody's imprisonment was "political" or not.There are cases where people are imprisoned "solely for their ideas" - or more accurately, their expression of them - such as Holocaust denial in Europe and inciters of racial and religious hatred in Malaysia and Singapore. The distinction between these crimes and that of subversion is blurry in those countries, because those laws are also designed to stifle the rise of political opposition - but from illiberal groups. Again, these people are only considered "political prisoners" by groups who agree with the ideals for which the prisoner was charged. If Wikipedia categornizes any prisoner as a "political prisoner", it makes a value judgment against or (by omission) for the imprisoning authority. That's not neutral. Shrigley ( talk) 02:36, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply

  • Keep. As previous. Should we now expect to see Alexander Solzhenitsyn listed as a prisoner of the Soviet Union? Benkenobi18 ( talk) 05:25, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
    • Reply. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is categorised as he has been for years: in Category:Soviet prisoners and detainees and various related categories such as Category:Sharashka inmates. His time as a Soviet prisoner is a well-sourced and uncontested point of fact, unlike the value judgements as to whether he was or was not a political prisoner. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:45, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
      • Comment. His arrest and imprisonment for political reasons is also well documented. As for this particular category I think it is a useful way to group people who share things in common with each other. If there are people that you believe should not qualify, the correct response is, "Keep, but prune", and go through on a case by case basis. That there are legitimate political prisoners is a reason to keep this category. That some listed are not legitimate political prisoners is not sufficient justification to warrant deletion. Benkenobi18 ( talk) 06:09, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
        • Benkenobi, you misunderstand the problem. My concern is not whether "some listed are not legitimate political prisoners"; my concern is that there is no stable and objective definition of what constitutes a political prisoner. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:24, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Comment: sourcing and false assertions. In the discussion above, User:Homunculus asserts in several places that this category is viable because it supported by "good sources". As above, I don't think that any number of sources overrides the essentially POV nature of the category, but I checked this assertion.
The are currently 16 pages in this category. I divided them into 4 groups:
Group Count Current version of articles
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, with multiple supporting references 0
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, with one supporting reference 0
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, but with no supporting references 2 Harry Wu, Liu Xiaobo
Pages which do not use the phrase "political prisoner" in body text 14 Zhou Decai, Hu Jia (activist), Zhang Zhixin, Zhang Xianliang, Yang Chunlin, Wei Jingsheng, Tan Zuoren, Shi Tao, Guo Quan, Jean Pasqualini, Lin Zhao, Zhao Lianhai, Li Zhi (dissident), Huang Qi
So, it turns out that Homunculus's assertions are false: not one of these articles is has a direct ref to a reliable source for the assertion that they are a political prisoner. As the articles currently stand, the category should be empty. The category was created by Humunculous and appears to have been populated entirely by Humunculous, so zie should have been well aware of the chasm between assertion and reality.
There are several possible explanations for why a category has been populated in this way, including; a) failure to cite available sources which confirm the assertion; b) synthesis (X was convicted of Y, and Y is cited elsewhere as a political crime); c) original research (X was convicted of Y, and an editor thinks that is political); d) POV-pushing.
I don't know which of those reasons apply in these 16 cases, but these 16 miscategorisations illustrate clearly how such a category can be abused. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
I'm quite confident that for every one of those 16 individuals (and for many more), there are multiple reliable sources that are a) already cited in the articles or b) that could be cited in the article to support the classification as political prisoners / prisoners of conscience. Admittedly it's not standard for each article to contain the phrase "x is a political prisoner," but if desired, someone could add that sentence to each page and then stack it with sources. It wouldn't be hard. For instance: Liu Xiaobo [2] [3] [4] [5] ; Hu Jia [6] [7] [8]; Huang Qi [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]; Lin Zhao [14] [15] [16](note that the library also uses 'political prisoner' as an indexing term); Jean Pasqualini [17] [18] [19] [20]; Shi Tao [21] [22] [23] [24]; Tan Zuoren [25] [26], etc.
Another note on the utility and appropriateness of this classification: in addition to libraries and news websites like the New York Times that use this same classification to aid in indexing and searches, there are several books and studies that make a point of examining the changing composition of China's labor camps and prisons in terms of the ratio of political prisoners. This indicates not only that these sources recognize the difference, but they even study it longitudinally. [27] [28] [29] [30] Homunculus ( duihua) 07:22, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply

Here's an updated table, by the way. I didn't spend too much time on this, and didn't finish updating all of them. Point is, these sources exist.

Group Count Current version of articles Updated versions of articles
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner with multiple supporting references 0 11 Hu Jia, Huang Qi, Zhao Lianhai, Liu Xiaobo, Jean Pasqualini, Guo Quan, Tan Zuoren, Wei Jingsheng, Shi Tao, Yang Chunlin (*note: including cases where people are described as prisoners of conscience, as they are a subset of political prisoners).
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, with one supporting reference 0 3 Li Zhi (dissident), Lin Zhao, Zhang Xianliang
Pages which assert in body text that the subject is a political prisoner, but with no supporting references 2 1 Harry Wu, Liu Xiaobo Harry Wu
Pages which do not use the phrase "political prisoner" in body text 14 2 Zhou Decai, Hu Jia (activist), Zhang Zhixin, Zhang Xianliang, Yang Chunlin, Wei Jingsheng, Tan Zuoren, Shi Tao, Guo Quan, Jean Pasqualini, Lin Zhao, Zhao Lianhai, Li Zhi (dissident), Huang Qi Zhou Decai, Zhang Zhixin
  • Keep Having read the foregoing I find the arguments in favour of keeping by all proponents of the keep !vote outweigh those of those who wish to take the category down. I recognise that one may be both an 'ordinary' criminal and a political prisoner and that the terms are not mutually exclusive. I find the categorisation of 'political' to be not hard to determine, and suggest a requirement of this category, as with all categories, is that members must be declared in WP:RS to be political. Ideally that should also follow through to a verified statement in the article. However, we are discussing the category, not the articles within it. The category is valid and should remain. The articles placed in that category may be imperfectly categorised, a thing which is remedied on a per article basis. Those matters are separate matters. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
I wish these were separate matters; it would make the task much easier.
Unfortunately, this is not like Category:Living people, where there is an well-established set of objective criteria for whether people are alive, so we know that the RSs will be making the same assessment. Even for the theoretically more complex cases around brain death, most countries have a set of of procedures for determining whether someone is dead, so it is rarely a matter of dispute except for missing persons. If the RS assert that X is dead and Y is not, we know that they are talking about the same thing.
However, that is not the case for many other issues, which are subjective. That's why we have a long-standing guideline at WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE warning against the use of a subjective inclusion criterion, because the sources are call taking one POV or another.
In this case, we have a subjective category: there is no generally-accepted definition of what amounts to a political prisoner (PP), so when sources say that X is or is not a PP, we don't know that they are applying the same definitions. In a case such as this, where there is a clash of ideologies, the result depends entirely on which sources are selected. If we use sources from the liberal democracies, we will find often plenty of sources to say X is a PP ... but if we use Chinese sources, we will rarely find any which use that terminology.
The assessment here is even more complicated, because those who do not regard someone as a PP rarely go around trumpeting that fact. So we end up with the sort of position taken above by Homunculous, who demands sources to contradict the claims that someone is a PP despite knowing full well that such denials are rarely published.
There is a further problem here. We have repeatedly deleted the global category "political prisoners", and we recently deleted 3 similar per-country categories, so this is the only category for political prisoners on Wikipedia. If some RSs say that some someone is a PP in Russia or the USA, we can't categorise them as such, because there is no category for them.
That is blatantly and flagrantly biased. Can you imagine the outcry on Wikipedia if the situation was reversed, and we had a category system which was similarly biased against the United States? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 04:47, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
I have read your thoughts with care and considered my response to them. I consider that the arguments depend upon your statement: I wish these were separate matters; it would make the task much easier.
To me it is black and white. Those with WP:RS references that they are PP and PD in China are included in this category, one I believe to be valid. Those without are removed. And we make the absolute decision to separate the existence or not of the category form the membership of the category. A WP:RS reference is simply the door key for inclusion. I fear the deletion discussion is more about membership and politics per se than about pure 'Wikipedianess'
Of course we, the editors, determine what should and should not exist. In discussing it we must be very careful not to divert from the matter in hand when we discuss.
Putative anti US bias is a red herring, I fear. We must stand on different ground from that of a nationalist, patriot, Chauvinist (in its correct usage). Ours is to run an encyclopaedia with zero bias while documenting biases that exist if we can reference them.
There are often areas where I agree with your arguments. So far this is not one of them. I remain opposed to the deletion. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 18:08, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Our job is indeed to "run an encyclopaedia with zero bias", as you say. So why exactly do you support keeping a political prisoners category for China, when they have been deleted for every other country on earth? What is taht about, other than bias? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs)
Sorry to be dragging this out on other people's comments, your argument seems more appropriate as a reason to recreate categories for other countries than to delete this one. If reliable sources strongly support the concept of political prisoners in a given country, then the category should exist. There are some countries where the classification itself is controversial—not just in individual cases, but in general terms. Eg. plenty of reliable sources dispute the existence of American political prisoners, noting that the United States does not imprison people for the peaceful expression of their beliefs (though there may be politicized trials). But in the case of China, no such debate exists in reliable sources; the irrefutable consensus in independent, reliable sources is that this category of people exists. There are multiple databases tracking their existence, and there are thousands upon thousands of references to them in news article and scholarly works. The same holds true for some other states (North Korea and the Soviet Union spring to mind), and there should be categories for those people too.
You got the previous categories deleted largely by arguing that the classification of American political prisoners was controversial and failed NPOV. China is not the same as the United States, and the circumstances here need to be assessed independently. Simply pointing to the deletion of other categories is not a valid reason to delete this one. Homunculus ( duihua) 01:15, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Well, BHG, I support keeping this category because it is precise, defined to categorise member articles with precision, and precisely the class of category this encyclopaedia is intended to have, should have and does have unless there is a mistaken push to delete it. I will not rerun my comments about policing the article that are members. The category is distinct from its members. Your arguments do not convince me that you are correct. If the USA has no political prisoners, (a) good and (b) it does not require this category. If Foo has them then Foo needs this category. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 07:44, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
I don't think anyone is asserting that there are no American political prisoners. BHG's argument, as I understood it, is that the classification of political prisoners in certain cases is controversial and vigorously contested (she gave examples from the United States, Ireland, and Israel). Because categories offer only a binary choice—Foo either has political prisoners or it doesn't, x is a political prisoner or is not—they are not appropriate to represent issues where there is a wide spectrum of opinion. But even if one finds that argument compelling (I reserve judgement), what's true in Ireland, Israel and the United States is not true of China, the Soviet Union, Iran, or North Korea; in those cases, the consensus in independent, reliable sources is very clear: they have political prisoners, and lots of them. Homunculus ( duihua) 14:48, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nearly, Homunculous, but not quite; my view is not that "the classification of political prisoners in certain cases is controversial". Since there is no clearcut objective test for what constitutes a political prisoner, there is no way of resolving any dispute as to who goes in such a category, nor is there any way of ascertaining whether sources that use the term are talking about the same thing. That's why Category:Dictators was deleted: we can all agree that there is such a thing as a dictator, and in some cases we can find an overwhelming balance of sources to support that view. However, there are plenty more cases where the label is disputed, and we don't adopt the Humuculous approach of salami-slicing off the cases in countries which we believe to be clearcut, while preventing the categorisation in other cases.
In the Humunculous version of NPOV, if a country has lots of political prisoners, then we should categorise them as political ... but in cases where the sources don't claim that the country has lots of them, Humunculous is happy to leave us with no mechanism for categorising them that way.
However, H interrupted my reply to Fiddle Faddle. FF argues that if foo has political prisoners, then it requires a category for them. Not so; that's not how categories work. Categories are hierarchical, and for broad concepts we have a global category which may be subdivided by country. We don't have to have a by-country sub-category for everything; many categories such as Category:Gay politicians are not subdivided by country.
But if we decided that it was inappropriate (for whatever reason) to have a global Category:Gay politicians, then it would be POV to decide that some countries should categorise their politicians in this way, but not others. - BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:41, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete - whether or not categorizing people as "political prisoners" on not is a good idea is not at issue here. What is at issue is whether China should have such a category when the rest of the tree has been deleted. The answer is no. If someone wants to initiate a discussion at an appropriate forum to discuss the larger issue of categorizing "political prisoners" then I'm sure it would be lively. This isn't that discussion. Delete the sole remaining outlier. Buck Winston ( talk) 23:38, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
That's not an argument to delete this category. It's an argument to revive similar categories for other countries. I agree that, where supported by reliable sources, such categories should exist. A majority of editors in the last CfD discussion felt similarly, but they were deleted anyway. Homunculus ( duihua) 23:50, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Big Strong Keep and I'll explain why. References to Chinese political prisoners are found extensively in government reports, major news organizations, and scholarly writings—even in library indexing, as has been pointed out. Several reputable research organizations keep databases of Chinese political prisoners, not to mention groups like Amnesty International, so there are plenty of sources that can help determine inclusion in the category. It is a categorization of crime (or "crime" if you prefer), just like any other type of categorization of crime. What's the difference?
The argument to delete seems based on the fact that the Chinese government denies that there is such thing as political prisoners. The Chinese government also denies the Great Famine and Tiananmen Square Massacre; they deny engaging in espionage or cyberwarfare, and all sorts of other things despite irrefutable proof to the contrary. These denials are so far from mainstream understandings that they constitute WP:FRINGE theories. Ignoring them isn't a violation of WP:NPOV.
Here's a good example to make the point clear. We have a category for "LGBT people from Iran". By our friend BrownHairedGirl's reasoning, we should delete that category because the government of Iran denies the existence of LGBT people. That's obviously not how Wikipedia works. (Thank goodness.) TheSoundAndTheFury ( talk) 21:00, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep if Political prisoners don't exist, please delete that article then come back. Given that there are political prisoners, classifying them by country of detention seems the norm. We cannot dumb down the Wiki solely to give solace to dictators (which probably also don't exist under the logic espoused above). Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 03:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
    • Reply'. That's a straw man. AFAIK, nobody in any of the many CFDs on these categories has argued that there is no such thing as a political prisoner. The reason that such categories have been repeatedly deleted is that a) the classification of any individual as a political prisoner is subjective, and b) categories permit only a binary choice of inclusion or exclusion, which means that the category cannot reflect the divergence of views which exist in many cases, contrary to the requirement of WP:NPOV to present divergent views in accordance with their weight. We have similarly deleted categories for Sate terrorism and freedom fighters on grounds of subjectivity, despite having a whole article on state terrorism and a well-referenced section on freedom fighters. And one deletion of a freedom fighters category was supported by Carlossuarez46.
      Carlossuarez46 is also demonstrably wrong to say that "classifying them by country of detention is the norm". There is no other category of political prisoners, either globally or by country. If editors want to argue that case, it belongs in a discussion about a global Category:Political prisoners, not in a discussion about a unique category which exists for no other country. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:47, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
The majority consensus here, as with in the previous CfD, seems to be that the global category was valid. I support bringing it back. Homunculus ( duihua) 14:52, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
This discussion is not about that global category. If you want to restore it, then go to WP:DRV. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:18, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Comment wikipedia is not a democracy and not governed by majority rule. The problem is that "political prisoner" is a POV pushing term that is always meant to pass a value judgement on the inprisonment, while the fact that someone is held as a prisoner by a certain government does not pass any value judgement on the validity of the inrisonement, only state th fact that says it is done. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 16:17, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
It would certainly be a problem if we were to use a subjective, value-ladden term such as "virtuous prisoner" or "innocent prisoner." That's not what we're doing. Political prisoner is a term widely used by respected, reliable sources. The term 'political' itself is not inherently biased, and it does not to imply that a person's politics are noble or correct per se. It's really quite simple: a person imprisoned for their political ideas—such as for being a "rightist"—is a political prisoner. When reliable sources are in agreement on that fact, then we can say the same on Wikipedia. Homunculus ( duihua) 04:39, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Currently Merge, but I have a suggestion that it would be less POV if one make a category based on whatever the dissident was convicted of, eg Category:Chinese people convicted of subverting state power -- PCPP ( talk) 04:18, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
That is not a bad suggestion, but there's a problem: a significant number of Chinese political prisoners—both historically and today—were never criminally convicted. Many are imprisoned administratively through the reeducation-through-labor system, so we can't identify them by the charge they're imprisoned under. Homunculus ( duihua) 04:39, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Then what about "Category:People held under Reeducation Through Labor", similar to categories like Category:People held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp? There are plenty of other suitable category titles that avoids terms containing POV judgment.-- PCPP ( talk) 10:43, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • I reject that using the term "political prisoner" entails a POV judgement. Again, it is used by the most reliable and neutral sources (even libraries use it for indexing purposes), and there is extremely strong support in reliable sources for the concept of political prisoners in China. Reflecting that fact adheres to NPOV. It is the unsubstantiated POV of Wikipedia editors that the term is subjective in this case.
  • There's nothing wrong with having a category for Chinese RTL prisoners, but it doesn't solve our problem here. People held in RTL are not all political prisoners, just as people held in prisons are not political prisoners. At least half of the RTL population is petty criminals, drug addicts, prostitutes and the like. The whole purpose of this category is to group together people who are imprisoned for their political beliefs. A political dissident imprisoned in the RTL system has more in common with a dissident held in a prison than they do with the drug dealers. If we adopted your proposal, we would not have a category where all such political prisoners can be found together; people would need to search through at least six different categories of criminal charges, and then sift through the RTL prisoners as well, just to find all the people who share this easily identifiable characteristic of being political prisoners. Homunculus ( duihua) 14:11, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
May I suggest that you keep your own POV in check? "Political prisoner" itself is an inherent POV term, usually used to describe people who are imprisoned on false or trumped up charges, and can just be well used for people like Julian Assange or Mumia. And besides, one person's political prisoner is another person's criminal, and per WP:LABEL, such loaded words should be replaced in favor of more neutral wording. Furthermore, the Category:Chinese dissidents category already suffice, and there is nothing wrong with categorizing the prisoner by the offence he is convicted of, as similar categories exist for other crimes eg Category:People convicted of murder by the People's Republic of China.-- PCPP ( talk) 15:51, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
I support keeping categories of people by the actual charge under which they were convicted or detained. Whether that charge is "inciting subversion of state power" or "aiding the enemy", "subversion", being a "member of an illegal organisation", or "stirring up racial hated", categorisation in this form is NPOV. The reader can make up their own mind about whether to regard any of these charges as political, assisted by the various opinions in reliable sources which may referenced in the article. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:45, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Do you have any idea how many different statues and criminal and administrative provisions have been used to sentence political prisoners in China? There are 87. This is the number of unique charges that have been used to detain people recognized in reliable sources as political prisoners. Do you really think we should have that many separate categories just to identify political prisoners? And what would you name these categories? It's one thing to have a "Category:Chinese people imprisoned for subversion of state power." Quite another to have "Category:Chinese people detained for gathering to disturb order at railway stations or bus terminals, wharves, civil airports, marketplaces, parks, theaters, cinemas, exhibition halls, sports grounds or other public places, or to block traffic or undermine traffic order, or resist or obstruct public security administrators of the State from carrying out their duties according to law." (That's what Chen Guangcheng was sentenced under, and independent reliable sources agree that he was actually imprisoned for his activism against forced abortions. This is a NPOV concern, whereby we'd be giving credence to the Chinese government's narrative, even when reliable sources agree that the charge is bogus. Another example: the Chinese government calls Tibetans who travel to India without permission 'terrorists,' and sometimes sentences them as such. Should we really categorize those people are terrorists, even when no reliable sources would use the term? That is far more problematic than labeling them political prisoners per the RS). Or would you name the articles after the statute number, eg. 'Category:Chinese people sentenced under article 291'? This is an option that sounds nice in theory, but insofar as categories are designed to be useful navigational tools, not very practical or helpful. Homunculus ( duihua) 00:03, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Thanks, Humunculous. That clarifies your POV purpose much more than you realised.
  1. You want someone categorised as political for being "detained for gathering to disturb order". But people are imprisoned for similar offences in the United Kingdom
  2. Your alternative claim is that it was political because the charges were bogus, according to reliable sources. Check out the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four: imprisoned on bogus charges.
  3. You say that "the Chinese government calls Tibetans who travel to India without permission 'terrorists' and sometimes sentences them as such". And the UK uses terrorism laws against peaceful protestors, even arresting an individual heckler.
I selected the UK because it is the country most convenient to me for sourcing these things, but similar issues arise in many many countries. They nicely illustrate the subjectivity inherent in these categories, because the same charges against political activity are labelled as "political" in some countries but not in others. This is the core problem with any "political prisoner" category: there is no stable, neutral and consistently-applied definition of who is or is not a political prisoner.
Your fear that "we'd be giving credence to the Chinese government's narrative" is misplaced. We have Category:People convicted of murder, Category:People convicted of treason, Category:People convicted of treason, Category:People convicted of racketeering etc ... all of which are neutral because they record the fact that they were convicted under those charges (whether rightly or wrongly). Those categories do not pass judgement of the verdict, they just record the fact. (See for example Cameron Todd Willingham: he was convicted of murder, and is categorised accordingly. Despite overwhelming evidence in reliable sources that he was wrongfully-convicted, the category is accurate: he was indeed convicted. Concerns that the category would "be giving credence to the Texan government's narrative" would be similarly misplaced, because the category does not pass a value-judgement on the verdict.
Similarly, you object to categorising some of these people a "terrorists". If you had done a little more checking, you would have found that we have no Category:Terrorists: it was deleted in 2009 because, like "political prisoner" it is a subjective term. What we do have is Category:People imprisoned on charges of terrorism, which groups people by the fact of the charge rather than the subjective value placed upon it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:19, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
So, you think it's a problematic to use a term that is widely used in independent, reliable sources (political prisoner), but you see no such problem in uncritically adopting the accusations employed by the Chinese government, even though independent reliable sources vigorously dispute the legitimacy of those charges and the fairness of the trials. I think there would be some serious NPOV and BLP concerns with labeling someone a convicted terrorist when the reliable sources say they were imprisoned solely for their political or religious beliefs. It's a fact that Tibetans have been convicted of terrorism for traveling to India without a permit, sure. But it's also a fact that they're described in reliable sources as being political prisoners. If we want to follow WP:NPOV (and I do), then we should adopt the terms used by the preponderance of independent, reliable sources, and reflect the understandings of the expert community on these issues.
I should also say something about China's criminal justice system, as it might be useful for observers. In cases that are deemed political sensitive by Chinese authorities, the courts do not adjudicate independently. Judicial authorities are instead made to defer to the Communist Party's Political and Legislative Affairs Committee—a political organ—in making decisions on these types of cases. The former head of that organization makes statements to the effect of "All law-enforcement activities should be led by the Party. All reform measures should be conducive to the socialist system and the strengthening of the Party leadership." The head of the courts declared that "The power of the courts to adjudicate independently doesn't mean at all independence from the Party. It is the opposite, the embodiment of a high degree of responsibility vis-à-vis Party undertakings." The president, Hu Jintao, has declared that the country's "grand judges and grand procurators shall always regard as supreme the party’s cause." Now, there are plenty of cases where political authorities don't intervene in the legal process. But when we're talking about the people charged for their political ideas (aka political prisoners), the party takes the lead, and it's not even really fair to say anymore that they were convicted by a court of law; they were convicted by a back-room panel of party apparatchiks. The specific charges that are levied against these individuals—disrupting traffic, tax evasion, etc.—are often just concocted for PR purposes. And to be clear, this isn't just my opinion. This is what Chinese legal scholars say. I hope that's helpful. Homunculus ( duihua) 04:31, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Homunculus, there are huge problems with the fairness of the trials of many of the people executed in the United States; there are plenty of cases which have demonstrated in numerous reliable sources to have been wrongful convictions leading to the death of an innocent man. But we don't use the category system to make any editorial judgement on those convictions. What we do is per WP:NPOV, we explain and attribute the different views in the article per WP:WEIGHT, and we categorise those people according to the fact that they were convicted. That's all: just the verifiable fact that a conviction was made, without using the category system to judge whether it was right or wrong. If the conviction was overturned by a court, we categorised by the fact that he conviction was overturned, in Category:Overturned convictions by country.
But your latest reply goes even further than you have gone before. You are now setting your views on the Chinese judicial system as the basis for opposing even categorising people according to the fact of what verdict the courts hand down. You aren't content to simply let the reader decide from the sources cited in the article whether or not they think the verdict sounds plausible; you are insisting on an editorial pre-judgement that in China, we should not categorise convicted people according to the charges under which they were convicted.
How far do you want thus to go? Do you want to do this consistently, and examine every country to see whether the judicial process's conforms to Humunculous's view of due process before we categorise the fact that a conviction has been registered? Or do you just want to approach it like you approach the "political prisoner" category, and happily treat China differently to every country on earth? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:13, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
I have never proposed treating China differently from other countries; to the contrary, I've said repeatedly that I do not hold it to be exceptional, but that this discussion is about China. I would appreciate if you stopped misrepresenting my position.
My stance has consistently been that we ought to follow WP:RS and WP:NPOV in determining both which categories should exist and who should be placed within them. NPOV holds that we need to follow what the preponderance of independent, reliable sources says on a given subject. In this case, that means that the category for political prisoners in China should exist.
In determining other categories that should exist, we should examine the discourse in the best reliable sources to assess whether those proposed categories could present problems in terms of neutrality or BLP violations. I am not optimistic that an evidence-based discussion of that nature is possible in this forum, and in any case, this isn't actually the place for it. There are plenty of reasons why the proposal of listing political prisoners by the charge they were imprisoned under is potentially problematic (again, we're dealing with as many as 87 different statues for political prisoners. I have no idea how we would name them. Many political prisoners were never formally charged, and in other cases, the reliable sources can't quite figure out what provision someone was charged under. And then there's the inconvenient fact that they were not convicted by independent judicial authorities, but instead by a political party.) That's my opinion. Ultimately these are separate discussions. Homunculus ( duihua) 05:59, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
A politicised judicial system which upholds the status quo at the expense of justice? How completely unlike the system elsewhere.
I'm not misrepresenting your position; the problem is that you are trying to have it both ways.
We have already decided repeatedly that there should be neither a general category for political prisoners, nor a by-country category for any other country on earth. Whether or not any of us agrees with that decision, it stands as the context within which this decision is made.
You want to keep a category for political prisoners in China, so you are demanding that China remain an exception to the wider principle.
You can deny this all you like, but it remains true. If you don't like it, then stop defending China as an exception to the wider principle, and challenge that wider decision directly rather than trying an end-run around it.
You are also trying to have it both ways wrt to whether individuals can be categorised as political prisoners. At the outset of this discussion, on 29 October you argued that the categorisation should be applied " if a preponderance of reliable sources describe them that way and/or if they were charged for political crimes" ... but now you are saying that this should happen only if there is a separate decision as to whether we allow that form of categorisation for prisoners of that country. That creates the possibility that the RS point to an individual being a political prisoner, but we can't categorise them as such because a separate decision didn't allow the category to exist for that particular country.
So, which Humuculous should the closing admin believe? The one who argued at the outset that we decisions about categorising a person as a political prisoner be taken on a case-by-case basis? Or the one who argues now that this should depend on a separate screening decision about that country? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:46, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
WikiProject China has been notified.
Sorry, I should have done this when I made the nomination. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:38, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. According to nominator, There are some extreme cases where such categorisation may appear straightforward, but there are many more where the application of the "political" label is POV. Yes, indeed. So, what's the problem? Use the category in cases when it is clearly straightforward per multiple sources, rather than per anyone's subjective judgement. For example, these Chinese dissidents do belong there per sources. Even Chinese government considers them convicted for political reasons. Or consider many victims of Stalinist repressions. Even Stalin called them "terrorists" and "saboteurs" meaning "politicals", and of course all later Soviet and Western sources agree that the people were prosecuted for political reasons. My very best wishes ( talk) 21:08, 6 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Merge. The categories for political prisoners have been deleted at least twice. Those voting keep are arguing that there are pure crimes of political opinion and that these crimes are unique to China and that there are sources which label these people political prisoners. This doesn't work. Political crimes don't punish opinion; China's legal code punishes proscribed expression or advocacy, and such limitations on the content and form or expression existed virtually everywhere. In the United States, people have been imprisoned for these political crimes. Clement Vallandigham was imprisoned during the American Civil War for the crime of advocating peace with the South. Emma Goldman was repeatedly imprisoned and eventually deported to Russia for advocating anarchism during the Palmer Raids in the First Red Scare. Gus Hall was imprisoned for years on charges of seeking the overthrow of the United States government for teaching – in the abstract – the ideas of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin during the Second Red Scare. Are there reliable sources referring to "American political prisoners"? there are. A country that did describe the people it captured as "political prisoners" was the British Empire: it issued so-called "political prisoners ordinances" - the Political Prisoners Ordinance of 1882 [31], the Ashanti Political Prisoners Ordinance of 1896 [32], the West Africa Political Prisoners Ordinance of 1900 [33] and so on. But China has never issued any "political prisoners" ordinances like that. Are there categories for American or British political prisoners? No. We just deleted a bunch – now we are supposed to make an exception for China, because it is our enemy? The participants voting to keep are actually introducing a systemic Western bias into Wikipedia and disregarding multiple instances of previous consensus. Zloyvolsheb ( talk) 02:28, 7 November 2012 (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:The Band of Blacky Ranchette albums

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. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:27, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: The Band of Blacky Ranchette redirects to Howe Gelb. Cf. Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_October_5#Category:The_Band_of_Blacky_Ranchette_albums. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 16:19, 29 October 2012 (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:LGBT atheists and related categories

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. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:24, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply

Nominator's rationale: # Category:LGBT atheists was deleted in 2009 at this discussion per WP:CATGRS ("Do not create categories that are a cross-section of a topic with an ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, unless these characteristics are relevant to the topic"), and it has been twice speedily deleted since then as recreation of deleted content. This one should be salted.
  1. Category:LGBT agnostics was deleted in 2011 at [[ this discussion and breaches the CATGRS principle quoted.
  2. Category:Gay atheists has the same problem about the irrelevant grouping of topics in a category.
  3. Category:Gay agnostics – ditto.

Bencherlite Talk 12:44, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply

  • Delete Per nom and recreation of deleted content. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 16:22, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete; appears to be unencyclopedic cross-categorization. I was initially hesitant to delete because it seemed like part of the Category:LGBT people by religion tree, and LGBT Christians, Jews, Muslims are definitely relevant, but we have articles on homosexuality in those religions and no article on homosexuality and atheism or agnosticism. – Roscelese ( talk ⋅ contribs) 16:58, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Categories too far. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 21:44, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete because such cross-categories of religion and unrelated characteristics are discoraged. As it stands there are lots of trivial intersect categories we need to get rid of. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:08, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete and Salt to prevent further recreations. Benkenobi18 ( talk) 05:26, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. This gay/LGBT thing in categories is getting out of hand. Not every cross-section should have its own category. Nymf hideliho! 09:12, 4 November 2012 (UTC) reply
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Category:Australian rules biography, pre-1880 birth stubs

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: no consensus.-- Mike Selinker ( talk) 23:46, 23 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Delete. Outlived usefulness. Propose migrating category and both templates up to parent ( Category:Australian rules biography stubs) Dawynn ( talk) 11:17, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep Please explain how it's "outlived usefulness"? The parent cat is only used for people with unknown birth dates. We still have 100s and 100s and 100s of articles not yet created, a few hundred would be pre 1880s, and are likely to be stubs to start. The-Pope ( talk) 11:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. Didn't we just go through this a month or two ago? What's changed since then? Jenks24 ( talk) 12:50, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Comment -- This has 20 articles, which is perhpas too small for a stub-category, but its sub-cat on 1870s births, has many more. This looks like a case for merger to me. However, categorising sportsmen by date of bith seems odd to me. Would it not be better to do it by the date when they became active in sport, or retired form it? Peterkingiron ( talk) 15:39, 2 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • I just realised that the nominator created the 1870s cat a couple of days before this nomination. Having done that, this cat should be renamed pre-1870s, not pre-1880s. As to why we use date of birth and not date of activity, I guess it's a nice fixed date, compared to the possibly contentious decision of when they become "active". Also remember it's only stub sorting, which is just a convenient way to split up big cats. And I'm not going to be bothered going through all of them and changing them away from decade of birth. The-Pope ( talk) 12:54, 3 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • as the main group of bios to be created are ex players, and the most notable league only started in 1897, the number of notable pre 1870s births will be minimal. There is no reason to keep creating more 18#0s cats, nor to create a two level hierarchy. The-Pope ( talk) 16:46, 17 November 2012 (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:Gay dancers

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: Merge. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:22, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Added the one below now. Bencherlite Talk 13:02, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: I am sure we have had the discussion before about over-granular categorisation of LGBT people, and that this discussion was closed as migrating the populations of Gay Fooians back to LGBT Fooians and removing the over granular categories. If I am mistaken please speedy close this as a mistaken nomination. I cannot trace the prior discussions easily so I may be having a memory malfunction. There are some categories where subdividison is required, but I submit that this, while well meaning, is not one such. I can, of course, be persuaded otherwise. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 10:30, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • I'm indebted to you for finding that. I'm not sure about the Queer dancers category, but I believe that it should be included in your !vote. I am hazy about the significance of 'queer', as are many people. If I am incorrect in including it I hope for someone's opinion to justify its retention. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 12:37, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Request Can someone please point me to the discussion referred to by the nominator ("discussion before about over-granular categorisation of LGBT people... closed as migrating the populations of Gay Fooians back to LGBT Fooians and removing the over granular categories"). Thanks in advance Ottawahitech ( talk) 13:25, 1 November 2012 (UTC) reply
  • I have a hazy recollection that it was started by or included User:BrownHairedGirl if that helps. It feels as if it was a couple of months ago. My apologies if I am mistaken, the recollection is hazy at best. Fiddle Faddle ( talk) 13:36, 1 November 2012 (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.

Transport categories for China ex-PRC

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: Speedy rename/merge C2D. Timrollpickering ( talk) 14:27, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Propose renaming or merging
Nominator's rationale: Further stages in changing PRC categories (except PRC stub categories) Hugo999 ( talk) 12:11, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Merge or Rename all, since in general we use China to designate the country in question. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 04:14, 30 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Rename as China is the common name for the country. Arsenikk (talk) 12:22, 31 October 2012 (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:SONiA & disappear fear albums

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: Merge. Timrollpickering ( talk) 00:21, 5 November 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Artist is a redlink--it's the same group — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 08:06, 29 October 2012 (UTC) reply
  • Note: Target is tagged for speedy renaming due to caps. — Justin (koavf)❤ T☮ C☺ M☯ 08:07, 29 October 2012 (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:Lists of major league baseball 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.
The result of the discussion was: Speedy rename C2C. Timrollpickering ( talk) 14:40, 31 October 2012 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Major League Baseball is the name of a league/organization so it should be capitalized similar to Category:Lists of Major League Baseball owners and executives and Category:Lists of Major League Baseball Opening Day starting pitchers Astros4477 ( talk) 02:01, 29 October 2012 (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.
Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_October_29&oldid=1084319618"

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