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October 28

Category:Roller coasters by location

The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was rename. I have relocated Category:Roller coasters at Disneyland to Category:Roller coasters in California; if a better location for the category is known, please move it there. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 16:14, 5 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose renaming Category:Roller coasters by location to Category:Roller coasters by country
Nominator's rationale: Rename. All of the entries except one are countries. The one exception can be easily moved into appropriate existing sub categories. Vegaswikian 22:47, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Mayors of Reno

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The result of the debate was rename as nominated. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 09:52, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Suggest merging Category:Mayors of Reno to Category:Mayors of Reno, Nevada
Nominator's rationale: to match main article Reno, Nevada. Bencherlite Talk 22:15, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Roller coasters at Idlewild Park

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The result of the debate was speedy delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:29, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Idlewild Park ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Rename to Category:Roller coasters at Idlewild and Soak Zone, to match Idlewild and Soak Zone. -- Prove It (talk) 21:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a template issue. Vegaswikian 02:25, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Countries with original languages

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The result of the debate was speedy delete per CSD G7 (author request). – Black Falcon ( Talk) 22:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Countries with original languages ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Delete, as non-defining attribute of a country, and also as a categorization by name. -- Prove It (talk) 21:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Speedy delete as nonsense, because the relationship betweens names of languages and names of countries varies depending oin which language is being spoken: e.g. in the Island of Éire, there are two countries, neither of which is strictly called Éire, but where one of the native languages is Gaeilge. Only in the English language is there a correlation of words between Irish nationality and the Irish language. (Otherwise delete per nom). -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom and the first comment on the talk page. This categorization doesn't make sense; undecided as to whether it qualifies as "nonsense". Bencherlite Talk 21:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. Unnecessary. Matthew Brown (Morven) ( T: C) 21:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

*Weak Keep I know that there must be someone on Wikipedia other than me that finds this category useful. Common, maybe it isn't 100% accurate, but there must be a way to change this category to become less original research. Could you guys at least alert the WP:COUNTRY wikiproject? TheBlazikenMaster 22:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC) :*Please don't hate me for the category guys, I was just trying to help. I know everyone of you have tried to do something helpful, but failed. So please don't hate me for making this category. TheBlazikenMaster 22:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

  • Delete per nom ("non-defining attribute of a country"); the information that is wished to be conveyed via this category would be better suited to a list, assuming that the topic of the relationship between language name and country name is notable. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 22:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment I tagged it I'm really sorry, I don't usually make useless category, you guys know I was trying to help right? Well, next time, I will think things through first. TheBlazikenMaster 22:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • I removed the category from the articles, and let's forget this category was ever created, and get on with your lives. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheBlazikenMaster ( talk • contribs) 22:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Oil fields of England

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The result of the debate was keep. Kbdank71 15:06, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Merge Category:Oil fields of England into parent Category:Oil fields of the United Kingdom. (Ref: Category:Oil fields of Scotland - see discussion below.)
Nominator's rationale: England is not a sovereign entity in the same manner as Germany or the UK and hence 'Oil fields of England' is not possible; they should be listed under UK oilfields. Only one of the 4 entries in this cat. is clearly associated with oil in England - and that is a mixed oil & gas facility at that. Ephebi 20:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per the Scottish category below. Johnbod 21:17, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. This rather pointy nomination is based on the premise that the boundaries of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom are not properly defined, which is demonstrably wrong in law: see the CfD for Oil fields of Scotland for links to the Scottish boundaries. Category:United Kingdom is divided between England, Scotland and Wales in most areas of geography, biography, society, culture, business, politics etc, and we should not make oil fields an exception just because one editor apparently dislikes the fact that it is a political issue. What next, delete Category:Scottish people just because for 300 years there has been no such thing in law as a citizen of Scotland? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - following longstanding precedent that in most cases English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish etc. categories are so split. Matthew Brown (Morven) ( T: C) 21:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - Many categories are divided by the counties of the United Kingdom. It might be thought that there would eb difficulties with offshore oil fields, but legislation exists to define which legal system apples, for England and Scotland have completely different legal systems. This is discussed at length under a similar nomination related to Scotland. Peterkingiron 00:13, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Glass Mask

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The result of the debate was delete. Kbdank71 15:06, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Glass Mask ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Eponymous overcategorisation. The material does not justify a distinct category; all of the category members are adequately interlinked via in-text links and "See also" sections. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 18:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Glass Mask characters

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The result of the debate was merge. Kbdank71 15:07, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose merging Category:Glass Mask characters into Category:Lists of anime and manga characters
Nominator's rationale: Overcategorisation. The material (two lists of characters) does not justify a distinct category. The category can be created if/when there are articles about individual characters. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 18:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Works by Myaskovsky

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The result of the debate was rename. Woohookitty Woohoo! 09:05, 3 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose renaming Category:Works by Myaskovsky to Category:Compositions by Nikolai Myaskovsky
Nominator's rationale: Per convention of Category:Compositions by composer, and more than just the surname of Nikolai Myaskovsky should be used in the category name. Bencherlite Talk 18:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • I am entirely happy with this proposal if it conforms better to Wiki conventions and aids transparency of reference. Cenedi 19:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Rename per nom. Johnbod 21:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Rename per nom. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:23, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Roller coasters at Playland

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The result of the debate was speedy delete as empty. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:31, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Playland ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Rename to Category:Roller coasters at Playland (Vancouver), to match Playland (Vancouver), but not Playland (New York) -- Prove It (talk) 18:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a usage template issue. Vegaswikian 02:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Atenean

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The result of the debate was merge as nominated. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 09:48, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Suggest merging Category:Atenean to Category:Ateneo de Manila University alumni
Nominator's rationale: Duplicate category; suggested merge target is better named (per convention of Category:Alumni by university or college in the Philippines) and per main article Ateneo de Manila University. Bencherlite Talk 18:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Artists featured on Grand Theft Auto

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The result of the debate was delete. Kbdank71 15:05, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Artists featured on Grand Theft Auto ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Overcategorization as performer by performance, per multiple precedents. Bencherlite Talk 18:13, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Roller coasters at Ocean Park

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The result of the debate was speedy delete as empty. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:33, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Ocean Park ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Rename to Category:Roller coasters at Ocean Park Hong Kong, to match Ocean Park Hong Kong. -- Prove It (talk) 17:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Upmerge to Category:Roller coasters in Hong Kong. The nominated categ contains only 1 article, and is the only subcat of Category:Roller coasters in Hong Kong; it's an un-needed intermediate layer. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • These cats are added by {{ Infobox roller coaster}}. So they can not be upmerged unless someone guts/rewrites the template. However these one ofs are part of a series so probably should be kept. Editors who are not careful can generate redlinked categories that some unsuspecting editor will later create if the wrong name is used in the template. The fix is to edit the article and fix the park name in the infobox for the coaster. Vegaswikian 20:07, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a usage template issue. Vegaswikian 02:29, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Oil fields of Scotland

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The result of the debate was keep. Kbdank71 15:04, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Merge into Category:Oil fields of the United Kingdom, Scotland is not a sovereign entity in the same manner as Germany or the UK and hence 'Oil fields of Scotland' is not possible; they should be listed under UK oilfields. -- Jw2034 (talk) 17:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep many "by country" categories are divided like this. There is Category:Oil fields of England also, both under the UK cat. We should not make it difficult for Scots to work out how much revenue the English have deprived them of; they are bad-tempered enough about it as it is. :) Johnbod 18:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep. Subcategorising UK categories into Scotland, England, Wales, N.Irl is a long-established convention; and it's particularly relevant in this case where the claim of "Scotland's Oil" is a major political issue in Scotland. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Upmerge per nom. Sub-categorising like this becomes heavily POV. Just where is the boundary of Scottish Water & English water? And are there inner and limits? Who owns Rockall? The rectangular Licence Blocks are issued at Westminster and do not take into account nationalistic claims for borders of "territorial waters". And to complicate the POV, IIRC 99% of the companies developing & operating those fields are registered in England and operate under the laws of England, not Scotland. Answering Johnbod & BHGs concerns, if someone has a devoluntionary agenda its pretty easy to see where the fields are and make their own mind up (though they'd be pretty foolish to use the current sparse WP list as an inventory of fields past, present & future). And if we really are trying to feed these agendas, shouldn't you be asking for an extra cat to make it easier for the independence meovement of the Lieutenancy of Shetland? Enough. The Category:Oil fields of England is also a misnomer & being misused - I'll submit a nom to upmerge those as well. Ephebi 20:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Reply. There is nothing POV about this: the boundaries are clearly defined in the law of the United Kingdom by the Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999 ( Statutory Instrument 1999 No. 1126, ISBN  0-11-059052-X). There is no need to break the well-established patten of Scottish subcategories just because someone takes a particular view either way about a major issue in the politics of Scotland.
      The question about the nationality of the oil companies is an irrelevance, because this is categorising the location of oil fields, not the nationality of the companies involved. An oil field of Kazakhstan doesn't cease to be in Kazakhstan just because it is being operated by an American company. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:09, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • PS for those who don't want to plot all the co-ordinates in Statutory Instrument 1999 No. 1126, Her Majesty's Stationery Office has kindly created a handy map of the boundaries. To answer Ephebi's question above, it appears that Her Majesty's Government regards Rockall as Scottish. It might help to link to the map from the category, to avoid further confusion for those who don't follow the minutiae of legislation. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:39, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Not everything in a UK category is sub-cat'ed down to the level of England/Scotland/Wales etc. if its not appropriate. Thanks for maps & document:if you read them carefully you may note they are cunningly worded to relate to fishing rights or simply describe water "adjacent to Scotland", and not "ownership", "control" or any other rights. Most (but not all) oil fields are way outside the 'Scottish' fishing limits as defined in the Act. So, to repeat, Licence Blocks are still issued and controlled nowadays from the UK's Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in Westminster, mainly to companies registered outside Scotland. Much to Alex Salmond's frustration they do not legally "belong to" Scotland (or England, or Wales) and it is not a function for Holyrood, and we have no way of knowing how such a function would be devolved to a Scottish Parliament, or how the exploitation 'rights' would be shared and managed. That's not to diminish Scotland in any way, but the cat is still plainly POV/ WP:Crystal until Scottish govt has a legal claim on them. However, if we seriously feel the need to try to represent a geographic and not a political assignment, then it would more accurate to drop the 'of' and call it Category:Oil and gas fields adjacent to Scotland. Ephebi 23:34, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • The convention of Category:Oil fields by country is for subcats called "oil fields of Foo", and I don't see any need to break that convention. I don't think there is any dispute about who issues the licence blocks, but the SI still makes clear that the territory defined in section 3 of the SI is part of the territory of Scotland, and under the jurisdiction of Scots law (and as the map shows, that extends way beyond the fishing limits defined in section 4). To understand this, you have to read the SI in conjunction with Section 126(1) of the Scotand Act 1998, an interpretation clause which says “Scotland” includes so much of the internal waters and territorial sea of the United Kingdom as are adjacent to Scotland' .
    Whether or not Scottish Government has a legal claim to control of all things in Scottish territory is a separate issue (relating to the list of reserved matters in the Scotland Act), but this is not the place to take a judgement either way on the merits of such a claim. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:55, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • I think we are agreed about the convention - our different positions come down to the level and to just one word. As the word "of" means possession, it can be a politically-charged statement, which is why we must be particularly careful about expressing a POV. 'Of' clearly applies to the Oil fields "of the UK". We appear to agree that Scotland does not exercise those rights or other aspects of ownership: so I hold that the term cannot apply to Scotland (or England). Perhaps it should apply now or one day in the future, but I think we agree that would need a change in the interpretation or letter of the law first, which is not the role of WP. Thats why I suggested the alternative, apolitical "in Scottish waters". Ephebi 02:01, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • But - not legally... and that's the problem with using a statement like "oil of Scotland" which implies it is Ephebi 23:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • But yes legally the oil is in Scottish waters we may not get the revenue from it but its still our oil -- Barryob Vigeur de dessus 01:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep provided that the distinction can adequately be supported, and I presume it can. It must be necessary for statute to provide whether a given oil platform is subject to English or Scottish law, for example in which country a person should sue for an injury sustained on it or be prosecuted for a theft or assault committed on it. There is a political hot potato involved, but that does not justifiy the proposed merge. Peterkingiron 00:52, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • interesting viewpoint, m'lud. There have certainly been cases of North Sea health and safety breaches being prosecuted by Scottish Sheriffs both before & after devolution. But "jurisdiction" is seperate from "ownership". Ephebi 02:01, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Indeed it does. But the category name does not say "owned by Scotland", any more than Category:Military of Scotland means that the ministers in Holyrood have under their control several regiments of infantry and a few submarines full of leased Trident missiles. You are reading far too much into that word "of". -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • LOL good point. (Even the merger of the traditional "Scottish Regiments" into the "Regiment of Scotland" went down like a lead balloon.) I'm only reading what the words say - my dislike of "of" and preference for "in" avoids this false interpretation if we must have this false category. Ephebi 09:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Roller coasters at Busch Gardens Williamsburg

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The result of the debate was speedy delete as empty. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:35, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Busch Gardens Williamsburg ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Merge into Category:Roller coasters at Busch Gardens Europe, to match Busch Gardens Europe, formerly Busch Gardens Williamsburg. -- Prove It (talk) 15:58, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • These cats are added by {{ Infobox roller coaster}}. The fix is to edit the article and fix the park name in the infobox for the coasters. Vegaswikian 20:08, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge both to a new Category:Roller coasters in Virginia. Time to categorise these roller coasters by state to match the wider system of categorisation of buildings and structures, visitor attractions etc. --20:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
    • How do you propose to deal with the template? Are you also saying that being part of a series of roller coasters by park is not a reason to keep this article? Vegaswikian 21:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • I think that the simplest way out of the mess would be to remove the autocategorisation and categorise them manually according to the usual geographical divisions of countries. The roller-coaster-by-par schema creates too many small categories, and loses a lot of geographical category info. E.g. there is no Category:Roller coasters in Ontario, and the rollercoasters there are divided up amongst several small by-park categories, so anyone looking for the Ontario roller coasters has to figure out which province the amusement park categories relate to. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:15, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • PS your comments below, under Roller coasters at Great America seem to emphasise that the current categorisation scheme is simply broken. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
          • So the suggestion is to create the new parent categories, the level depending on the country and number of coasters, upmerge the by park categories by adding a specific category hard codded in the article and when all of these are completed, update the template to no longer categorize at all. Vegaswikian 00:26, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a template usage issue. Vegaswikian 02:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Diving non-fiction books

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The result of the debate was rename. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:11, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose renaming Category:Diving non-fiction books to Category:Underwater diving books
Nominator's rationale: Rename - lead category is about to be renamed to Underwater diving and this should match. Almost all of the other subcats of the Sports books parent leave out the qualifier and the volume of books on diving is not so large as to warrant distinction between fiction and non-fiction. Otto4711 15:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Rename per nom - I don't suppose there is a diving equivalent to Dick Francis. Johnbod 18:01, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Greg Louganis has co-authored his autobiography and a book on dogs, but he wasn't an underwater diver. Otto4711 23:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Roller coasters at Marriott's Great America

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The result of the debate was speedy delete as empty. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:37, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Marriott's Great America ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Merge into Category:Roller coasters at Six Flags Great America, to match Six Flags Great America, formerly Marriott's Great America. -- Prove It (talk) 15:36, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge per nom as duplicate. However, the parent category Category:Roller coasters in the United States needs attention. It is sub-categorised by venue, and there are 77 sub-categories for 376 articles, which is an average of less than 5½ articles per category. It would be much better to categorise the roller-coasters by state, which would reduce the number of categories (by about half, I reckon), and fit in better with the broader categorisation schemes for buildings and structures in the US, which is by state. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment These cats are added by {{ Infobox roller coaster}} see my comments above. Just change the templates to the correct park name. Vegaswikian 20:11, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a template usage issue. Vegaswikian 02:36, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Roller coasters at Great America

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The result of the debate was speedy delete as empty. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:38, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Great America ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Merge into Category:Roller coasters at California's Great America, to match California's Great America. -- Prove It (talk) 15:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a template usage issue. Vegaswikian 02:42, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Tom Goes to the Mayor

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The result of the debate was delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:13, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Tom Goes to the Mayor ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete - completely unnecessary category per extensive precedent. Otto4711 15:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Films with Original Screenplays

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The result of the debate was delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:18, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Films with Original Screenplays ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Delete, as non-defining, or at least Rename to Category:Films with original screenplays. I consider it a defining characteristic of the screenplays, but not of the films themselves. -- Prove It (talk) 15:06, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films‎. It's overcatergorisation. The JPS talk to me 15:39, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Weak delete the source of the screenplay is a somewhat important characteristic of a film, but perhaps it is overcategorization. Also, the category seems to be being applied very selectively. -- W.marsh 16:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Carlossuarez46 23:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Teenage Robot characters

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The result of the debate was rename. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 06:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Teenage Robot characters ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Rename to Category:My Life as a Teenage Robot characters, convention of Category:Television characters by series, and to match My Life as a Teenage Robot. -- Prove It (talk) 14:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Nicktoon protagonists

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The result of the debate was delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:19, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Nicktoon protagonists ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Delete, as non-defining, see previous discussions. -- Prove It (talk) 14:37, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Endemic birds of Alaska

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The result of the debate was delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:21, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Endemic birds of Alaska ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Delete: The category was created by a user who apparently wasn't clear on the meaning of the word " endemic", and thus had included many species that didn't qualify. There is only a single species that falls into this category. No new species are likely to be added any time soon! MeegsC | Talk 14:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Landing places of Captain James Cook

The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was delete, by consensus and as non-defining. Has some potential as a list, possibly incorporated into the main article, but as there are several different inclusion criteria that could be applied, will leave that for the moment. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 04:08, 8 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Landing places of Captain James Cook ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Delete, This would make a fine article, but as a category it's non-defining, and already covered by James Cook and First voyage of James Cook. -- Prove It (talk) 14:08, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete The category does not make it clear what landing places over what period are being included. I would imagine there are numerous points in Europe and North America where Cook landed, but how they fit into this category is unclear. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 00:47, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I would have thought that the category could be tightened up by providing some explanatory text on its category page, limiting it to places where he and members of his crew landed during his vatious voyages of exploration. This would eliminate places he landed while a collier captain, etc. Peterkingiron 00:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment Perhaps, but what then becomes a "landing place". Is Australia a landing place or a place in Australia such as Botany Bay or a location on Botany Bay such as Kurnell, New South Wales? Same with Hawaii, New Caledonia, Tahiti etc. If the category is to be kept, it should at the least be renamed Category:Landing places on the voyages of James Cook without the rank and specifying the voyages. Even a broader category such as Category:Voyages of James Cook may be better. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 06:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. The fact that James Cook landed in these places may be relevant to the history of these places, but it is by no means a defining feature of them. This information is better suited to a list or article, such as the ones noted in the nomination. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 06:23, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment My inclination is to delete, but I'm not sure: I think it might be a keep if tightened up and renamed to something like "places established by" or "places discovered by". If Cook landed somewhere, marked it on the map and wrote it up in his reports as a great place to build a huge new colony, then it sees to me that his visit is a defining characteristic of the place. But if he visited an existing settlement, had a few beers with the locals, and went on his way with a log entry saying "great people, plentiful beer, lousy anchorage, diabolical climate and infertile land" then it seems not to be defining. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:17, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Listify per nom 132.205.99.122 19:21, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Listify and delete per nom. Carlossuarez46 03:39, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete and don't listify - After looking through nearly all of the 16 articles in this category I can see no possible rationale for keeping it. If there were substantial sections about James Cook in these articles it would probably make sense. But in nearly every case there is only a single sentence in the entire article that even mentions Cook. I don't even see a real need to listify, since these landings are already covered quite adequately in the articles about Cook. If a list is desired, it can easily be appended to one of those articles. And lastly, I will simply note that the creator of the category (Adam.J.W.C.) left the following remark in the edit history after finding the CFD notice: "removing cook category, I dont mind if this is deleted..." Cgingold 11:51, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Listify. Good amount of info in here - just not in the right medium. Auroranorth ( sign) 02:21, 3 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment. Is creating what is essentially a context-less list really necessary? After all, we have an article at First voyage of James Cook. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 16:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • delete as non-defining per Black Falcon and Cgingold, and no need for a list when First voyage of James Cook does the job. Bencherlite Talk 09:57, 6 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Listify per Auroranorth. JRG 23:40, 6 November 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Australian bryologists

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The result of the debate was merge as nominated. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 09:57, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Australian bryologists ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Merge into Category:Bryologists, or Keep ... there are so few of these it probably doesn't make sense to divide them by nationality. -- Prove It (talk) 13:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Merge per nom. __ meco 14:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Erdős numbers

A discussion in the aftermath of this discussion can be located on the talk page of this page —Preceding unsigned comment added by Meco ( talk • contribs) 11:16, 3 November 2007 (UTC) reply
The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was delete. I honestly don't have time to explain every reason why. Strength of argument lends to those who wanted to delete. For the vote-counters, many of the "keeps" relied on the argument "nothing has changed since the last time", which isn't a strong argument at all, and certainly pales to the arguments that the delete people brought up. There were some good arguments on both sides, but as I said, the ones who wanted to delete had the stronger argument. Kbdank71 15:01, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Erdős numbers ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 1 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 2 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 3 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 4 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 5 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 6 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete, and listify. This group of categories should be deleted not because the information isn't necessarily noteworthy (as trivia, in my opinion), but because it compromises the quality of Wikipedia's category system. Allowing this to remain lowers the threshold for placing into categories information that should, at most, be included in lists.
Two previous nominations have foregone this one:
I am certain that many people are going to be annoyed at this third nomination for deletion of these categories. My rationale for "not respecting previous decisions" (or some similar accusations) is twofold. Firstly, I was not aware of them, and I want to voice my opinion where it matters, as should be the right of anyone who wasn't around for the first two rounds. Wikipedia is constantly evolving and the notion that things can be settled "once and for all" should be scoffed at at every opportunity. Secondly, my big grievance about these categories existing was hardly discussed in the two previous rounds: In the previous round (February 2007) there were 14 keeps and 11 deletes (27 keeps and 13 deletes in October 2006) where the "keepers" unanimously failed to address the need to have this information presented in the category format as opposed to lists. (Also, there used to be a parameter in the Infobox_Scientist template which was removed, partly due to the existence of these categories. This field may of course be reintroduced if deemed useful.)
The umbrella category Category:Erdős numbers is parented by Category:Academic publishing in which it stands out like a sore thumb, indicating how this scheme does not integrate in Wikipedia's categorization scheme at all. __ meco 13:36, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. I don't see how the existence of these categories "compromises the quality of Wikipedia's category system". Nominators tone and arguments are simply WP:IDONTLIKEIT, which is not a valid reason for deletion. Gandalf61 14:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Reply Not so. The nominator's arguments specifically cited (in the first sentence) the problem of the categories being trivia, which a valid reason for deletion per WP:OCAT#Non-defining_or_trivial_characteristic, and one widely used at CfD. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:11, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • Reply Yes so, because if you read nominator's first sentence carefully he says that his opinion that the information is trivia is not part of his argument for deletion. Even if it were part of his argument, he provides no evidence to back up his "trivia" opinion (and probably knows he could not do so if challenged, as there is overwhelming evidence that Erdős numbers are notable to mathematicians), so his "trivia" opinion just another WP:IDONTLIKEIT statement. Gandalf61 09:40, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • I have seen plenty of evidence that the concept of Erdős numbers is notable, but none that an individual mathematicians' Erdos number is a defining attribute of that person. Per WP:V, it's for someone making the claim of an item's significance to provide the evidence to support that: can you find evidence to support the claim that it is defining? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:38, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
          • Reply Well, that task is trivial (in the mathematical sense) ! Do a Google search for "my Erdős number" and you get over 12,000 hits - here are some examples picked at random: [1], [2], [3]. Individual mathematicians spend significant amounts of time and effort in researching their own Erdős number and presenting the results. Now, why would they do that unless they believed it made a contribution to their standing in the mathematical community ? Clearly it has personal significance to individual mathematicians, as well as community-wide notability - in fact it probably has greater individual significance than a mathematician's nationality. Gandalf61 12:21, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
            • Comment: Excellent point, Gandalf61. While at it, check out this: "For a definition of Erdős number, read Wikipedia's excellent entry on the topic." Hah! Turgidson 12:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
              • Reply. Sorry, all those google hits just show that it is popular trivia (and hence a notable subject), but not that it is a defining characteristic of the people categorised. They could perfectly well do that because it was fun, or because of peer pressure, or because on a boring day its an easy way to whle away a few hours in something which will interest a few other obsessives; if you claim that "probably has greater individual significance than a mathematician's nationality", let's see some evidence for that claim. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
            • Reply: I think you may be overestimating the amount of effort it takes to determine your own Erdos number. When you're a young grad student writing your first paper, of course you might go to a lot of effort to figure this out. Once you have a few publications under your belt, though, it's not really hard to guess which of your collaborators might have low Erdos numbers and to add one to the result to get your own. And no, your Erdos number is not a contribution to your standing in the mathematical community. Your publication record is. Finally, a lot of people have Erdos numbers who aren't mathematicians; if I compute an Erdos number for someone who is likely to not even know what one is, should I edit their article to place them in the appropriate category too? Is categorization by characteristics people might not know they have a useful thing? SparsityProblem 23:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Keep. Nothing has changed since the previous two deletion attempts. I do appreciate being notified of the discussion this time (unlike the previous time). Roger Hui 14:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • I'm going to abstain from expressing my own opinion, but the nominator's reasoning seems to be begging the question to me. It should be a list rather than a category because it undermines the category system because it should be a list rather than a category? Supply a real reason, please. — David Eppstein 15:55, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
My point is that as trivial as this categorial focus is, it should not infringe on the category hierarchy which should be used where significant relations into other hierachies can be established and make sense. This simply doesn't fit into the structure, being an island unto itself, unless someone should attempt to create categories for Pauli numbers, Bacon numbers, Erdős–Bacon numbers, Stringfield numbers and all the other "fun" categories we can similarly conceive of. If you absorb the discussion of the two previous nominations you will notice that even those who support keeping these categories either concede them being trivial and/or emphasize their importance lying in the alleged fact that the mathematicians community in general places a substantial emphasis on one another's Erdős numbers, and you would also notice that the reason why many mathematicians find Erdős numbers important is left uncommented. The "real reason" why I can allow a list where a category cannot be defended is that lists of a more or less trivial nature are much less conspicuous than categories. __ meco 16:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
A category is probably inappropriate if the answer to the following questions is "no":
  • (not relevant)
  • If you go to the article from the category, will it be obvious why it's there? Is the category subject prominently discussed in the article?
An article will often be in several categories. Restraint should be used, however — categories become less effective the more there are on a given article.
In how many of the articles in these categories are Erdős numbers explained? Would it be feasible to include an explanation into these articles? No, it would be thrown out as insignificant trivia. Why then should the category tags be allowed? Of course they shouldn't. __ meco 16:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
To respond to this comment: this criterion is applied much more weakly than you are trying to suggest is the minimum here. Consider the profusion of "date of birth/death" categories, including "date of birth missing". This information is never explicitly discussed in a biographical article, except that it is given as a datum at the top; much like the Erdos number, really. Granted, the date of birth of an important historical figure provides historical context for their life and work, but the Erdos number provides some kind of context for a mathematician's work as well. And the precise date of birth, down to the day of the month, is of no interest in this connection at all; certainly, the interest in knowing how many people were born on November 24th, 1982 (as was I) is largely one of trivia. And this level of precision is far beyond that of the Erdos number. To answer the obvious objection, I don't consider this point of mine to be that "we already have this kind of crap, so it's okay", which everyone knows is a bad argument. I consider it an application of existing precedent to the interpretation of what is, after all, a mere guideline, since the suggestion given as to the appropriateness of a category is deliberately unspecific. I think that it is much less restrictive than you are saying. Ryan Reich 16:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
The comparison with the birth date categories was made a big number of in the previous nominations also, which to me is tantamount to grasping at straws. This line of reasoning is so philistine that I'm simply not going to debate it. __ meco 17:24, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Like you, I didn't read the previous debates. Like you, it didn't stop me from writing something that "many people are going to be annoyed at" because it has been "settled once and for all". Unlike you, apparently, I managed to remain civil. Please, be nice, which includes even making an argument you don't want to bother making, rather than dismissing mine as "philistine". Ryan Reich 20:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I did read both the previous debates before venturing to nominate for a third time. If that hasn't become apparent to you from reading my posts here, I don't think I can be blamed. __ meco 20:14, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. All the arguments have been made in profusion before. Honestly, there are better ways to contribute to Wikipedia than this nomination, which is a repetitive waste of the time and good will of editors. -- KSmrq T 18:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong delete and listify all per WP:OCAT#Non-defining_or_trivial_characteristic. Anyone interested in Erdős numbers can find the info they need in a list, and it's clear from a quick trawl through the articles that an Erdos number is such an insignificant attribute of the mathematicians listed that only one out of twenty of the level 2 articles which I examined even mentioned Erdos, and none mentioned an Erdős number (other than in the category). Additionally, this sort of relationship mapping would overwhelm wikipedia's categorisation system if replicated, particularly when we get beyond the first degree of separation. Frankly, I'm amazed that this stuff survived previous CfDs; it's quite a fun game to play, but creating categories "for people who worked with someone who worled with X" is trivia with no limits. By all means have an article and a list or a series of lists, but if anyone is actually serious about keeping the categories (rather than just sustaining a joke), I hope to some very clear explanation of a) why they consider an Erdős number to be a defining characteristic of these mathematicians, and b) why this cannot be satisfactorily handled in a sortable list. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:11, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep I wasn't aware of the previous discussions on this, but I'm glad the categories have survived so far. I don't know about other Wikipedia readers, but I have found these categories to be a useful resource. According to WP:CAT, "Categories...help users find information, even if they don't know that it exists or what it's called." Because of these categories I have found information on numerous notable mathematicians that I just didn't know about, and I've taken the time to expand and improve some of those articles. As has been pointed out before, it's much easier to maintain this information in categories than in lists. Besides, although this isn't any kind of an argument, I've spent a lot of time lately adding existing articles to Category:Erdős number 2. Once I'm done I can easily go back and improve the articles themselves. I'm on letter S right now; it would be frustrating for the category to vanish as I'm nearing the end of the list. Ntsimp 18:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • According to Erdős number, there are over 8,000 people with an Erdős number of 2, so this doesn't seem like a good way of finding mathematicians. The second of the "in a nutshell" box at the top of WP:CAT says "Categories are for defining characteristics". As I asked above, in what way is it a defining characteristic of a mathematician that he co-authored a paper with someone who co-authored with someone else? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • But not all of those 8,000 people are notable enough to have Wikipedia articles. The category has in practice been useful to at least one reader in finding the articles of those who are. Ntsimp 17:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete: It's a given that almost anyone who has published a collaborative paper in mathematics or computer science has an Erdos number of 6 or less. All that having an Erdos number between 3-infinity says about you is that you have published a paper with one or more coauthors, and are (probably) a mathematician or scientist (though not even that, since some people in non-math/science fields have Erdos numbers too). It doesn't provide any "context for their work" to know someone has Erdos number 6. (Half my friends -- mostly grad students -- have finite Erdos numbers.) There is no imaginable reason why, on reading an article on someone with Erdos number of 6, you would think, "Hmm, I wonder who else has Erdos number 6?" In addition, I don't see anyone else raising this concern, but the Erdos number information is likely to be inaccurate -- that is, the claim that someone has Erdos number n is verifiable, but if n > 2 then it's always possible that they have Erdos number m where n < m, and no one has bothered to find the shorter path. There's already an Erdos number database, so why should we be maintaining a clumsy and inferior copy of the same information? SparsityProblem 18:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Comment: Good question(s), so let me take a stab at answering them. (1) The Erdős number database provides only lists of people with Erdős number 1 or 2; only WP has listings up to 6, far as I know. (2) Finding someone with Erdős number 6 is no mean feat -- I know, since I created that cat and populated it as much as I could. BTW, where else would you find those 5 people in that cat listed together, eh? (3) Speaking just for myself, anytime I add an Erdős number I check it thoroughly against the MathSciNet database. The info there is about as reliable as one can get, and besides, the path from the respective person to Erdős can be readily inspected. I am about 99.9% confident in the computers at MathSciNet finding the shortest path, given the available information they have (and they do have 2,268,196 in their database, as of today). Yes, a paper may be overlooked (especially if it's an old one), but hey, that's the best we've got right now, and I think it's pretty darn good. Turgidson 22:08, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • Where else would you find those 5 people in that cat listed together? (those with a E number of 6). That nicely illustrates one of the fundamental problems of these categories, that they are grouping together individuals who have so little in common that only this exercise groups them. Two individuals with an Erdos number of 6 may be separated by up to 12 degrees of separation, united inly in the fact that they are a long way from a third party. It's like a Dorothy-designed category of "places a long way from Kansas", including Yokohama and Tromso. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:41, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • Comment: What do you mean, "finding someone with Erdős number 6 is no mean feat"? I know at least six people with Erdős number 6. None of them are notable enough to have Wikipedia articles about them (and it's possible some of them are actually 5s or less, but I don't think all of them are), but they certainly exist. I suspect, though, that there are many people who are 6 and higher -- chemists, biologists, and other people in fields that are even further flung from math. SparsityProblem 22:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • Comment: I mean, people with Erdős number 6 (verifiable on MathSciNet), and are notable enough to have a page on WP. If you think this is so easy, go ahead. Please drop me a line when you got one, I'd be interested to know. Turgidson 22:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • Comment: Hmmm... I don't consider the information from that list as being reliable, since I cannot verify the path to Erdős from it. As a quick check, I did look up Vladimir I. Arnold and Martin D. Kruskal, and I found that the former has Erdős number 3 (Arnold- Anatoly Vershik-Gregory A. Freiman-Erdős), while the latter has Erdős number 4 (Kruskal-Harvey Segur-Franco Vivaldi-Patrick Morton-Erdős). I'll try and check the others ones when I have time, but unless the path can be certified by a MathSciNet search (or an equivalent literature search, with precise list of inetrmediary authors and papers they wrote together), I'd be rather suspicious of the information, and accordingly would very much hesitate to list it in WP based on that single source (with which I am very familiar, of course). BTW, in the meantime I found a 6th person listed on WP with certifiable Erdős number 6: Danilo Blanuša. Turgidson 00:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
          • Comment: I suggest you write in and correct them, then, since the page says they welcome corrections. This link (goes to a PDF) should contain verifiable data on which to base all of the numbers that page lists. Sure, it's possible that there are shorter paths for some of these people, but as this page shows the distribution of Erdos numbers, and 6 is the third-most-popular number among people they know about (with 40014 people), I think it's unlikely that there are really only five notable people with Erdos number 6. Of course not *all* of those 40014 people are notable by WP standards, but I'd imagine more than six of them are. SparsityProblem 00:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
          • Comment: One more: despite what is claimed above, Ilya Prigogine has Erdős number 3 (Prigogine- David van Dantzig- Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn-Erdős). And thanks, but no thanks -- I rather edit productively here at WP than wasting my time fixing someone else's list. I think we can do much better here, based on reliable sources. Turgidson 01:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
            • Comment: So you think it's better to have two separate databases of information on Erdos numbers (the oakland.edu list and the Wikipedia category tree), each with its own disjoint set of errors, rather than having a single source for this information? Interesting. But this gets to be rather far away from the original point, which was that there are tens of thousands of people with each Erdos number between 3 and 7 inclusive, and as such, the fact that someone has one of those numbers isn't very interesting. (Even 2 isn't all that interesting. 1 is interesting, but if we retained that, it would raise the question of "so why not a category for people who collaborated with [insert other famous person in the field here]".) SparsityProblem 01:12, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep. We've been around the bend with this before, and I don't see anything really new in this nomination, though, as others have said, I do appreciate the notification. Can we reach stare decisis et non quieta movere on this, already?  :) Turgidson 21:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Only if someone can provide a persuasive answer to the question of how an Erdős number is a defining characteristic (per WP:CAT) of a mathematician rather than an amusing piece of trivia. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. It is funny to read the argument that this kind of information belongs in a list instead of a category, while in AFD nominations the usual proposal is to delete a list because, after all, that's what categories are for. Anyway, this information on a well-known and notable concept should definitely be preserved.  -- Lambiam 22:09, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • I don't see anyone disputing that it's a notable concept, but the issue at stake in categorisation is rather different: whether it is a defining characteristic of these mathematicians. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) —Preceding comment was added at 23:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      You are putting too much weight on a literal interpretation of a clause. It has already been pointed out that many categories do not fit the strict pattern of "defining characteristic". In the Wikipedia:Overcategorization guidelines the section Non-defining or trivial characteristic gives these examples of what to avoid: categories Bald People, Fictional characters who love to shop, Famous redheads; or categorizing based on someone's tastes in food, their favorite holiday destination, or the number of tattoos they have. Instead we should "categorize by what may be considered notable in a person's life." Surely you don't want to suggest that someone's Erdős number is as trivial as the number of tattoos, or as incidental as alopecia.  -- Lambiam 00:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • In my opinion it is you who attempts to narrow down the significance of this clause to where it basically can be circumvented in all cases but for the very few examples which it gives out explicitly. As for your appeal to common sense in recognizing the significant difference betwen these Erdős number categories and the examples given, you fail in my view. I could easily go with categories Bald People or Famous redheads before I would accept an individual's Erdős number as a defining characteristic.
As for your assertion that "It has already been pointed out that many categories do not fit the strict pattern of "defining characteristic" that is also an attempt to spin actual facts. Several people have argued that the categorization scheme for year of birth is equally trivial as Erdős number categories. Are there other examples? Is this example even valid? __ meco 07:53, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete as irrelevant to anything in reality. this is the essence of trivia, beyond at least n= 2 or 3. Mathematical genealogies are relevant and important , and should be constructed for other sciences. But this does not apply to what is mere position on a co-citation network for a single paper. This is one instance where consensus ought to change pretty drastically. I see it probably hasn't yet, at least among the devotees, but I continue with BHG to advocate that it ought to. DGG ( talk) 00:02, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment: I don't think anyone has raised this issue yet: there are major verifiability and original research problems with letting these categories stand. The "obvious" way to verify someone's Erdos number is to look it up using the MathSciNet collaboration distance tool. However, their database omits many authors, and even for people included in the database, the result it returns is higher than the minimal number. For example, while looking up my various friends and acquaintances I ran across someone for whom MathSciNet returns "5". I happen to know it's actually at most 4, but apparently MathSciNet's database doesn't know about the paper that gives this person an Erdos number of 4. Okay, so can I edit the article about this person and add them to the "Erdos number 4" category? I don't think it would be right for me to do that, because verifying this claim would require manually going to their publications web site and looking for people you know have a small Erdos number. And lots of other academics don't even *have* a publications list online. I could, when adding the person to the category, also edit their article to provide the path that witnesses their Erdos number, but that would be silly. If you accept that these categories should exist, the right thing to do would be for the category page to list both the person and the path that witnesses their Erdos number -- without having to pollute articles with that information -- but MediaWiki doesn't have any way to do that (AFAIK). So if you support keeping these categories, how do you address the verifiability issue? SparsityProblem 04:21, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • You change from categories to lists. __ meco 07:53, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Yes, see my detailed posts on this subject, just above. Turgidson 10:24, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • I don't see where your comments address my points. The numbers provided by MathSciNet are often too high. Many authors who have Erdos numbers -- particularly in computer science, my field -- are not listed at all. So is it "original research" to categorize someone as having an Erdos number you know they have, if MathSciNet doesn't agree? If not, where do you put the data that allows for verification of the category assignment? SparsityProblem 19:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. Nothing essential has changed from the previous deletion challenges for these categories. The arguments are the same and since they were correctly kept before that's appropriate this time as well. Personally I think that 6 is way too many cats, however, and Erdős numbers 4, 5, and 6 should go away. Nobody cares about an Erdős number > 3 (actually even 3 is pushing it, 1 and 2 are the only ones that really matter), and documenting it and even getting the numbers correct is hard for large n. Quale 05:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • One of the things that hasn't changed is that those in favour of keeping the category still seem unable to offer any evidence at all that an Erdős number is a defining characteristic of an individual mathematician, rather than a piece of trivia. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • Comment Evidence provided in my response to your challenge above. Gandalf61 13:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • And per my reply above, all you have found is evidence of the notability of the concept of an Erdos number, not evidence that it is a defining characteristic of a mathematician. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
          • Actually the primary thing that hasn't changed is the obsessive need of delete supporters to reply to every comment that disagrees with their view, repeating the same argument over and over again as if that might convince those several people who disagree with it. Quale 14:52, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
            • No, I see very little prospect of convincing them. But CfD isn't a vote count, and if the keep !voters want to retain the category, they need some evidence that having an Erdos number is more important than, for example, holding a PhD (which we don't categorise). This is the third debate in which the keep voters can only repeat that it's interesting and lots of people do it, but offer no evidence of how important it is to an individuals' career or reputation. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:09, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. Keeping these categories, which in reality tells us very little about the mathematicians other than that they've collaborated on papers with other mathematicians, seems pretty pointless. If we keep this, we might as well start including the "Bacon number" on every biography relating to the film industry; it contributes about as much useful information! MeegsC | Talk 13:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Comment And if my aunt had a beard she would be my uncle. In other words, if film stars spend as much time talking about, researching and documenting their Bacon numbers as mathematicians spend on polishing their Erdős numbers, then yes, we should include Bacon numbers in film industry biographies. If they don't, then Bacon numbers is a false analogy. Gandalf61 13:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • Many people also polish their cars obsessively, but we don't categorise their biographies as Category:Ford Escort drivers, Category:Toyota Camry drivers or whatever. Plenty of things can be very popular without being a defining characteristic. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • Comment Another false analogy - people change their cars, whereas once you have an Erdős number you have one for ever - it might decrease, but you never lose it. Can you explain what you mean by a "defining characteristic" ? You seem to reject the idea that it is a more-or-less permanent attribute that is important to an individual or to their culture or community - so what is it, then ? What exactly makes nationality or sexual orientation or political orientation or being an Olympic medalist defining characteristics, that is not also true of Erdős numbers ? Gandalf61 15:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
(deindent)Reply Unfortunately, I don't think we have any clear definition in the guidelines of "defining attribute". WP:CAT is where it should be (and this discussion suggests that it is much needed), but for now all I can offer is what I believe to be the rough consensus of many hundreds of CfD discussions. For biographical articles, the consensus appears to me to be that it is one or more the following:
a) a thing for which they are notable per WP:NOTE and/or WP:BIO, and hence the reason for which there is a wikipedia article on that person (e.g. being a notable mathematician); or, b) a fundamental detail of biographical data which assists in identifying the person through the usual records (e.g. nationality, year of birth and death); or, c) (more controversially) a significant quality of that individual which may be unrelated to either of the the above but which sets a person apart from the majority of her or his peers and which groups people with a similar quality, which is why for example we sometimes categorise LGBT people, through the principles set out at WP:CATGRS.
I hope that's a fair summary of the precdents, and I'll ask at WT:CFD for a review of my summary.
So the olympic medallist gets that category because it's exactly why they are known: Mark Spitz and Sonia O'Sullivan are known even by sporting ignoramuses like me, simply because they won medals. The category political orientation is used to describe the nature of the political stance taken by people who are notable for their political activities, and vague "supporters of X party" categories for non-activists have been ruthlessly purged. It's not an exact science, and like anything else on wikipedia some dross remains per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. (CFD clears a lot of junk, but there's a never-ending tide of new junk, as well as of old stuff we missed)
I don't see that an Erdős number can be defining as in reason-for-notability; nor is it the sort of fundamental biographical detail which enables the person to be identified in a population register. So the question remaining is whether an Erdős number falls into the weaker and more controversial third area: a significant quality which sets a person apart from the majority of her or his peers. It seems clear to me that it's not, because it has a high degree of randomness and because it groups together people who may have very little in common. Consider a few examples:
  1. mathematical prodigy X, working alone at his home a remote island, successfully submits for publication a stunningly brilliant mathematical paper which is published under her own name: no collaboration, hence no Erdős number
  2. good but far-from-exceptional engineering graduate student Y, in a high-prestige university, hit it lucky and publishes a paper with her prof as a co-author. Prof (who initially trained as a mathematician) has an E.No. of 1, hence student gets E. No. of 2
  3. Similarly-talented mathematical graduate student Z, in an obscure college, publishes a paper with her prof as a co-author. Prof has E.No. of 6, hence student gets E. No. of 7
So the E-numbers don't group like with like, and they don't reflect reflect what sets someone apart from their peers. They are simply an application of a mathematical model of relationship mapping, which naturally generate much interest as a social meme amongst mathematicians, and in which no doubt many learned papers have been (and will be) written. But their significance is as a tool in group sociology, and not as a measure of the individual. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Exactly my point! Well said, BrownHairedGirl! -- MeegsC | Talk 18:30, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Maybe the significance should be interpreted purely at a group level, and not on the basis of individuals. But here at Wikipedia, we are concerned not with what information should be considered notable, but on how notable some information actually is now. We don't try to be trendsetters ourselves, but rather trend-followers. And, as it actually is used now, many mathematicians consider it a defining characteristic to the point where they publically announce their numbers on their web pages. Also, contra your claim that an Erdős number can't be defining as a reason-for-notability, I've seen low Erdős numbers used as supporting evidence in AfDs. Whether they should be so used is a different question, but they certainly can be. — David Eppstein 19:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
People announce all sorts of trivia on their own web pages, and if that's the best reason anyone can advance for the retention of these categories, their future looks short. Are they used by universities in listing their staff, with Erdős number as a column beside research interests and where they got their degrees? Are they used that way in academic gradings, or for listing conference participants? (It seems unlikely, because I would expect E numbers to converge amongst any group, as people collaborate with each other). -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:41, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Indeed. As a computer scientist who associates closely with mathematicians, I can give an emphatic "no" to all of those questions. Again, it's simply a given that all mathematicians who have done any joint work have an Erdos number of 6 or less, and almost all people in closely allied fields have an Erdos number of 8 or less. Whether you're a 2 or a 4 is an interesting bit of trivia to know about yourself or your own friends or collaborators, but it's not encyclopedic, any more than female mathematicians with teal hair should be a category on WP just because there's a list of such people out there. SparsityProblem 19:53, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Summary of my position Erdős number is an objective, verifiable and permanent attribute of a mathematician. The mathematics community thinks it is notable. Individual mathematicians think it is notable. It is quoted as evidence of notability in Wikipedia articles, in AfDs - and even appears in support of at least one RFA. If you want further evidence, you could ask some of your fellow Wikipedians to relate their first-hand experience. Erdős numbers 1-3 clearly qualify as a "defining attribute" under BrownHairedGirl's rule (a) - "a thing for which they are notable per WP:NOTE". I wouldn't personally go to bat for 4 and below. Gandalf61 20:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Objective it is, but it's neither easily verifiable given the way that the category system works -- the only way to make it verifiable is to insert the path to Erdos in the article for each person asserted to have a finite Erdos number, which I think we can all agree is a bad idea -- nor permanent (it can decrease). Notability doesn't prove that it should be a category. Having a PhD is notable, but we have no category for "people with doctoral degrees". And no, there is no way that having an Erdős numbers 1-3 qualifies as a "defining attribute". No one is notable for having an Erdős number of 3. Having collaborated with someone, or having collaborated with someone who collaborated with someone else, or having collaborated with a third person who collaborated with someone who collaborated with someone else, confers no notability on its own, though it certainly correlates with other characteristics that might confer notability. SparsityProblem 21:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
It's a variant on the old shibboleth of inherited notability, in this case in the form of notability-by-association. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep as a significant defining characteristic of mathematicians within the mathematics community. Also, the subject doesn't necessarily lend itself to list format. — Disavian ( talk/ contribs) 19:23, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete do not listify, as numbers can change, and thus it will be a housekeeping headache. Non-defining characteristic, of a trivial pasttime amongst mathematicians. Let's count how many angels can fit on the top of a pin instead. 132.205.99.122 19:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Comment if this is kept, I propose we establish the nth degrees of Kevin Bacon categories, since those are eminently MORE POPULAR 132.205.99.122 19:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - this won't list-ify well, and is not trivial, regardless of what the nom thinks. -- Cheeser1 20:14, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I think the question we need to ask our selves is: If there were no categories, would we then let sentences like "X has Erdős number 3" stay in articles? If not, then we should not write it using categories either. A list is no problem since you will not find it unless you are looking for it. -- Apoc2400 22:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Try looking through the articles in these categories. The more well-developed ones frequently have such sentences in them. The Erdős number of a notable person is an appropriate thing to include in the article, and when I have time I plan to add these sentences (and other significant information) to the articles I've categorized. The fact that you won't find a list unless you're looking for it is a weakness, in my opinion. The category system helps you find things you hadn't known existed. I am genuinely trying to understand the argument against these categories. Why would a reader who chooses to read an encyclopedia article on a mathematician be bothered that it contains that mathematician's Erdős number? It seems there is a misconception that the Erdős number has a similar status to the Bacon number. Bacon numbers are not taken seriously in Hollywood; Erdős numbers are taken seriously in mathematics. Ntsimp 22:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • There have been lots of assertions in this thread along the lines of yours that "Erdős numbers are taken seriously in mathematics", but the best evidence so far has been that it appears on some mathematicians homepages (which we don't usually treat as a |reliable source). Can you offer any more substantial evidence that the E.numbers of individual methematicians are treated as anything other than a common curiosity? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:17, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • I think it would be wildly inappropriate to mention someone's Erdos number in an article about them -- unless the subject was a close collaborator of Erdos, in which case it would be appropriate to discuss the work they did together -- and if I happened to run across such an article while browsing Wikipedia, I would remove that information. Moreover, some people seem to be under the misapprehension that only mathematicians have Erdos numbers. As I've tried to say several times, this is not so. Finally, I'm not sure on what basis you claim "Erdos numbers are taken seriously in mathematics". Can we see some evidence of this? In my experience as a computer scientist who knows many mathematicians, they are not taken seriously. They are at best a bit of fun trivia that people might amuse each other with at parties. SparsityProblem 23:42, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • I appreciate the value that coming into new fields of knowledge through mere curiosity about a term one hasn't heard of before entails. I often click on on such wikilinks, and it certainly was my impulse when I spotted Category:Erdős number 2 at the bottom of the article about Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter. When the article hasn't mentioned the term Erdős number I think a high percentage of readers would become curious like me to find out what this strange looking category could possibly be about. However, this positive experience/mechanism would remain whether or not the wikilink or category link one followed was notable, defining, accurate, noteworthy, etc, so that point is not very relevant, if at all. My rationale for nominating this categorial scheme is concern for the quality and integrity of Wikipedia's categry system at large, and specifically the negative precedent which is set by giving a clearly non-defining characteristic sanctuary basically because of a cult following and because it is "cute". The weak basis of several of the arguments that I have seen brought forward in this debate reinforces my perception that this is the mechanism for the clamorous support for keeping these categories which we see manifest in this discussion. __ meco 23:22, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I don't think you see the difference between a "cult" following (like, for example, "Pokemon by height") and a following by mathematicians (who are, by the way, exactly the people who write the reliable sources pertaining to mathematics). This isn't a group of fankids clamoring to categorize their favorite cute facts, it's something that mathematicians take particular note of. Someone's nationality is pretty trivial, but virtually every biography mentions it. The same could be said for someone's PhD-granting institution - that generally has little direct relevance, but is clearly of interest. -- Cheeser1 23:40, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • The question keeps being raised -- is this just a mere curiosity? Well, as a matter of fact people do study the "Erdős collaboration graph" per se; see for example the article
Vladimir Batagelj and Andrej Mrvar, Some Analyses of Erd˝os Collaboration Graph, Social Networks 22 (2000), no. 2, 173--186; reviewed in MR 1789607
The fact that the Erdős collaboration graph is the object of serious academic study (and not just a mere oddity, as some keep on arguing) should give some extra weight to the argument that we need to keep these categories. Turgidson 23:46, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Again, so? People write serious academic papers about the social networks latent in Facebook and LiveJournal, too, but we don't have "People with Facebook accounts" or "People with LiveJournal accounts" categories (despite that I could come up with at least a few subjects of Wikipedia articles who have accounts on these systems). Collaboration networks are a fascinating research topic, but that doesn't make any individual scientist's Erdos number a useful defining characteristic for the purposes of the Wikipedia category system. SparsityProblem 23:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Please--I am trying to make a serious argument, backed by reliable sources. Responding with non sequiturs does not advance the discussion. Turgidson 00:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I'm completely in earnest. If anything, the non sequitur is being advanced by you; we all agree that Erdos numbers are a notable concept, and no one is arguing the article on Erdos numbers should be deleted. What's up for debate here is whether a characteristic shared by tens of thousands of scientists is a useful defining characteristic. The fact that a characteristic is the object of serious academic study does not make it a defining characteristic. SparsityProblem 00:06, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete all trivial, non-defining, and not useful. Yet another cat to clog every biography. What's next, categories by blood type, astrological sign, Asian astrological year sign, people by the sum of their birth digits, people by whether the ascii conversion of their names is divisible by various numbers, and other numerological trivia? Carlossuarez46 01:35, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Yes, that's exactly what's next. Your extrapolation is insightful. -- Cheeser1 02:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
These topics are as important to some as erdos numbers are to their devotees - as your comment amply demonstrates. Carlossuarez46 03:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
There's really no need for that kind of sarcasm here. I think the analogy was a good one. Astrological sign, for example, is objective, verifiable, permanent, and some people believe it's very important. Who's to judge? SparsityProblem 04:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
In general, mathematicians who have a low Erdős number tend to cherish it, and mathematicians with a high Erdős number secretly envy them. I don't think that it is true in general that people who have an astrological sign tend to cherish it. Some may do, but most don't. Also, few people will think like Oh, she's a Scorpio – I wish I was a Scorpio.  -- Lambiam 06:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Comment As Cheeser1 says, Carlossuarez46's camel's nose argument is a straw man. No-one is proposing that every biography should have an Erdős number category. To put things into perspective, there are about 800 articles in the Erdős number 1-3 categories; there are over 1,800 articles in the Olympic gold, silver, bronze medalist categories for the United States alone. Gandalf61 09:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Maybe not everybody, but it seems likely to be most of them, The current categories extend as far as an Erdős number of 6. Can anyone provide a reasoned estimate of a) what proportion of mathematicians with a wikipedia biography have an Erdos number less than 3; b) what proportion have Erdos number less than 6? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:52, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Comment "Most of them" ??? Most of what ? Most biographies ? Definitely not. Most biographies of mathematicians ? Hardly, as around 30% of our mathematicians biographies are for pre-20th century mathematicians who cannot have an Erdős number. Most Wikipedia biographies of 20th and 21st century mathematicians ? Possibly yes, because for modern mathematicians a low Erdős number shows a high correlation with notability within the mathematics community, and thereby satisfies your criteria for a defining attribute. Gandalf61 11:30, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Exactly. Which is not true of any of the nonsense strawman analogies people have been setting up and knocking down. -- Cheeser1 14:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Reply to Gandalf61. Yes, I meant mathematicians from the 20th-century onwards: those whose careers are in the age where an Erdős number is a possibility. If most of them are going to have a lowish Erdos number, then what is gained by categorising in this way?
You have also neatly inverted the nature of a defining attribute. Mathematicians are not known because they have an Erdős number; rather they have an Erdős number because they have done things which establish notability, with the limitation that is a selective and inaccurate measure because an Erdős number ranking excludes the lone writers such as Bertrand Russell — it ranks collaboration in particular cultural milieu rather than notability. This has some similarities with categorising people by whether they are in a hall of fame; such categories are repeatedly deleted at CfD because they categorise a selective reflection of notability rather than reason for it.
Going back to your earlier analogy of the olympic medallist, people don't get an olympic medal because they are notable, they are notable because they got an olympic medal. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:41, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Reply to BrownHairedGirl There are so many logical flaws and straw men in your arguments that it is difficult to unpick them all, but I will try to highlight the most obvious errors:
  • I did not say that most modern mathematicians have a low Erdős number. I said that it is possible that most notable modern mathematicians (i.e. modern mathematicians with biographies on Wikipedia) have a low Erdős number. So the point of the Erdős number categories is that they provide a measure and demonstration of notability for modern mathematicians.
  • You say that Erdős numbers are similar to a "hall of fame". This is yet another false analogy. There is no similarity at all, because a "hall of fame" is both subjective and transient, whereas an Erdős number is objective and permanent.
  • Betrand Russell was certainly not a lone writer ! He collaborated extensively with other mathematicians and philosophers. The reason that he does not have an Erdős number is that his mathematical work was done before 1920, and his focus turned to philosophy after that. As Erdős was only born in 1913, their mathematical careers did not overlap.
  • You say that a sportsman/woman is notable because they have won an Olympic medal. What an absurd idea ! They are notable because they produce world-class performances. Winning an Olympic medal is one objective measure of this, but it only applies to certain sports - for tennis players, for example, there is an entirely different set of notability measures based around winning Grand Slam tournaments. In the same way, a mathematician is notable because of the wordl class quality of the work that they have done and published, and for modern mathematicians, a low Erdős number is one measure of this notability. Low Erdős numbers are highly correllated with other measures of notability in the mathematical community such as Category:Fields Medalists and Category:Wolf Prize in Mathematics laureates. Gandalf61 16:00, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
WP:AGF please, and less of the "straw man" allegations.
"I said that it is possible that most notable modern mathematicians (i.e. modern mathematicians with biographies on Wikipedia) have a low Erdős number." Ant references for that guess? "So the point of the Erdős number categories is that they provide a measure and demonstration of notability for modern mathematicians." Non-sequitur: "x may correlate with Y" is two jumps short of showing that Y is demonstrated by X.
On the Olympic medals, it's quite common for the 4th, 5th and many other competitors to produce world-class performances, but athletes who gets the attention are the ones who collect the medals, even, if their time was only a fraction of second faster.
You assert that " a mathematician is notable because of the world class quality of the work that they have done and published, and for modern mathematicians, a low Erdős number is one measure of this notability". As per my lengthy answer above, I believe that to be demonstrably false. You evidently disagree, so where are the references which show an Erdos number to be a useful measure? The correlation you cite doesn't show that: most eminent mathematicians have 2 eyes and 2 legs, but that doesn't mean that anything more than a tiny proportion of living 2-eyed bipeds are emijnent mathematicians. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:34, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Reply to BrownHairedGirl You say that Erdős numbers are trivial and are not a "defining attribute" because they do not indicate notability for individual modern mathematicians. I say that they are an indicator of notability, and hence a "defining attribute", because they correlate with other accepted measures of notability in the mathematical community. As evidence for this, a spot check of the 48 articles in Category:Fields Medalists shows that 37 of these mathematicians (over 75%) have an Erdős number, and 29 (over 60%) have an Erdős number of 3 or less. So - where is your evidence to back up your opinion ? Your "2 eyes and 2 legs" argument betrays such a lack of understanding of the meaning of "correlation" that it is not worth answering, so I am done here. Gandalf61 17:30, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
75% is not a great predictor, and 60% is pretty weak i it's being claimed as a defining characteristic, but let's try it the other way round. What proportion of mathematicians with a finite Erdos number have won a major prize? (Or those wih E. No <=3, if you prefer) -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep as this is often prominently listed on CVs, has been the subject of probably more than a dozen papers, and is otherwise significant. I think that an added advantage of the category the nominator may not have considered is that it discourages statements like "This mathematicians has an Erdos number of 3." CRGreathouse ( t | c) 19:44, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
A mathematician would, first and foremost, be notable for published work. This work is discussed in the article, presumably. The Erdős Number is clearly derived from having published mathematical work(s). The fact that not every mathematican can have paragraphs written about his/her Erdős Number is not open invitation to delete a helpful category that at least arguably conforms to policy. We should defer to precedent, or perhaps to the opinion of those at the relevant Wikiproject, or perhaps just err on the side of caution. If nothing else, there's a clear number of people who believe this category should be included, and regardless of whether or not the specific technicalities of policy regarding categories might compel you to delete it, don't forget that rules are just rules, and using a category that doesn't quite fit the rules is still allowed if it helps build a good encyclopedia. -- Cheeser1 20:05, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that these categories do help to build a good encyclopedia. Notability through academic publication is usually measured through counting citations, which is a much more reliable measure than this fickle measuring of relationship-through collaboration. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:44, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Fickle? What does that even mean? Fickle is a term used to describe indecisive people, not categories or ideas that you've decided are meaningless. Nobody but you is insisting that this must be an exact, precise, official, or properly ordered measure of collaboration. -- Cheeser1 15:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Fickle: likely to change, especially in affections, intentions, loyalties, or preferences; or Liable to sudden unpredictable change; or marked by lack of steadfastness, constancy, or stability; given to erratic changeableness. An Erdős number is a claimed attribute of an academic's notability which can change markedly not because they have published anything else or because their work has ever been cited by anyone, but simply because someone who they may never have met or worked with chose at some subsequent point to work with someone else on an unrelated subject. You may prefer "unreliable", "erratic", or some other such term, and I'd agree they are better, but fickle is a fairly good fit … and although it's used primarily for people, it's not only used that way. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:49, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Oh come on. You might as well say that one's academic affiliation is fickle, because faculty sometimes move from one university to another. Or that having a Nobel prize or Fields medal is fickle, because people who didn't have one previously sometimes acquire them. — David Eppstein 17:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Um, no. If I move from one university to another, that's through specific action of my own (and the choice of the new university to recognize me by offering me a job). If I win a Nobel prize or Fields medal, that's because the awarding body chose to recognize my accomplishments with an award. Note the emphasis on *me*. With Erdos numbers, on the other hand, as Bhg pointed out, my Erdos number can change *through no action of my own*, but merely because *a coauthor of one of my coauthors* chose to work with someone else. SparsityProblem 17:36, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Note that BHG's argument that someone's Erdős number can change because of the actions of someone they have never worked with does not apply to Erdős numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. It can only happen to someone whose Erdős number is 5 or above. Gandalf61 15:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per BrownHairedGirl, it is trivia, trivia, trivia and not a defining characteristic no matter how you look at it. Like "Recipient of XYZ Award" categories it should be deleted. Pavel Vozenilek 19:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Comment But no-one thinks that Category:Nobel laureates or Category:Olympic medalists should be deleted, because these are agreed to be notable awards. Therefore you need to provide evidence to back up your opinion that Erdős numbers are trivial, rather than notable. Gandalf61 17:28, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Keep. All arguments against the usefulness of Erdos Number miss the point. The real point is that it has significant cultural impact and therefore is worthy of preservation. If the concept is good enough for the American Mathematical Society (AMS) database, then it is good enough here in wikiville. Period. Wikipedia is about reflecting and summarizing what is already out there, not imposing our taste and POV. To delete this category is tantamount to POV. As for whether it should be a list or category...Cummon guys, we've been thru' this argument zillions of times before. A list would be a veritable nightmare to maintain. If it ain't broke don't fix it. bunix 20:49, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
This line of reasoning has little to do with any WP guidelines or rules; there are many culturally significant topics that don't correspond to any known categories on Wikipedia. Declining to categorize people on a particular basis is not POV; if anything, it's POV to give a person's Erdos number the undue weight that reifying this as a category entails. You could equally well say, by your logic, that there ought to be a "Vegetarian mathematicians" category because being a vegetarian is culturally significant. SparsityProblem 20:54, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Watch my lips carefully: "Vegetarian mathematicians are not on the AMS database." Your argument is a straw man. Leave Erdos alone, he's human! [4] bunix 21:06, 31 October 2007 (UTC). reply
Interpreting the belief that Erdos numbers aren't a particularly useful way to characterize individuals in an encyclopedia as a personal attack against the late Erdos summarizes everything that's wrong with this discussion, I think (even if that's meant to be a joke.) What about economists who have Erdos numbers? Computer scientists? Sociologists? Should they be placed in these categories? If so, why? They aren't (necessarily) in the AMS database. If not, why not? The categories are called "Erdos number 1" (and so on), not "Mathematicians with Erdos number 1". SparsityProblem 21:16, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I think these numbers may be more informative about the nature of someone's research in fields other than mathematics than in mathematics themselves: they give some idea how closely connected to modern mathematics the subject's research is. — David Eppstein 23:10, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
But why is it important to mention in every article about an academic how closely related their work is to mathematics and not, say, to physics or anthropology or history? What makes mathematics special? If the answer is that Erdos numbers have special cultural significance, then sure, they do -- *in mathematics*. So that would be begging the question. SparsityProblem 23:19, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Dear Sparsity, you need to take up your arguments with the AMS. Our job at Wikipedia is not to judge, but to report on what's out there. AMS is a respectable institution that has put Erdos number out there, via their very nice database. So it is a verifiable source that has cultural impact. We are not here to philosophize about Erdos number and its seeming arbitrariness. Rememember your choice of an origin on a graph is always artibitrary (if you want an analogy!). There are lot's of categories on wikipedia I don't necessarily like....but I have to butt out if there is a big subculture that likes that stuff. bunix 09:37, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Wikipedia doesn't report everything that's out there, which is why WP:NOT is such a long-standing document on wikipedia, predating many other policies and guidelines. And if we start categorising according to very factor that is recorded in the database of professional organisations or other major bodies, we are going to see a massive proliferation of categories. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:22, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Let's worry about the categories we have rather than trying to paint them as bad by association with unspecified categories that we don't have. — David Eppstein 16:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Actually, that inverse- OTHERSTUFF argument is much less applicable at CfD than at AfD, because of CfD's focus on maintaining consistency and coherence across the category tree, and particularly because an extra category may impact dozens or hundreds of articles in the way that an article need not. Wikipedia's category system would buckle under the strain of trying to replicate every field in a database, which is why it's-in-a-database is such a weak argument for retaining a fickle measure of academic notability. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Bunzil: it's a very strange argument indeed that every database needs to be mirrored in the Wikipedia category system. If we were proposing deleting the Erdos number article, then you would have a good argument. But nobody is proposing deleting the article. The choice of whether or not to make a category about something is not based only on verifiability (although as has been amply demonstrated, there are serious verifiability issues with making this into a category) and cultural significance, but on how well it fits into the existing category tree, and how useful it is for helping assist people who are browsing an encyclopedia. SparsityProblem 18:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
A $5 reward

Repeated requests for evidence of an Erdős number being a defining characteristic of individual mathematicians (rather than just an interesting or amusing way of analysing relationships) have produced nothing which seems to me to come close to meting those criteria. So I have offered a reward of US$5, payable as a donation to the wikimedia foundation: full details at Wikipedia:Reward board#Erdos_number.

Note that in order to create reasonably unambiguous criteria, I have specified the required information quite precisely. However, the threshold is not high, so I hope that it will be easily met. Please make me part with my cash! -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:48, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply

  • PS Note that the reward offers expires at 01:00, 2 November 2007 (UTC). The expiry date is set 12 hours before the earliest point at which the CfD may be closed (i.e. 5 days after it opened), to give time for any information to be considered by the CfD closer. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:56, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Let's see here:

  1. "Patterns of Research in Mathematics" from the Notices of the AMS. Article discusses collaboration and the differences between fields of mathematics and how collaborative graphs vary (including discussion of Erdős Numbers). This is related to your question, because collaborative publication (and publication in general) is probably the top criterion for hiring/tenure decisions, and this is a serious topic and one that is often discussed at length - including how specialization affects publication, which affects hiring/tenure and how fair (or not) that might be at a particular institution. Erdős was, for the most part, a combinatorist and combinatorics is a field in which papers are published relatively often, and collaboration is seen throughout the subject. He serves as an important, notable, and unique illustration of how collaboration, publication, and research work in the field - Erdős numbers are a way to quantify a mathematician's collaborative publications, and this number correlates (roughly) with not only publication ( = tenure), but also with notability (e.g. Ron Graham, Fan Chung, Endre Szemerédi, Paul Turán, etc).
  2. The The Department of Linguistics at The University of Massachusetts Amherst in this Weekly Newsletter chronicle the changes in their faculty's Erdős numbers. And they aren't even mathematicians.

I believe that meets your requirements. You can't possibly expect Erdős numbers to be a direct factor in hiring, tenure, or membership in a professional organization, but that doesn't change the fact that they are related, at least tacitly, with both notability and prominence in mathematics, as well as to hiring/tenure/etc. That this is more than enough to explain that this number is worth mentioning for any mathematician. -- Cheeser1 14:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Sorry, but neither of those comes anywhere close to what I asked for.
The first question I asked was for evidence that "Erdős numbers are used within the academic community of mathematicians to rank the contribution to the body of mathematical knowledge of individual mathematicians". The "Patterns of Research in Mathematics" article contains no such evidence at all; it analyses what Erdős numbers tell us about patterns of collaboration, and is possibly a useful piece of evidence for those constructing an argument that Erdős numbers could be used in this way, but I cannot find it any evidence at all that Erdős numbers are used in this way.
The weekly newsletter article also clearly fails the test: it is an article entitled "Erdős numbers for UMASS linguists", not as I asked for an example of the use of Enumbers in "a general list of mathematical academics". It isn't even about mathematicians!
I think you have missed the point here. I'm sure there are lots of articles about E numbers, and notability is clearly established for the subject of E.nunbers. But the $5 is donated when someone who can show E.numbers actually being used in institutional settings to rank or assert the notability of individual mathematicians. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Of course you are free to choose whatever criteria you wish for a reward you offer, but I don't see why what you're asking for should be considered necessary in order to keep these categories. I know you haven't explicitly said it should be. But I think multiple points have been conflated in this discussion. Having a low Erdős number is not sufficient to make a particular academic notable, and I don't think anyone is claiming that it is. Furthermore, there's no reason why someone with an Erdős number of 4 should be inherently more notable than someone with an Erdős number of 2, for example. Again, I don't believe anyone has made such a claim. The numbers are not used for an explicit "ranking" in that sense. But they shouldn't have to be used that way in order for the categories to be useful and appropriate on Wikipedia for categorizing articles about people who already meet the notability criteria. In other words, failing the very specific criteria you have given is not enough for the categories to cease to exist. Ntsimp 16:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
You seem to be advocating original research: that wikipedia should rank people by a measure not used for that purpose within the profession, at least not on evidence so far. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Who says Wikipedia should "rank people" in this way? The Erdős number is not a ranking. I'm saying Wikipedia should continue its practice of categorizing certain articles by Erdős number. That's not original research; outside sources are researching and keeping track of Erdős numbers. Ntsimp 16:50, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
1<2, 2<3, 3<4 etc; assigning numbers like this is a ranking, and the discussion above carries plenty of example of people asserting that a low Erdos number is more significant than a high one. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:19, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
You've apparently decided that since the natural numbers are well ordered, that anything that uses the natural numbers is well ordered. Does that mean the year 2007 is "ranked" as "better" than the year 2006??? The fact that they aren't a ranking system does not mean we can't use them. -- Cheeser1 17:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
If it's not a ranking, why the repeated emphasis on low Erdos numbers in the discussion above? Why categorise on number 1-06 rather than on numbers 7-12? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:57, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Because there are fewer such people. There are ~4000 people with an Erdős Number less than 7 at all (compared to several hundred thousand with smaller finite Erdős numbers). Now, you're not making sense because the fact that people have small/finite Erdős Numbers is relevant to their biographies. That does not require that the Erdős Number be a strict, ranked, official system by which mathematicians are judged. That's absurd. -- Cheeser1 18:46, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
If a low number matters more than a high number, that's a ranking. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Nobody said it mattered more, I just said that the vast majority of people fall into 1-6, and those are the ones that tend to be notable/encyclopedic. We can't have a category "Erdős Number 15" if no biography is of someone with such an Erdős Number. Furthermore, you've done more than to ask us to demonstrate that it could be construed as some sort of ranking. You want us to prove that it is a strict ranking used in things like hiring decisions. That's absurd. Obviously it's a ranking. Anything that involves integers could be a ranking. Number of teeth could be some sort of official ranking, that doesn't mean it is one (even though you could tacitly argue that having 32 teeth is better than having 31). Of course, number of teeth has no bearing on the notability of someone (except some bizarre case I don't know about), but Erdős number relates to the primary notability of a mathematician: publication. And it correlates with notability in mathematics. And it's well-documented. What more do you want? -- Cheeser1 20:15, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
It relates to publication, but only in a complex derivative way by measuring not publication but rather collaboration on publication against a particular benchmark. If you want to measure notability through publication, then count citations, which I believe is the normal way of measuring such things. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:14, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

More evidence: A mathematics department prominently lists one of its faculty as, among other things, having an Erdős Number of 1, here. -- Cheeser1 18:58, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply

That's more a collection of potted bios than a list, but in any case they don't list an Erdős Number for the others. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Your arbitrary criteria may be the mark to meet for the $5, but it doesn't preclude other evidence for keeping this category. I feel like this $5 prize nonsense is not a fair good way to make this a fair discussion - you've decided to make up your own criteria and while you don't say so, it's pretty clearly going to tilt the discussion towards whether or not sources meet your criteria, which is more precise and strict than the question of whether or not we should keep the category. -- Cheeser1 20:10, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
All this Wikilawyering about what it takes to win this award (regardless of what that has to do with whether we should keep this category), and how the various examples proposed so far somehow fail to meet her arbitrary standards, is strongly reminding me of the no true Scotsman fallacy. — David Eppstein 20:56, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I don't see Bhg's (clearly stated and unambiguous) criteria for the award as the least bit "arbitrary". People who have voted to keep these categories have claimed, as the basis for their votes, that Erdos numbers are important in the mathematical community and are used as a ranking criterion *by* other mathematicians. No one has provided any evidence of this. Articles about collaboration networks are not evidence of this. I really don't understand how anyone can confuse a characteristic that's interesting to devotees of certain kinds of trivia to a characteristic that's crucially important for categorizing scholars. Why is it useful to have a set of categories such that almost all scientists and mathematicians and many social scientists are included in one category in that set? SparsityProblem 21:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
You mean like Category:Academics by subject? I will concede that the set of categories we're discussing is less useful than that set, but by your reasoning it would be more useful.
I just re-read the entire discussion and failed to find a single example of a claim that Erdős numbers "are used as a ranking criterion". This is a straw man that the categories' opponents keep repeating. Ntsimp 21:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Are you seriously asserting that an academic's Erdos number is as important and readily identifiable as their subject area?
If we're looking for specific bad claims, I'd like to see sources backing up any and all of the following verbatim quotes:
  • "Individual mathematicians spend significant amounts of time and effort in researching their own Erdős number and presenting the results."
  • "the Erdos number provides some kind of context for a mathematician's work"
  • "finding someone with Erdős number 6 is no mean feat"
  • "Erdős number is an objective, verifiable and permanent attribute of a mathematician"
  • "The Erdős number of a notable person is an appropriate thing to include in the article"
  • "Bacon numbers are not taken seriously in Hollywood; Erdős numbers are taken seriously in mathematics."
  • "In general, mathematicians who have a low Erdős number tend to cherish it, and mathematicians with a high Erdős number secretly envy them."
I'm not sufficiently energetic at the moment to post a reward for backing up any of these claims, but I'm curious nonetheless. SparsityProblem 22:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
About point #3: "finding someone with Erdős number 6 is no mean feat". Yes, I said that, and I explained what I meant by that very thoroughly (just go back and look it up): clearly, "someone" meant someone that has an entry on WP, not your random Joe Shmoe. Also, someone who demonstrably (i.e., via MathSciNet) has E-number 6. You brought a bunch of possibilities, and I shot down several of them; I'm still not convinced about the others, but the burden of proof is not on me. I still haven't seen "someone" added to the E-6 category, besides the ones I put. My challenge stands. And I won't offer a $5 reward for it. Turgidson 23:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Why the fetishization of MathSciNet? I've already pointed out that there are many people with finite Erdos numbers who aren't in their database, and many people whose Erdos numbers are overreported by it. I can give you a list of names if you'd like. Since I already gave you a list of 22 people with Erdos number 6, I think the burden of proof is on *you* to show that more than two of them actually have smaller numbers. SparsityProblem 00:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Actually, I shot down 3 names from your list: Martin Kruskal, Vladimir Arnold, and Ilya Prigogine (just scroll up and look it up). Just because this is a heated argument should not be a reason for misrepresenting facts. And, finding 3 counterexamples to a purported theorem usually disqualifies that theorem in mathematics; similar criteria should hold in this discussion, methinks. Turgidson 00:57, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Please keep it civil; no one "misrepresented" any "facts". If the theorem is "there exists some member s of S such that P(s)", where |S| = 22, proving that not P(s) for distinct s_1, s_2, and s_3 in S does not disprove the theorem. SparsityProblem 01:05, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Arguing the precision of Erdős Numbers is irrelevant. The definition of these numbers is understood to be "if a link of length n exists, the Erdős number is at most n." Wikipedia is not perfect, nor is any source of any information. There is an obvious understanding that saying "Person X has Erdős number k" is simply asserting that a reliable source can show that there is a path of length k between X and Erdős. It's not up to us to prove that reliable sources are perfect or infallible. -- Cheeser1 01:02, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
So we have a ranking system based loosely on publication, but with two levels of remove from that; we have no evidence that it is widely used within academia for ranking mathematicians; and even though the primary source for it is not reliable and apparently does not claim to be reliable, we are still ask to accept its uncited use as the basis of categorisation of hundreds of articles? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:20, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Let me return to my question from earlier that nobody answered. Hypothetically, I know that Alice's Erdos number is 4. MathSciNet says Alice's Erdos number is 5. Do I edit the article about Alice to add her into Category:Erdos number 4? If so, someone else may come along and change it to 5 because MathSciNet says that her Erdos number is 5. The only remedy for this is to mention *in the article about Alice* that her Erdos number is 4, perhaps even including the chain of collaborators that witnesses this fact. But that would pollute the article with trivial information. On the other hand, if I *don't* do that, then I'm prevented from adding accurate information to Wikipedia. Can you explain how you would address this problem? SparsityProblem 17:44, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
This talk of "pollution" seems to be begging the question, and your hypothetical situation seems to be a technical concern far below the level that would make a difference to this CfD, but: have you considered leaving the justification for the categorization in an html comment? — David Eppstein 18:05, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I don't see how it's begging the question. Would you really argue that every article about a scientist, social scientist or mathematician who has a finite Erdis number should mention the chain of collaborators that witnesses the subject's Erdos number? I guess the HTML comment method would work, but it's certainly an out-of-band way to handle this situation. Finally, I don't think it's merely a "technical concern" at all; it's central to whether this kind of information can be described as verifiability, and verifiability is a prerequisite for categorization. SparsityProblem 18:14, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
In fact, there are many Wikipedia articles that already do mention the number, some including the chain of collaborators. I don't see what trouble this causes. I'm not going to argue strongly for the categories representing numbers greater than 4, since those numbers are more fluid and as you say harder to verify, but this CfD covers even numbers 1 and 2. — David Eppstein 18:22, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Your Google search turns up about 60 articles, half of which are in userspace. Of the remaining 30, some of them mention Erdos numbers in "Trivia" sections, which are deprecated in general. The question remains, though: for articles that don't mention this information already, do you think they should all be edited to add it? And since the category guidelines suggest that we shouldn't categorize articles about people on the basis of a characteristic that wouldn't be mentioned in the article, this is relevant. SparsityProblem 18:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
If your "deprecated" refers to WP:TRIVIA, please read that guideline more carefully: it's not about whether the information belongs in the article or not, it's about how to present it. — David Eppstein 18:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Yes, I'm familiar with WP:TRIVIA, which says (in part): "Such sections should not be categorically removed: it may be possible to integrate some items into the article text." I have yet to see a good example of "integrating" a statement like "X has Erdos number n" into the text of an article. The examples brought up by the Google search above generally mention this in its own paragraph; I think that when it's difficult to smoothly integrate something into the text of an article, that's a good sign it may not belong there. SparsityProblem 19:01, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
These sentences would fit perfectly well into a paragraph that describes how many collaborators the subject of the article has, whether they're all in the same field or span multiple disciplines, and who some of the more notable ones are. — David Eppstein 23:03, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Maybe for articles about combinatorists, but it's doubtful for articles about mathematicians in fields not closely related to combinatorics that a paragraph describing the subject's collaborators would naturally mention the Erdos number, and highly doubtful for articles about non-mathematicians. SparsityProblem 23:09, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Are you implying that it's only of interest to describe the close collaborators of combinatorists, and that other researchers shouldn't have such paragraphs? That seems a bizarre claim to me. The typical sentence here would be that "X has an Erdos number of Y due to his collaborations with A and B", and A and B are likely to be people working in a similar area with smaller Erdos numbers; I don't see how a sentence like that would have trouble fitting into a paragraph about research collaborations for any type of researcher, combinatorial or no. (Note: I don't think we have to give the whole chain, if at least one of A and B is noteworthy enough for a separate article with a similar sentence.) — David Eppstein 23:14, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
No, I implied no such thing. I only said that Erdos number information is unlikely to be relevant to a paragraph on collaborators unless the subject is a combinatorist or works in some other mathematical subfield closely related to areas Erdos worked in -- that is, if you're dedicated to providing useful biographical information, rather than dedicated to mentioning Erdos numbers in as many articles as possible. Sections on a mathematician/scientist's collaborators would certainly be interesting, but how does discussion of someone's Erdos number add any value to such a section if it's already well-elaborated? SparsityProblem 23:17, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

(undent)It is painfully obvious (to me at least) that this CFD will be closed as no consensus. As it stands, I don't think this bickering is helping anyone's general case, and I also doubt that either side will (ever) be convinced by the other. So why don't we just leave it to the closing admin while everyone's dignity is still intact? — Cronholm 144 12:36, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

It seems to me that whether the closure is a "no consensus" will probably depend on whether the closing admin counts votes, or measures the arguments against policy, guidelines and precdents. But I don't envy who gets the job :( -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:45, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
It seems to me that the outcome will depend on whether or not the closing admin is interested in pedanitically nitpicking policy to delete a category, or to err in favor of building a helpful encyclopedia. Or you could just avoid mocking up your argument into speculation about what the closing admin will do. -- Cheeser1 15:57, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Glad we agree that these categories don't fit with current policies and guidelines. - BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:49, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
And I'm glad even an admin will stoop to putting words in someone else's mouth. I said no such thing. -- Cheeser1 21:40, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
If something does fit policies and guidelines, WP:IAR is irrelevant. And "defining characteristic" is not nitpicking, it's the core of WP:CAT which is why I have offered a cash bounty for evidence that Erdos numbers are used in ways which demonstrate it as a defining characteristic. Still waiting. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
It has become clear that you are not a mathematician. I dispute that the category is meaningless or unencyclopedic, but even if I hypothetically granted that it was, IAR could still apply in that case. I'll thank you to read my arguments more carefully and not do your best to misinterpret them as a way to argue against them. And it is fortunate that Wikipedians do not serve at your pleasure, because I have no intention of wasting my time meeting your arbitrary prize criteria when it's clear that you're deliberately setting (and re-setting) the bar in whatever place you'd like, to make a point rather than to spur discussion. -- Cheeser1 23:24, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Are you a mathematician? Your user page says "I'm going to go on to grad school soon" so I take it that you aren't one; perhaps you're a future mathematician. And anyway, let's keep this about content and not people. If "you have to be a mathematician to understand my point" is the best you can do, you may not have a good argument. I've talked to two mathematicians about this discussion, and both agree that it's absurd to retain the Erdos number categories (a point I bring up not in order to argue from authority, but only to illustrate that not all mathematicians necessarily believe that Erdos numbers are a defining characteristic of themselves and their colleagues). It would also be good if you assumed good faith.
I don't understand your point about IAR. Why is there a need to ignore rules if the path of action you support is supported by the rules? SparsityProblem 23:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
As a mathematician (undergraduate yes, but published, more than once), I find it sad that such simple logic is lost on people: I do not believe the policy/guidelines about categories precludes this category, but there is disagreement - even if we accept, for the purposes of argument, that the rules did preclude these categories, IAR tells us that we can ignore the rules if the category still helps us build a better encyclopedia. My point was simply that anyone who works in any field requiring an ounce of logical sense (e.g. a mathematician) would be able to comprehend the conditional logic of such an argument. -- Cheeser1 05:08, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
You're skating dangerously close to the personal attack edge there. Again, let's keep this about content; WP:AGF says that if someone else does not understand our argument, it means there's a problem with our argument or that we have not communicated it well, not that they lack logical sense. SparsityProblem 05:11, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Yes, quite a convenient misunderstanding, for the sake of her argument. I'm not making personal attacks - this stemmed from her putting words in my mouth (deliberately and quite tersely), not the other way around. If she's going to twist things I say to make it look like I'm contradicting or discrediting my own stance on an issue, she'd at least do well enough to read my argument throughly -- regardless of how much you could throw up your hands and hope it was just her mistake, and ignore the fact that her "misunderstanding" was essentially just a rude "see even you think you're wrong" side-comment. I'm not going to argue these incessant pedantics or spend any more time trying to meet this $5 prize mockery, which to me demonstrates what a circus this CfD has become. I've made my point, and if you and BHG want to rally around a strict constructionist reading of policy and throw caution to the wind, that's fine, but those of us who disagree aren't automatically wrong because your reading of policy may seem more precise or detailed. I'm a huge fan of obeying policy, but I prefer to do so wisely and within the spirit of the rules. Using them to exclude content that a plurality or large group of people believe is encyclopedic, and that does no harm to any article, and that has at least arguable merit within policy: that's quite alot to ask. -- Cheeser1 05:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Well, I agree with Cheeser1 - BHG's arguments in this discussion have sometimes been illogical, contain irrelevancies and factual errors, and are often based on misinterpretations of what others have said. However, I also agree with SparsityProblem - following AGF, we should assume that this is because BHG genuinely fails to understand the arguments put forward by other people, rather than imagining that she is deliberately trying to obscure and complicate this debate. Gandalf61 10:53, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Alternatively, you could assume that the problem is that some of the keep !voters don't understand the policies and guidelines and don't understand the arguments put forward by those advocating deletion. But wouldn't it be better to avoid personal attacks, and to try address some of the problems with Erdos numbers as criteria for categorisation, such as the fact that they can change massively because someone unknown to the subject has done something unconnected to the subject's career or to the notability of their work? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:18, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
<rmv indent>Response to BrownHairedGirl (a) Your understanding of WP:NPA seems to be flawed - I was commenting on the content of your posts, which is not a personal attack. (b) Your argument that someone's Erdős number can change because of actions by someone else "unknown to the subject" is not true for Erdős numbers 1, 2, 3 or 4. Only someone with an Erdős number of 5 or higher can have their Erdős number lowered because a collaborator of a collaborator (or someone at a more remote distance) lowers their own Erdős number. Gandalf61 15:44, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
a) Allegations of deliberately twisting things are a personal attck. Please WP:AGF.
b) You're quite correct about the collaborator of a collaborator. However, an Erdos number of 4 can still change because of the actions of a collaborator. For example, I write paper with you, and get myself an E.No of 4 because yours is 3, but although we never communicate again and our joint paper is never cited, my E num increases when you reduce your E-num to 2 ... and before the death of Erdős, the same could have applied even if my E number was as low as 3. So the problem actually extends to E numbers of 3 or higher. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:23, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
No, allegations of such things are not a personal attack - I am not commenting on your character, but on the substance (or lack thereof) of a particular point you were trying to make: that I agreed with you or that I was contracdicting myself or some such. You twisted my words and tersely snapped out "I'm glad we both agree that ..." - simply saying that you did what you did is not a personal attack. Let's not stoop to defending our actions by simply shrugging off allegations of illogicality or impropriety by saying that such allegations are personal attacks. -- Cheeser1 19:57, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to BrownHairedGirl (a)If your comment is directed at me, then please note that I did AGF. I specifically said we should not imagine that you are "twisting things" as there is the alternative explanation that you simply do not understand what other people are saying - as indeed you seem to have misunderstood many things that I have said. (b) You originally said "collaborator of a collaborator"; it seems that you are now moving the goalposts. Also, whatever might have applied before Erdős died is irrelevant to this discussion - please stick to the point. Gandalf61 20:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Oh dear. Leaving aside the resort to WP:IAR, what happened before Erdos died is highly relevant to the E. numbers of people who were his contemporaries, because wikipedia has articles on them too. I did indeed originally say the "collaborator of a collaborator", and stand by that point, but I have also identifed a problem in that an E. number as low as 3 could have been changed as the result of the subsequent and independent actions of a collaborator. If you disagree with that, perhaps you explain say why? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 08:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to BrownHairedGirl Let me explain in more detail. If someone now has an Erdős number of 1 or 2 they have that number permanently - it will never change. If someone now has an Erdős number of 3, that value will only change through their own actions (if they publish with a co-author who has an Erdős number of 1). If someone now has an Erdős number of 4, that value will only change through their own actions (if they publish with a co-author who has an Erdős number of 1 or 2) or the actions of one of their previous co-authors (if a co-author with Erdős number 3 lowers their Erdős number to 2). Therefore your claim that the Erdős number that someone has now can be changed by the actions of someone else is logically false for Erdős numbers 1,2 and 3, and your claim that the Erdős number that someone has now can be changed by the actions of a "collaborator of a collaborator" is also logically false for Erdős number 4. I hope that is now clear to you. If not, please leave a note on my talk page saying which parts you do not understand, and I can provide you with further help "off line". Gandalf61 10:40, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
WP:CIVIL, please, and please read what I wrote before sneering, with particular references to tenses. I was discussing how a person may have achieved a particular E-number, with respect to the role of collaborators, which was different at difft times. What happened before Erdis died is relevant because we are not only considering the allocation of Erdos nunbers to living people, and because it demonstrates some of the many ways in which the Erdos numbers which have been allocated to people can change by the actions of others. Consider one example: at his death in 1960, X had an E-number of 3, because his only published paper was co-authored with Y, who had an E-number of two. Thirty years later, Y wrote a paper with Erdos himself, posthumously raising X's E-number to two. That's nothing to do with X, and it is very strange to claim that a number changed by a posthumous irrelevancy is a defining characteristic of X. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:03, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to BrownHairedGirl I do not understand what part of my post above you think was not WP:CIVIL. I was simply trying to explain my refutation of your "collaborator of a collaborator" argument with as much clarity and precision as possible, to avoid misunderstanding. If you want to expand on your WP:CIVIL remark, please take it to my talk page, as I do not think it is relevant to this CfD discussion. Gandalf61 14:30, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
I don't see it as at all "painfully obvious". At this moment, there are 10 keep votes and 8 delete votes, with two and a half days left for further discussion. The outcome could go either way So far this has been a civil discussion and it should continue as long as there are more issues to be discussed. And as Bhg said, CFD decisions aren't made just based on vote counts, but on whether the arguments on either side are supported by policy. SparsityProblem 19:43, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment The concept of Erdős numbers is a mathematicians joke. The point of the joke is to rank mathematicians by a number that is obviously of no significance whatsoever, in order to see how many people are fooled into taking it seriously. Quite a lot, judging by the discussion above. R.e.b. 18:31, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Unlike Pokemon, which are extremely serious. -- Cheeser1 20:02, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
People have been asserting that Erdos numbers are "taken seriously by mathematicians" (almost a verbatim quote), so the comparison to Pokemon isn't too relevant. SparsityProblem 20:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to R.e.b. Do you, in any case, have a source that demonstrates that Erdős numbers are a joke that is not taken seriously by the mathematical community, or is that just your opinion ? Why is there a whole database devoted to the topic if it is only regarded as a joke ? Do you think that the Wikipedians with low Erdős numbers, some of whom have contributed to this discussion, regard it as a joke ? My impression is that they treat it with at least a moderate amount of seriousness. Gandalf61 20:07, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
I think R.e.b. counts as a reliable source here; he's as qualified as anyone to speak for the mathematical community. SparsityProblem 20:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to SparsityProblem Of course R.e.b. is as qualified as anyone to speak for the mathematical community, and we can balance his personal opinions against those of the other Wikipedian mathematicians who have contributed to this debate. However, the contributors who argue that Erdős numbers are notable and significant within the mathematical community have also provided multiple independent sources to support their claims. I was trying to determine whether R.e.b. has a similar independent source to support his view that "it's only a joke and has no significance", or whether this is just his personal opinion, in which case he is simply advancing a WP:IDONTCARE argument. Gandalf61 10:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Gandalf, you are still not distinguishing between the notability of a method of analysing relationships in a particular field, and the separate question of whether the tag attached to a particular individual by that technique is a defining attribute of the individual. Not one independent source has been offered in support of the latter claim, despite repeated requests. If the E.numbers of individuals were as significant as their defenders claim, we should have had screenfuls of references rather than the complete blank. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:41, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to BrownHairedGirl Evidence of the importance of Erdős numbers to individuals has been provided, but you have rejected it all for various reasons. However, you are correct that I was adressing the issue of the notability of the concept of Erdős numbers in my comment above - because that was the issue that was raised by R.e.b. in his comment, to which I was responding. Quote from R.e.b. "The concept of Erdős numbers is a mathematicians joke". Quote from BrownHairedGirl : "I have seen plenty of evidence that the concept of Erdős numbers is notable". Gandalf61 14:18, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
For the record, I gave above a reference to a scholarly article that discusses in-depth the Erdős collaboration graph, and its significance. Here it is, again, since it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle:

Vladimir Batagelj and Andrej Mrvar, Some Analyses of Erd˝os Collaboration Graph, Social Networks 22 (2000), no. 2, 173--186; reviewed in MR 1789607

And here is another article, from the online publication of the Mathematical Association of America:

Ivars Peterson, "Groups, Graphs, and Erdös Numbers", MAA Online, June 12, 2004

Here's a brief quote from that article: "One can look at mathematical collaborations as a graph—an array of points connected by lines. Each point represents a mathematician, and lines join mathematicians who have collaborated with each other on at least one published paper. The resulting tangle is one of the largest, most elaborate graphs available to mathematicians. Some people have conjectured that this monstrous graph snares nearly every present-day mathematician and has threads into the physical, life, and social sciences (and even into movies and baseball). Its breadth is astonishing and vividly demonstrates the vital role of collaboration in math and science." Is this significant, or what? And, yes, the article ends with a screenful of references. Turgidson 13:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
My point made again, in both papers. The author of the frst notes the usefulness of E numbers as "techniques that can be used for analysis of large networks", while the second claims to have produced "one of the largest, most elaborate graphs" and that it "demonstrates the vital role of collaboration", but not that it provides a mechanism for meaningfully labelling the notability of individual mathematicians. Merely being a data point use in the construction of an informative graph is woefully insufficient as a criterion for categorisation. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:41, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I would like some way to cabin this categorizing practice and the perpetual ensuing debate. If it is kept, can we agree to limit it to (a) mathematicians (and maybe also computer scientists); (b) that, while trivia, it is non-precedential and unique to the circumstances of mathematicians etc.; and (c) that we have an annual debate about E-numbers to see if consensus has shifted, but do it on some dedicated page. We can announce it on CFD and link to it. Then we could generate an E-number-CFD number for everyone who has participated in a debate with someone who was in one of the annual CFDs. ... I'm only being half-farcical here. It seems to me that it is patently trivia but maybe such fiercely defended and such well-recognized trivia in some circles that it gets special treatment. As a matter of wikipedian collegiality if nothing else. -- lquilter 13:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
    • If it's trivia, them it doesn't belong in mainspace, despite the devotion of its small but vociferous fan-club. But I don't see offhand any reason why it couldn't be applied to talk pages, just as we do with wikipedia maintenance categories. I'm not aware of any precedent for that usage of talk pages, but I can see how this could legitimately be implemented as a set of WikiProject categories, and the devotees could extend it to higher Erdos nunbers if they like. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:41, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply


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Apparitions

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The result of the debate was merge all as nominated. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 06:22, 5 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Suggest merging
Nominator's rationale: Merge. This is partly a tidyup nomination after a group CfD on October 5, for which some of these categories were tagged but not listed. This nomination does two things:
  1. it upmerges two small subcats about specific apparitions which have little potential for growth (see WP:OCAT#Small_with_no_potential_for_growth);
  2. it removes the split by whether apparitions were church-approved (which I presume refers to the Roman Catholic church, although this is not specified). Apart from being unclearly labelled, that distinction is not historically useful, because the RCC has at times revised its stance on various apparitions as it has on saints. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge all per nom, & thanks to Bhg for tidying some loose ends from my earlier nom. One of the categories says the "church" is the RC plus Orthodox churches, but all members seem to have occurred to Catholics. I initially left some of the "approval" splits, but now think these are untenable. Johnbod 14:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Your previous nom was a big one which cleared out a mass of overcategorisation, and it's often a good idea to approach this sort of huge mess in two passes. The first time around, there were so many sub-sub-categories that it wasn't entirely clear what we'd be left with once they were gone. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Upmerge per nom. Not only is the current category scheme unnecessary, some of the current names are also faintly ridiculous. I didn't realise that angels had to get church approval to appear anywhere - who do they apply to? Grutness... wha? 22:44, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Most literary sources agree that one of the worst things about being an angel is the paperwork :) 23:03, 28 October 2007 (UTC) Johnbod 23:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
But the Angels' Trade Union is getting very militant about this whole business of mostly having to work at night. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
And we all have heard how the angel got atop the Christmas tree. I'm sure a grievance was filed. Carlossuarez46 01:30, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Iron Man video games

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The result of the debate was merge to Category:Video games based on Marvel Comics -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:25, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Iron Man video games ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete. Very broad category, that is a clear form of overcategorization. There is no possible way to expand this, as Iron Man hasn't appeared in many video games overall. Contents should be moved into Category:Video games based on Marvel Comics. RobJ1981 11:42, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Spawn video games

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The result of the debate was upmerge. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:07, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Spawn video games ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete. Very small category. A good example of overcategorization. Articles in this category should be moved into Category:Video games based on comic books. RobJ1981 11:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Video games based on Image Comics

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The result of the debate was relisted at Nov 4. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 10:11, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Video games based on Image Comics ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete. Very small category, the contents basically duplicate the Spawn video games category. Contents should be moved into Category:Video games based on comic books. RobJ1981 11:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - seems a reasonable subcat of the video games based on comics category. Otto4711 13:11, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Common Lisp implementation

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The result of the debate was speedy rename (case of singular→plural). Since this has already been performed manually by the nominator and sole author of both categories in question, the original category can be deleted now. —  TKD:: Talk 08:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Common Lisp implementation ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Should have been Category:Common Lisp implementations as per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories). Tobias Bergemann 07:36, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Alfred P. Sloan Prize

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The result of the debate was Keep and Rename to Category:Alfred P. Sloan Prize winners. Vegaswikian 23:19, 8 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose merging Category:Alfred P. Sloan Prize into Category:Sundance Film Festival award winners
Nominator's rationale: The Alfred P. Sloan Prize is just one of at least 25 Sundance Film Festival awards, and it happens to be a relatively new one (started in 2003). Per Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Award winners, the information conveyed by this category is better suited to the "Awards" sections of individual film articles and to the article Alfred P. Sloan Prize, which contains a full list. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 07:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge per nom and per Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Award winners. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 09:37, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - While it is not the most prestigious of the awards given at Sundance every year, it is the only award with a cash purse. Also other then the random "Special Jury Prize for X" there are fewer awards given at recent Sundance Festivals then your quoted figure of 25 (the actual number is closer to 17.) Keep per Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Award winners, it is notable enough for both a category and an article. — A 09:38, 6 November 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Would it not, at least, need to be renamed to Category:Alfred P. Sloan Prize winners? The current category bundles together the main article, various film articles, and even three biographical articles. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 18:59, 6 November 2007 (UTC) reply
      • Then there would only be 5 articles in the category and it would increase at the rate of one per year; a sure-fire way to make sure a category gets merged/removed the next time this is up for discussion. Per my original edit, I do not think that any change is needed. — A 23:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC) reply
        • But it does not make sense to categorise these films and persons under this name. The films and people are not subtopics of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize ... they are merely affiliated with the Prize due to the fact that they are winners of it. The category name should reflect that. You seem to be arguing that we should sacrifice accuracy in naming simply for the sake of preserving the category. Incidentally, if the prize is indeed significant enough to justify categorisation per Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Award winners, then 5 category members is sufficient to justify retention. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 00:02, 7 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep and rename. I think the category should be kept, since it is the only award at Sundance that comes with a cash purse. I guess the category could be renamed Alfred P. Sloan Prize winners and the category removed from the Alfred P. Sloan Prize page. There are basically 9 kinds of awards at the Sundance Film Festival: Grand Jury Prizes, Audience Awards, Directing Awards, Cinematography Awards, Documentary Film Editing, the screenwriting award, Special Jury Prizes, awards for short films, and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize. I suppose it is a Sundance Film Festival award, in a broad sense, but I think it really is separate from the other awards. A separate foundation presents it, not juries or audiences. A separate jury selects the winner, they are not involved in any other selections. If the category is deleted, the films that won can still be seen at List of Sundance Film Festival award winners and Alfred P. Sloan Prize. It looks like every article for every film that has won the prize mentions it. But the people that have won it would not be listed — I suppose they could be listed at Alfred P. Sloan Prize as well. But to say that Werner Herzog is a one of several "Sundance Film Festival award winners" instead of one of several "Alfred P. Sloan Prize winners" is a bit misleading I think. -- Pixelface 00:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep and rename. Per Pixelface's rationale. The category is useful and informative. — Wise Kwai 08:04, 7 November 2007 (UTC) reply
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Scandinavian nuncios

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The result of the debate was merge all, although changing target to Category:Apostolic Nuncios to Scandinavia for consistency with other related subcats. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 09:19, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Suggest merging Category:Apostolic Nuncio to Denmark, Category:Apostolic Nuncio to Iceland, Category:Apostolic Nuncio to Finland, Category:Apostolic Nuncio to Norway, and Category:Apostolic Nuncio to Sweden to Category:Apostolic Delegates to Scandinavia
Nominator's rationale: Merge, First of all, all these categories need to be changed from the singular "nuncio" to a plural form. I'd suggest merging, as the nunciatures of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden are combined, with a single nuncio serving all five countries. He's also the Apostolic Delegate to the Scandinavian Bishops Conference, so using this title (or a similar one) allows us to have one category for this, essentially, singular office. Gentgeen 07:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge per nom. I have rarely seen so many categories created not just for one job but for just one person! -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:43, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge per both. Johnbod 18:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Railway architecture

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The result of the debate was delete. Kbdank71 14:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Railway architecture ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Not really about architecture. Can be safely deleted since the two subcats are in other appropriate parents. Vegaswikian 05:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Suspected terrorists alleged to be associated with Tablighi Jamaat

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The result of the debate was delete. Kbdank71 14:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Suspected terrorists alleged to be associated with Tablighi Jamaat ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: This category groups individuals on what seems to be a non-defining characteristic. The two category members are terrorism suspects who are alleged to have ties with Tablighi Jamaat, a Pakistan-based organisation. The latter part is not a defining characteristic for two reasons. First, it is not uncommon for Islamic terrorists to have ties with one or more Islamic organisations in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or southeast Asia. Second, mere "association" (or, in this case, allegations of association) is general a weak basis for categorisation, unlike membership. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 04:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. "Association" is a dangerously vague term, and "alleged" is a weasel word. We don't categorise on the basis that somebody somewhere has alleged something. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete The allegations are by the US authorities (except I suppose in the UK case now added), but associated is too vague. Johnbod 18:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • those two governments aren't always spot on in their allegations (they were really sure about this one) and vague or specific, we should use reliable sources. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:22, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Cockpit games

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The result of the debate was delete. Kbdank71 14:19, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Cockpit games ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Kind of a silly category. There's no main article for it. SharkD 02:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. This just a way of grouping flight and space games together. If each category contained a see-also link to the other, it would simplify the category tree and make navigation easier. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 08:58, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete 'Cockpit games' is not a widely used term, in fact I don't remember ever having come across it in 20 years of gaming. Pretty much all the items within belong to established genres which we have articles for, except for a 'vehicle simulation' article which will be written in due course. Someone another 12:56, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Women computer scientists

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The result of the debate was keep. No consensus to delete (or rename), plus per convincing demonstration that the topic has a significant and citable presence in relevant literature.-- cjllw ʘ TALK 08:56, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Women computer scientists ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: I'm shocked that this category has survived as long as it has; it was nominated for CFD before, but only in order to rename it to "Female computer scientists" (which had the result of no consensus). The problem is that there is no analogous "Male computer scientists" category -- indeed, such a category would be pointless, as it would include probably at least 90% of computer scientists who are the subjects of articles on Wikipedia. Categorizing female computer scientists under "Female computer scientists" and male computer scientists under "Computer scientists" suggests that computer scientists are expected to be male and women are a special case -- at best, this scheme could be seen as reflective of implicit bias.
In addition, people looking for "computer scientists" will be shown a list that doesn't include any female computer scientists (will most people notice the link to "Women computer scientists" in the list of subcategories?) I realize this is indicative of a more general problem with Wikipedia's category system, but nevertheless, I think the consequences in this case are especially bad. Delete. SparsityProblem 00:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. You are right. This should go. -- Bduke 07:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep, possibly rename to Category:Women in computing to match main article Women in computing. The relevant guideline is WP:CATGRS, which says "Dedicated group-subject subcategories ... should only be created where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right" and "Generally, this means that the basic criterion for such a category is whether the topic has already been established as academically or culturally significant by external sources." That test has already been met by the main article Women in computing.
    Per para 3 of WP:CATGRS#Other considerations a female category does not need to be balanced by a male category, so there is no reason to deprecate this category because of the lack of male equivalent. However, the ghettoisation problem mentioned by the nominator is covered by the guideline; and the solution is simply to check that no woman has been improperly removed from any of the 50 non-gendered categories of computer scientists because she is in the gendered one.
    It appears that the nominator was not aware of WP:CATGRS, and I invite SparsityProblem to withdraw the nomination. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 09:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Reply: I've read WP:CATGRS and I think it supports my argument for deletion. First, the guidelines say "a gender/race/sexuality subcategory should never be implemented as the final rung in a category tree. If a category is not otherwise subdividable into more specific groupings, then do not create a gender/race/sexuality subcategory." Obviously, "Computer scientists" can be subdivided in many different ways, but the fact is that the category contains hundreds of articles that *aren't* in any subcategory thereof; if you're writing an article on a male computer scientist, you're not necessarily going to remember to put it in one of the "Computer scientists by nationality" subcategories, and there don't yet exist subcategories for all disciplines within computer science. Whereas female computer scientists will be put in the "Women computer scientists" category. Moreover, WP:CATGRS does say that an exception to the rule about not putting an article in both a main category and its subcategories can be made for gender/race/sexuality categories, but I wasn't aware of that, and I would bet that a lot of other editors aren't either. Finally, the guidelines say "Dedicated group-subject subcategories... should only be created where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right." I find this impossibly vague. It goes on to say, "If a substantial and encyclopedic head article (not just a list) cannot be written for such a category, then the category should not be created." Women in computing isn't substantial and consists mostly of a list. Maybe it's possible to write a good article on the subject (although note that the subject of women computer scientists is quite distinct from the subject of women in computing), but there isn't evidence that there is. I don't know of any published books on the subject of women computer scientists (in general, rather than biographies of specific ones), for example, although I am aware of books about (for example) women mathematicians.
So, by WP:IGNORE, I stand by my nomination.
If the category ends up being renamed to "Women in computing", it should no longer be a subcategory of Category:Computer scientists, as being in computing doesn't imply you are a computer scientist. In addition, if the category is kept, I will try to edit to make sure no one is listed in the main category, but in the relevant subcategories by nationality and subfield. SparsityProblem 17:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
A few quick replies:
  • WP:IGNORE -- in this case, I find that common sense and the need to avoid bias are more compelling than following a very convoluted and ill-specified set of guidelines. Others may disagree.
  • Diffusion -- ok.
  • Google hits are tenuous at best for proving article notability, and I think entirely irrelevant for category notability. Looking at another debate above, we both agree that the Erdos number categories should be deleted, but there are plenty of ghits for "Erdos numbers". SparsityProblem 20:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I think that you misunderstand why I included those google links: not to establish notability, but because of the specific test applied to gendered categories that "The criterion of whether an encyclopedic article is possible should be the gauge". There is plenty of material in those google results alone to allow anyone with the inclination to write a very encylopedic article on the topic, starting with Ada Lovelace and including Alexandra Illmer Forsythe, who was the author of the first CS textbook.
"Common sense and the need to avoid bias" are the subject of very different views when it comes to gender and categories, which is why a huge amount of effort went into working out a guideline on the subject. You haven't provided any particular reason to ignore it in the case of this category, and your objection seems to be to the guideline itself. WT:CATGRS is the place to argue for its abolition or revision, but as of now it stands, and you have not explained how deleting this category would improve the encyclopedia. It seems to me that your concerns about ghettoization were misplaced, and are well covered in the guidelines ... and that the point in your nom about 90% of the wikipedia articles on comp.sci people being about men illustrates rather well why this category is needed. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs)
  • Keep and maybe rename, per Bhg. Johnbod 14:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep as in practice culturally significant. And I think the original name is the best fir for this. DGG ( talk) 00:04, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • I agree that the original name is best. SparsityProblem has rightly pointed out that "women in computing" is a broader topic, so I have struck out my renaming suggestion. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. The existence of conferences devoted to this subject shows its notability. That goes not just for the topic article but also for notability as the subject of a category. As a historically underrepresented segment of the population in this field, it serves an encyclopedic purpose to be able to conveniently point to a list of such women; e.g., I can easily imagine student projects in which the students are asked to choose and write something about one of these people. There is no symmetry here requiring a parallel list of male computer scientists, because males are not underrepresented in this area. — David Eppstein 17:33, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - Women have been and are still significantly under-represented in computing, to such an extent that the category is in fact often defining for its members. The underrepresentation is periodically covered in the media, both mainstream and industry-specific. Renaming to "female computer scientists" is fine if it makes the grammarians happy. -- lquilter 18:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Keep per preceeding arguments. (I generally don't like to weigh in without adding something of substance to the discussion, but I'm trying to get caught up here after losing 2 days thanks to a lighting strike that fried my modem. Ouch.) Cgingold 12:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Keep as a distinct and often overlooked minority in the industry Women computer scientists is notable, especially with increasing trends promoting women in technology. Women teachers would be an overcategorization. Women computer scientists is not. WP:CATGRS#Other considerations definitly applies. CJ 13:43, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Post-credits scene films

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The result of the debate was speedy delete per CSD G4 and salt per continued re-creation against strong community consensus. Since this category was populated by a single user, I'll go through that user's contributions and depopulate it through rollback. —  TKD:: Talk 07:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Post-credits scene films ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Speedy delete and salt - an anon added close to 200 articles to the (then-redlinked) category. I figured the easiest way to handle it would be to recreate the category and then speedy it. The anon deleted the speedy tag out-of-process so rather than get into an edit war, here it is. This category has been deleted twice previously, March 9 and November 10, 2006. It's likely that the category will continually be recreated unless salted. Suggest salting both versions. Otto4711 00:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Sports books

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The result of the debate was Rename. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:05, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose renaming Category:Sports books to Category:Books about sports
Nominator's rationale: Rename - in line with the majority of the subcats of Category:Books by topic and to avoid any possible confusion that the category is for notable Sportsbooks. Otto4711 00:35, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_October_28&oldid=1142527303"
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< October 27 October 29 >

October 28

Category:Roller coasters by location

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The result of the debate was rename. I have relocated Category:Roller coasters at Disneyland to Category:Roller coasters in California; if a better location for the category is known, please move it there. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 16:14, 5 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose renaming Category:Roller coasters by location to Category:Roller coasters by country
Nominator's rationale: Rename. All of the entries except one are countries. The one exception can be easily moved into appropriate existing sub categories. Vegaswikian 22:47, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Mayors of Reno

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The result of the debate was rename as nominated. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 09:52, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Suggest merging Category:Mayors of Reno to Category:Mayors of Reno, Nevada
Nominator's rationale: to match main article Reno, Nevada. Bencherlite Talk 22:15, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Roller coasters at Idlewild Park

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The result of the debate was speedy delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:29, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Idlewild Park ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Rename to Category:Roller coasters at Idlewild and Soak Zone, to match Idlewild and Soak Zone. -- Prove It (talk) 21:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a template issue. Vegaswikian 02:25, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Countries with original languages

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The result of the debate was speedy delete per CSD G7 (author request). – Black Falcon ( Talk) 22:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Countries with original languages ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Delete, as non-defining attribute of a country, and also as a categorization by name. -- Prove It (talk) 21:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Speedy delete as nonsense, because the relationship betweens names of languages and names of countries varies depending oin which language is being spoken: e.g. in the Island of Éire, there are two countries, neither of which is strictly called Éire, but where one of the native languages is Gaeilge. Only in the English language is there a correlation of words between Irish nationality and the Irish language. (Otherwise delete per nom). -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom and the first comment on the talk page. This categorization doesn't make sense; undecided as to whether it qualifies as "nonsense". Bencherlite Talk 21:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. Unnecessary. Matthew Brown (Morven) ( T: C) 21:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

*Weak Keep I know that there must be someone on Wikipedia other than me that finds this category useful. Common, maybe it isn't 100% accurate, but there must be a way to change this category to become less original research. Could you guys at least alert the WP:COUNTRY wikiproject? TheBlazikenMaster 22:22, 28 October 2007 (UTC) :*Please don't hate me for the category guys, I was just trying to help. I know everyone of you have tried to do something helpful, but failed. So please don't hate me for making this category. TheBlazikenMaster 22:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

  • Delete per nom ("non-defining attribute of a country"); the information that is wished to be conveyed via this category would be better suited to a list, assuming that the topic of the relationship between language name and country name is notable. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 22:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment I tagged it I'm really sorry, I don't usually make useless category, you guys know I was trying to help right? Well, next time, I will think things through first. TheBlazikenMaster 22:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • I removed the category from the articles, and let's forget this category was ever created, and get on with your lives. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheBlazikenMaster ( talk • contribs) 22:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Oil fields of England

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The result of the debate was keep. Kbdank71 15:06, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Merge Category:Oil fields of England into parent Category:Oil fields of the United Kingdom. (Ref: Category:Oil fields of Scotland - see discussion below.)
Nominator's rationale: England is not a sovereign entity in the same manner as Germany or the UK and hence 'Oil fields of England' is not possible; they should be listed under UK oilfields. Only one of the 4 entries in this cat. is clearly associated with oil in England - and that is a mixed oil & gas facility at that. Ephebi 20:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per the Scottish category below. Johnbod 21:17, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. This rather pointy nomination is based on the premise that the boundaries of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom are not properly defined, which is demonstrably wrong in law: see the CfD for Oil fields of Scotland for links to the Scottish boundaries. Category:United Kingdom is divided between England, Scotland and Wales in most areas of geography, biography, society, culture, business, politics etc, and we should not make oil fields an exception just because one editor apparently dislikes the fact that it is a political issue. What next, delete Category:Scottish people just because for 300 years there has been no such thing in law as a citizen of Scotland? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - following longstanding precedent that in most cases English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish etc. categories are so split. Matthew Brown (Morven) ( T: C) 21:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - Many categories are divided by the counties of the United Kingdom. It might be thought that there would eb difficulties with offshore oil fields, but legislation exists to define which legal system apples, for England and Scotland have completely different legal systems. This is discussed at length under a similar nomination related to Scotland. Peterkingiron 00:13, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Glass Mask

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The result of the debate was delete. Kbdank71 15:06, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Glass Mask ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Eponymous overcategorisation. The material does not justify a distinct category; all of the category members are adequately interlinked via in-text links and "See also" sections. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 18:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Glass Mask characters

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The result of the debate was merge. Kbdank71 15:07, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose merging Category:Glass Mask characters into Category:Lists of anime and manga characters
Nominator's rationale: Overcategorisation. The material (two lists of characters) does not justify a distinct category. The category can be created if/when there are articles about individual characters. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 18:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Works by Myaskovsky

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The result of the debate was rename. Woohookitty Woohoo! 09:05, 3 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose renaming Category:Works by Myaskovsky to Category:Compositions by Nikolai Myaskovsky
Nominator's rationale: Per convention of Category:Compositions by composer, and more than just the surname of Nikolai Myaskovsky should be used in the category name. Bencherlite Talk 18:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • I am entirely happy with this proposal if it conforms better to Wiki conventions and aids transparency of reference. Cenedi 19:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Rename per nom. Johnbod 21:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Rename per nom. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:23, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Roller coasters at Playland

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The result of the debate was speedy delete as empty. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:31, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Playland ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Rename to Category:Roller coasters at Playland (Vancouver), to match Playland (Vancouver), but not Playland (New York) -- Prove It (talk) 18:31, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a usage template issue. Vegaswikian 02:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Atenean

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The result of the debate was merge as nominated. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 09:48, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Suggest merging Category:Atenean to Category:Ateneo de Manila University alumni
Nominator's rationale: Duplicate category; suggested merge target is better named (per convention of Category:Alumni by university or college in the Philippines) and per main article Ateneo de Manila University. Bencherlite Talk 18:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Artists featured on Grand Theft Auto

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The result of the debate was delete. Kbdank71 15:05, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Artists featured on Grand Theft Auto ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Overcategorization as performer by performance, per multiple precedents. Bencherlite Talk 18:13, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Roller coasters at Ocean Park

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The result of the debate was speedy delete as empty. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:33, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Ocean Park ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Rename to Category:Roller coasters at Ocean Park Hong Kong, to match Ocean Park Hong Kong. -- Prove It (talk) 17:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Upmerge to Category:Roller coasters in Hong Kong. The nominated categ contains only 1 article, and is the only subcat of Category:Roller coasters in Hong Kong; it's an un-needed intermediate layer. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • These cats are added by {{ Infobox roller coaster}}. So they can not be upmerged unless someone guts/rewrites the template. However these one ofs are part of a series so probably should be kept. Editors who are not careful can generate redlinked categories that some unsuspecting editor will later create if the wrong name is used in the template. The fix is to edit the article and fix the park name in the infobox for the coaster. Vegaswikian 20:07, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a usage template issue. Vegaswikian 02:29, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Oil fields of Scotland

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The result of the debate was keep. Kbdank71 15:04, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Merge into Category:Oil fields of the United Kingdom, Scotland is not a sovereign entity in the same manner as Germany or the UK and hence 'Oil fields of Scotland' is not possible; they should be listed under UK oilfields. -- Jw2034 (talk) 17:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep many "by country" categories are divided like this. There is Category:Oil fields of England also, both under the UK cat. We should not make it difficult for Scots to work out how much revenue the English have deprived them of; they are bad-tempered enough about it as it is. :) Johnbod 18:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep. Subcategorising UK categories into Scotland, England, Wales, N.Irl is a long-established convention; and it's particularly relevant in this case where the claim of "Scotland's Oil" is a major political issue in Scotland. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Upmerge per nom. Sub-categorising like this becomes heavily POV. Just where is the boundary of Scottish Water & English water? And are there inner and limits? Who owns Rockall? The rectangular Licence Blocks are issued at Westminster and do not take into account nationalistic claims for borders of "territorial waters". And to complicate the POV, IIRC 99% of the companies developing & operating those fields are registered in England and operate under the laws of England, not Scotland. Answering Johnbod & BHGs concerns, if someone has a devoluntionary agenda its pretty easy to see where the fields are and make their own mind up (though they'd be pretty foolish to use the current sparse WP list as an inventory of fields past, present & future). And if we really are trying to feed these agendas, shouldn't you be asking for an extra cat to make it easier for the independence meovement of the Lieutenancy of Shetland? Enough. The Category:Oil fields of England is also a misnomer & being misused - I'll submit a nom to upmerge those as well. Ephebi 20:45, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Reply. There is nothing POV about this: the boundaries are clearly defined in the law of the United Kingdom by the Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999 ( Statutory Instrument 1999 No. 1126, ISBN  0-11-059052-X). There is no need to break the well-established patten of Scottish subcategories just because someone takes a particular view either way about a major issue in the politics of Scotland.
      The question about the nationality of the oil companies is an irrelevance, because this is categorising the location of oil fields, not the nationality of the companies involved. An oil field of Kazakhstan doesn't cease to be in Kazakhstan just because it is being operated by an American company. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:09, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • PS for those who don't want to plot all the co-ordinates in Statutory Instrument 1999 No. 1126, Her Majesty's Stationery Office has kindly created a handy map of the boundaries. To answer Ephebi's question above, it appears that Her Majesty's Government regards Rockall as Scottish. It might help to link to the map from the category, to avoid further confusion for those who don't follow the minutiae of legislation. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:39, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Not everything in a UK category is sub-cat'ed down to the level of England/Scotland/Wales etc. if its not appropriate. Thanks for maps & document:if you read them carefully you may note they are cunningly worded to relate to fishing rights or simply describe water "adjacent to Scotland", and not "ownership", "control" or any other rights. Most (but not all) oil fields are way outside the 'Scottish' fishing limits as defined in the Act. So, to repeat, Licence Blocks are still issued and controlled nowadays from the UK's Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in Westminster, mainly to companies registered outside Scotland. Much to Alex Salmond's frustration they do not legally "belong to" Scotland (or England, or Wales) and it is not a function for Holyrood, and we have no way of knowing how such a function would be devolved to a Scottish Parliament, or how the exploitation 'rights' would be shared and managed. That's not to diminish Scotland in any way, but the cat is still plainly POV/ WP:Crystal until Scottish govt has a legal claim on them. However, if we seriously feel the need to try to represent a geographic and not a political assignment, then it would more accurate to drop the 'of' and call it Category:Oil and gas fields adjacent to Scotland. Ephebi 23:34, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • The convention of Category:Oil fields by country is for subcats called "oil fields of Foo", and I don't see any need to break that convention. I don't think there is any dispute about who issues the licence blocks, but the SI still makes clear that the territory defined in section 3 of the SI is part of the territory of Scotland, and under the jurisdiction of Scots law (and as the map shows, that extends way beyond the fishing limits defined in section 4). To understand this, you have to read the SI in conjunction with Section 126(1) of the Scotand Act 1998, an interpretation clause which says “Scotland” includes so much of the internal waters and territorial sea of the United Kingdom as are adjacent to Scotland' .
    Whether or not Scottish Government has a legal claim to control of all things in Scottish territory is a separate issue (relating to the list of reserved matters in the Scotland Act), but this is not the place to take a judgement either way on the merits of such a claim. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:55, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • I think we are agreed about the convention - our different positions come down to the level and to just one word. As the word "of" means possession, it can be a politically-charged statement, which is why we must be particularly careful about expressing a POV. 'Of' clearly applies to the Oil fields "of the UK". We appear to agree that Scotland does not exercise those rights or other aspects of ownership: so I hold that the term cannot apply to Scotland (or England). Perhaps it should apply now or one day in the future, but I think we agree that would need a change in the interpretation or letter of the law first, which is not the role of WP. Thats why I suggested the alternative, apolitical "in Scottish waters". Ephebi 02:01, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • But - not legally... and that's the problem with using a statement like "oil of Scotland" which implies it is Ephebi 23:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • But yes legally the oil is in Scottish waters we may not get the revenue from it but its still our oil -- Barryob Vigeur de dessus 01:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep provided that the distinction can adequately be supported, and I presume it can. It must be necessary for statute to provide whether a given oil platform is subject to English or Scottish law, for example in which country a person should sue for an injury sustained on it or be prosecuted for a theft or assault committed on it. There is a political hot potato involved, but that does not justifiy the proposed merge. Peterkingiron 00:52, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • interesting viewpoint, m'lud. There have certainly been cases of North Sea health and safety breaches being prosecuted by Scottish Sheriffs both before & after devolution. But "jurisdiction" is seperate from "ownership". Ephebi 02:01, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Indeed it does. But the category name does not say "owned by Scotland", any more than Category:Military of Scotland means that the ministers in Holyrood have under their control several regiments of infantry and a few submarines full of leased Trident missiles. You are reading far too much into that word "of". -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:15, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • LOL good point. (Even the merger of the traditional "Scottish Regiments" into the "Regiment of Scotland" went down like a lead balloon.) I'm only reading what the words say - my dislike of "of" and preference for "in" avoids this false interpretation if we must have this false category. Ephebi 09:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Roller coasters at Busch Gardens Williamsburg

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The result of the debate was speedy delete as empty. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:35, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Busch Gardens Williamsburg ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Merge into Category:Roller coasters at Busch Gardens Europe, to match Busch Gardens Europe, formerly Busch Gardens Williamsburg. -- Prove It (talk) 15:58, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • These cats are added by {{ Infobox roller coaster}}. The fix is to edit the article and fix the park name in the infobox for the coasters. Vegaswikian 20:08, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge both to a new Category:Roller coasters in Virginia. Time to categorise these roller coasters by state to match the wider system of categorisation of buildings and structures, visitor attractions etc. --20:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
    • How do you propose to deal with the template? Are you also saying that being part of a series of roller coasters by park is not a reason to keep this article? Vegaswikian 21:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • I think that the simplest way out of the mess would be to remove the autocategorisation and categorise them manually according to the usual geographical divisions of countries. The roller-coaster-by-par schema creates too many small categories, and loses a lot of geographical category info. E.g. there is no Category:Roller coasters in Ontario, and the rollercoasters there are divided up amongst several small by-park categories, so anyone looking for the Ontario roller coasters has to figure out which province the amusement park categories relate to. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:15, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • PS your comments below, under Roller coasters at Great America seem to emphasise that the current categorisation scheme is simply broken. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
          • So the suggestion is to create the new parent categories, the level depending on the country and number of coasters, upmerge the by park categories by adding a specific category hard codded in the article and when all of these are completed, update the template to no longer categorize at all. Vegaswikian 00:26, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a template usage issue. Vegaswikian 02:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Diving non-fiction books

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The result of the debate was rename. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:11, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose renaming Category:Diving non-fiction books to Category:Underwater diving books
Nominator's rationale: Rename - lead category is about to be renamed to Underwater diving and this should match. Almost all of the other subcats of the Sports books parent leave out the qualifier and the volume of books on diving is not so large as to warrant distinction between fiction and non-fiction. Otto4711 15:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Rename per nom - I don't suppose there is a diving equivalent to Dick Francis. Johnbod 18:01, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Greg Louganis has co-authored his autobiography and a book on dogs, but he wasn't an underwater diver. Otto4711 23:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Roller coasters at Marriott's Great America

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The result of the debate was speedy delete as empty. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:37, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Marriott's Great America ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Merge into Category:Roller coasters at Six Flags Great America, to match Six Flags Great America, formerly Marriott's Great America. -- Prove It (talk) 15:36, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge per nom as duplicate. However, the parent category Category:Roller coasters in the United States needs attention. It is sub-categorised by venue, and there are 77 sub-categories for 376 articles, which is an average of less than 5½ articles per category. It would be much better to categorise the roller-coasters by state, which would reduce the number of categories (by about half, I reckon), and fit in better with the broader categorisation schemes for buildings and structures in the US, which is by state. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment These cats are added by {{ Infobox roller coaster}} see my comments above. Just change the templates to the correct park name. Vegaswikian 20:11, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a template usage issue. Vegaswikian 02:36, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Roller coasters at Great America

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The result of the debate was speedy delete as empty. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:38, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Roller coasters at Great America ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Merge into Category:Roller coasters at California's Great America, to match California's Great America. -- Prove It (talk) 15:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Speedy delete as empty. Was a template usage issue. Vegaswikian 02:42, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply

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Category:Tom Goes to the Mayor

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The result of the debate was delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:13, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Tom Goes to the Mayor ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete - completely unnecessary category per extensive precedent. Otto4711 15:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Films with Original Screenplays

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The result of the debate was delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:18, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Films with Original Screenplays ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Delete, as non-defining, or at least Rename to Category:Films with original screenplays. I consider it a defining characteristic of the screenplays, but not of the films themselves. -- Prove It (talk) 15:06, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films‎. It's overcatergorisation. The JPS talk to me 15:39, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Weak delete the source of the screenplay is a somewhat important characteristic of a film, but perhaps it is overcategorization. Also, the category seems to be being applied very selectively. -- W.marsh 16:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Carlossuarez46 23:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Teenage Robot characters

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The result of the debate was rename. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 06:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Teenage Robot characters ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Rename to Category:My Life as a Teenage Robot characters, convention of Category:Television characters by series, and to match My Life as a Teenage Robot. -- Prove It (talk) 14:50, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Nicktoon protagonists

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The result of the debate was delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:19, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Nicktoon protagonists ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Delete, as non-defining, see previous discussions. -- Prove It (talk) 14:37, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Endemic birds of Alaska

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The result of the debate was delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:21, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Endemic birds of Alaska ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Delete: The category was created by a user who apparently wasn't clear on the meaning of the word " endemic", and thus had included many species that didn't qualify. There is only a single species that falls into this category. No new species are likely to be added any time soon! MeegsC | Talk 14:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Landing places of Captain James Cook

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The result of the debate was delete, by consensus and as non-defining. Has some potential as a list, possibly incorporated into the main article, but as there are several different inclusion criteria that could be applied, will leave that for the moment. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 04:08, 8 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Landing places of Captain James Cook ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Delete, This would make a fine article, but as a category it's non-defining, and already covered by James Cook and First voyage of James Cook. -- Prove It (talk) 14:08, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete The category does not make it clear what landing places over what period are being included. I would imagine there are numerous points in Europe and North America where Cook landed, but how they fit into this category is unclear. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 00:47, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I would have thought that the category could be tightened up by providing some explanatory text on its category page, limiting it to places where he and members of his crew landed during his vatious voyages of exploration. This would eliminate places he landed while a collier captain, etc. Peterkingiron 00:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment Perhaps, but what then becomes a "landing place". Is Australia a landing place or a place in Australia such as Botany Bay or a location on Botany Bay such as Kurnell, New South Wales? Same with Hawaii, New Caledonia, Tahiti etc. If the category is to be kept, it should at the least be renamed Category:Landing places on the voyages of James Cook without the rank and specifying the voyages. Even a broader category such as Category:Voyages of James Cook may be better. -- Mattinbgn\ talk 06:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. The fact that James Cook landed in these places may be relevant to the history of these places, but it is by no means a defining feature of them. This information is better suited to a list or article, such as the ones noted in the nomination. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 06:23, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment My inclination is to delete, but I'm not sure: I think it might be a keep if tightened up and renamed to something like "places established by" or "places discovered by". If Cook landed somewhere, marked it on the map and wrote it up in his reports as a great place to build a huge new colony, then it sees to me that his visit is a defining characteristic of the place. But if he visited an existing settlement, had a few beers with the locals, and went on his way with a log entry saying "great people, plentiful beer, lousy anchorage, diabolical climate and infertile land" then it seems not to be defining. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:17, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Listify per nom 132.205.99.122 19:21, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Listify and delete per nom. Carlossuarez46 03:39, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete and don't listify - After looking through nearly all of the 16 articles in this category I can see no possible rationale for keeping it. If there were substantial sections about James Cook in these articles it would probably make sense. But in nearly every case there is only a single sentence in the entire article that even mentions Cook. I don't even see a real need to listify, since these landings are already covered quite adequately in the articles about Cook. If a list is desired, it can easily be appended to one of those articles. And lastly, I will simply note that the creator of the category (Adam.J.W.C.) left the following remark in the edit history after finding the CFD notice: "removing cook category, I dont mind if this is deleted..." Cgingold 11:51, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Listify. Good amount of info in here - just not in the right medium. Auroranorth ( sign) 02:21, 3 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment. Is creating what is essentially a context-less list really necessary? After all, we have an article at First voyage of James Cook. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 16:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • delete as non-defining per Black Falcon and Cgingold, and no need for a list when First voyage of James Cook does the job. Bencherlite Talk 09:57, 6 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Listify per Auroranorth. JRG 23:40, 6 November 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Australian bryologists

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The result of the debate was merge as nominated. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 09:57, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Australian bryologists ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Merge into Category:Bryologists, or Keep ... there are so few of these it probably doesn't make sense to divide them by nationality. -- Prove It (talk) 13:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Merge per nom. __ meco 14:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Erdős numbers

A discussion in the aftermath of this discussion can be located on the talk page of this page —Preceding unsigned comment added by Meco ( talk • contribs) 11:16, 3 November 2007 (UTC) reply
The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was delete. I honestly don't have time to explain every reason why. Strength of argument lends to those who wanted to delete. For the vote-counters, many of the "keeps" relied on the argument "nothing has changed since the last time", which isn't a strong argument at all, and certainly pales to the arguments that the delete people brought up. There were some good arguments on both sides, but as I said, the ones who wanted to delete had the stronger argument. Kbdank71 15:01, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Erdős numbers ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 1 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 2 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 3 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 4 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 5 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Category:Erdős number 6 ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete, and listify. This group of categories should be deleted not because the information isn't necessarily noteworthy (as trivia, in my opinion), but because it compromises the quality of Wikipedia's category system. Allowing this to remain lowers the threshold for placing into categories information that should, at most, be included in lists.
Two previous nominations have foregone this one:
I am certain that many people are going to be annoyed at this third nomination for deletion of these categories. My rationale for "not respecting previous decisions" (or some similar accusations) is twofold. Firstly, I was not aware of them, and I want to voice my opinion where it matters, as should be the right of anyone who wasn't around for the first two rounds. Wikipedia is constantly evolving and the notion that things can be settled "once and for all" should be scoffed at at every opportunity. Secondly, my big grievance about these categories existing was hardly discussed in the two previous rounds: In the previous round (February 2007) there were 14 keeps and 11 deletes (27 keeps and 13 deletes in October 2006) where the "keepers" unanimously failed to address the need to have this information presented in the category format as opposed to lists. (Also, there used to be a parameter in the Infobox_Scientist template which was removed, partly due to the existence of these categories. This field may of course be reintroduced if deemed useful.)
The umbrella category Category:Erdős numbers is parented by Category:Academic publishing in which it stands out like a sore thumb, indicating how this scheme does not integrate in Wikipedia's categorization scheme at all. __ meco 13:36, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. I don't see how the existence of these categories "compromises the quality of Wikipedia's category system". Nominators tone and arguments are simply WP:IDONTLIKEIT, which is not a valid reason for deletion. Gandalf61 14:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Reply Not so. The nominator's arguments specifically cited (in the first sentence) the problem of the categories being trivia, which a valid reason for deletion per WP:OCAT#Non-defining_or_trivial_characteristic, and one widely used at CfD. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:11, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • Reply Yes so, because if you read nominator's first sentence carefully he says that his opinion that the information is trivia is not part of his argument for deletion. Even if it were part of his argument, he provides no evidence to back up his "trivia" opinion (and probably knows he could not do so if challenged, as there is overwhelming evidence that Erdős numbers are notable to mathematicians), so his "trivia" opinion just another WP:IDONTLIKEIT statement. Gandalf61 09:40, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • I have seen plenty of evidence that the concept of Erdős numbers is notable, but none that an individual mathematicians' Erdos number is a defining attribute of that person. Per WP:V, it's for someone making the claim of an item's significance to provide the evidence to support that: can you find evidence to support the claim that it is defining? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:38, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
          • Reply Well, that task is trivial (in the mathematical sense) ! Do a Google search for "my Erdős number" and you get over 12,000 hits - here are some examples picked at random: [1], [2], [3]. Individual mathematicians spend significant amounts of time and effort in researching their own Erdős number and presenting the results. Now, why would they do that unless they believed it made a contribution to their standing in the mathematical community ? Clearly it has personal significance to individual mathematicians, as well as community-wide notability - in fact it probably has greater individual significance than a mathematician's nationality. Gandalf61 12:21, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
            • Comment: Excellent point, Gandalf61. While at it, check out this: "For a definition of Erdős number, read Wikipedia's excellent entry on the topic." Hah! Turgidson 12:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
              • Reply. Sorry, all those google hits just show that it is popular trivia (and hence a notable subject), but not that it is a defining characteristic of the people categorised. They could perfectly well do that because it was fun, or because of peer pressure, or because on a boring day its an easy way to whle away a few hours in something which will interest a few other obsessives; if you claim that "probably has greater individual significance than a mathematician's nationality", let's see some evidence for that claim. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
            • Reply: I think you may be overestimating the amount of effort it takes to determine your own Erdos number. When you're a young grad student writing your first paper, of course you might go to a lot of effort to figure this out. Once you have a few publications under your belt, though, it's not really hard to guess which of your collaborators might have low Erdos numbers and to add one to the result to get your own. And no, your Erdos number is not a contribution to your standing in the mathematical community. Your publication record is. Finally, a lot of people have Erdos numbers who aren't mathematicians; if I compute an Erdos number for someone who is likely to not even know what one is, should I edit their article to place them in the appropriate category too? Is categorization by characteristics people might not know they have a useful thing? SparsityProblem 23:59, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Keep. Nothing has changed since the previous two deletion attempts. I do appreciate being notified of the discussion this time (unlike the previous time). Roger Hui 14:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • I'm going to abstain from expressing my own opinion, but the nominator's reasoning seems to be begging the question to me. It should be a list rather than a category because it undermines the category system because it should be a list rather than a category? Supply a real reason, please. — David Eppstein 15:55, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
My point is that as trivial as this categorial focus is, it should not infringe on the category hierarchy which should be used where significant relations into other hierachies can be established and make sense. This simply doesn't fit into the structure, being an island unto itself, unless someone should attempt to create categories for Pauli numbers, Bacon numbers, Erdős–Bacon numbers, Stringfield numbers and all the other "fun" categories we can similarly conceive of. If you absorb the discussion of the two previous nominations you will notice that even those who support keeping these categories either concede them being trivial and/or emphasize their importance lying in the alleged fact that the mathematicians community in general places a substantial emphasis on one another's Erdős numbers, and you would also notice that the reason why many mathematicians find Erdős numbers important is left uncommented. The "real reason" why I can allow a list where a category cannot be defended is that lists of a more or less trivial nature are much less conspicuous than categories. __ meco 16:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
A category is probably inappropriate if the answer to the following questions is "no":
  • (not relevant)
  • If you go to the article from the category, will it be obvious why it's there? Is the category subject prominently discussed in the article?
An article will often be in several categories. Restraint should be used, however — categories become less effective the more there are on a given article.
In how many of the articles in these categories are Erdős numbers explained? Would it be feasible to include an explanation into these articles? No, it would be thrown out as insignificant trivia. Why then should the category tags be allowed? Of course they shouldn't. __ meco 16:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
To respond to this comment: this criterion is applied much more weakly than you are trying to suggest is the minimum here. Consider the profusion of "date of birth/death" categories, including "date of birth missing". This information is never explicitly discussed in a biographical article, except that it is given as a datum at the top; much like the Erdos number, really. Granted, the date of birth of an important historical figure provides historical context for their life and work, but the Erdos number provides some kind of context for a mathematician's work as well. And the precise date of birth, down to the day of the month, is of no interest in this connection at all; certainly, the interest in knowing how many people were born on November 24th, 1982 (as was I) is largely one of trivia. And this level of precision is far beyond that of the Erdos number. To answer the obvious objection, I don't consider this point of mine to be that "we already have this kind of crap, so it's okay", which everyone knows is a bad argument. I consider it an application of existing precedent to the interpretation of what is, after all, a mere guideline, since the suggestion given as to the appropriateness of a category is deliberately unspecific. I think that it is much less restrictive than you are saying. Ryan Reich 16:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
The comparison with the birth date categories was made a big number of in the previous nominations also, which to me is tantamount to grasping at straws. This line of reasoning is so philistine that I'm simply not going to debate it. __ meco 17:24, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Like you, I didn't read the previous debates. Like you, it didn't stop me from writing something that "many people are going to be annoyed at" because it has been "settled once and for all". Unlike you, apparently, I managed to remain civil. Please, be nice, which includes even making an argument you don't want to bother making, rather than dismissing mine as "philistine". Ryan Reich 20:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I did read both the previous debates before venturing to nominate for a third time. If that hasn't become apparent to you from reading my posts here, I don't think I can be blamed. __ meco 20:14, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. All the arguments have been made in profusion before. Honestly, there are better ways to contribute to Wikipedia than this nomination, which is a repetitive waste of the time and good will of editors. -- KSmrq T 18:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong delete and listify all per WP:OCAT#Non-defining_or_trivial_characteristic. Anyone interested in Erdős numbers can find the info they need in a list, and it's clear from a quick trawl through the articles that an Erdos number is such an insignificant attribute of the mathematicians listed that only one out of twenty of the level 2 articles which I examined even mentioned Erdos, and none mentioned an Erdős number (other than in the category). Additionally, this sort of relationship mapping would overwhelm wikipedia's categorisation system if replicated, particularly when we get beyond the first degree of separation. Frankly, I'm amazed that this stuff survived previous CfDs; it's quite a fun game to play, but creating categories "for people who worked with someone who worled with X" is trivia with no limits. By all means have an article and a list or a series of lists, but if anyone is actually serious about keeping the categories (rather than just sustaining a joke), I hope to some very clear explanation of a) why they consider an Erdős number to be a defining characteristic of these mathematicians, and b) why this cannot be satisfactorily handled in a sortable list. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:11, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep I wasn't aware of the previous discussions on this, but I'm glad the categories have survived so far. I don't know about other Wikipedia readers, but I have found these categories to be a useful resource. According to WP:CAT, "Categories...help users find information, even if they don't know that it exists or what it's called." Because of these categories I have found information on numerous notable mathematicians that I just didn't know about, and I've taken the time to expand and improve some of those articles. As has been pointed out before, it's much easier to maintain this information in categories than in lists. Besides, although this isn't any kind of an argument, I've spent a lot of time lately adding existing articles to Category:Erdős number 2. Once I'm done I can easily go back and improve the articles themselves. I'm on letter S right now; it would be frustrating for the category to vanish as I'm nearing the end of the list. Ntsimp 18:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • According to Erdős number, there are over 8,000 people with an Erdős number of 2, so this doesn't seem like a good way of finding mathematicians. The second of the "in a nutshell" box at the top of WP:CAT says "Categories are for defining characteristics". As I asked above, in what way is it a defining characteristic of a mathematician that he co-authored a paper with someone who co-authored with someone else? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • But not all of those 8,000 people are notable enough to have Wikipedia articles. The category has in practice been useful to at least one reader in finding the articles of those who are. Ntsimp 17:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete: It's a given that almost anyone who has published a collaborative paper in mathematics or computer science has an Erdos number of 6 or less. All that having an Erdos number between 3-infinity says about you is that you have published a paper with one or more coauthors, and are (probably) a mathematician or scientist (though not even that, since some people in non-math/science fields have Erdos numbers too). It doesn't provide any "context for their work" to know someone has Erdos number 6. (Half my friends -- mostly grad students -- have finite Erdos numbers.) There is no imaginable reason why, on reading an article on someone with Erdos number of 6, you would think, "Hmm, I wonder who else has Erdos number 6?" In addition, I don't see anyone else raising this concern, but the Erdos number information is likely to be inaccurate -- that is, the claim that someone has Erdos number n is verifiable, but if n > 2 then it's always possible that they have Erdos number m where n < m, and no one has bothered to find the shorter path. There's already an Erdos number database, so why should we be maintaining a clumsy and inferior copy of the same information? SparsityProblem 18:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Comment: Good question(s), so let me take a stab at answering them. (1) The Erdős number database provides only lists of people with Erdős number 1 or 2; only WP has listings up to 6, far as I know. (2) Finding someone with Erdős number 6 is no mean feat -- I know, since I created that cat and populated it as much as I could. BTW, where else would you find those 5 people in that cat listed together, eh? (3) Speaking just for myself, anytime I add an Erdős number I check it thoroughly against the MathSciNet database. The info there is about as reliable as one can get, and besides, the path from the respective person to Erdős can be readily inspected. I am about 99.9% confident in the computers at MathSciNet finding the shortest path, given the available information they have (and they do have 2,268,196 in their database, as of today). Yes, a paper may be overlooked (especially if it's an old one), but hey, that's the best we've got right now, and I think it's pretty darn good. Turgidson 22:08, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • Where else would you find those 5 people in that cat listed together? (those with a E number of 6). That nicely illustrates one of the fundamental problems of these categories, that they are grouping together individuals who have so little in common that only this exercise groups them. Two individuals with an Erdos number of 6 may be separated by up to 12 degrees of separation, united inly in the fact that they are a long way from a third party. It's like a Dorothy-designed category of "places a long way from Kansas", including Yokohama and Tromso. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:41, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • Comment: What do you mean, "finding someone with Erdős number 6 is no mean feat"? I know at least six people with Erdős number 6. None of them are notable enough to have Wikipedia articles about them (and it's possible some of them are actually 5s or less, but I don't think all of them are), but they certainly exist. I suspect, though, that there are many people who are 6 and higher -- chemists, biologists, and other people in fields that are even further flung from math. SparsityProblem 22:16, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • Comment: I mean, people with Erdős number 6 (verifiable on MathSciNet), and are notable enough to have a page on WP. If you think this is so easy, go ahead. Please drop me a line when you got one, I'd be interested to know. Turgidson 22:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • Comment: Hmmm... I don't consider the information from that list as being reliable, since I cannot verify the path to Erdős from it. As a quick check, I did look up Vladimir I. Arnold and Martin D. Kruskal, and I found that the former has Erdős number 3 (Arnold- Anatoly Vershik-Gregory A. Freiman-Erdős), while the latter has Erdős number 4 (Kruskal-Harvey Segur-Franco Vivaldi-Patrick Morton-Erdős). I'll try and check the others ones when I have time, but unless the path can be certified by a MathSciNet search (or an equivalent literature search, with precise list of inetrmediary authors and papers they wrote together), I'd be rather suspicious of the information, and accordingly would very much hesitate to list it in WP based on that single source (with which I am very familiar, of course). BTW, in the meantime I found a 6th person listed on WP with certifiable Erdős number 6: Danilo Blanuša. Turgidson 00:03, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
          • Comment: I suggest you write in and correct them, then, since the page says they welcome corrections. This link (goes to a PDF) should contain verifiable data on which to base all of the numbers that page lists. Sure, it's possible that there are shorter paths for some of these people, but as this page shows the distribution of Erdos numbers, and 6 is the third-most-popular number among people they know about (with 40014 people), I think it's unlikely that there are really only five notable people with Erdos number 6. Of course not *all* of those 40014 people are notable by WP standards, but I'd imagine more than six of them are. SparsityProblem 00:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
          • Comment: One more: despite what is claimed above, Ilya Prigogine has Erdős number 3 (Prigogine- David van Dantzig- Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn-Erdős). And thanks, but no thanks -- I rather edit productively here at WP than wasting my time fixing someone else's list. I think we can do much better here, based on reliable sources. Turgidson 01:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
            • Comment: So you think it's better to have two separate databases of information on Erdos numbers (the oakland.edu list and the Wikipedia category tree), each with its own disjoint set of errors, rather than having a single source for this information? Interesting. But this gets to be rather far away from the original point, which was that there are tens of thousands of people with each Erdos number between 3 and 7 inclusive, and as such, the fact that someone has one of those numbers isn't very interesting. (Even 2 isn't all that interesting. 1 is interesting, but if we retained that, it would raise the question of "so why not a category for people who collaborated with [insert other famous person in the field here]".) SparsityProblem 01:12, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep. We've been around the bend with this before, and I don't see anything really new in this nomination, though, as others have said, I do appreciate the notification. Can we reach stare decisis et non quieta movere on this, already?  :) Turgidson 21:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Only if someone can provide a persuasive answer to the question of how an Erdős number is a defining characteristic (per WP:CAT) of a mathematician rather than an amusing piece of trivia. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. It is funny to read the argument that this kind of information belongs in a list instead of a category, while in AFD nominations the usual proposal is to delete a list because, after all, that's what categories are for. Anyway, this information on a well-known and notable concept should definitely be preserved.  -- Lambiam 22:09, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • I don't see anyone disputing that it's a notable concept, but the issue at stake in categorisation is rather different: whether it is a defining characteristic of these mathematicians. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) —Preceding comment was added at 23:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      You are putting too much weight on a literal interpretation of a clause. It has already been pointed out that many categories do not fit the strict pattern of "defining characteristic". In the Wikipedia:Overcategorization guidelines the section Non-defining or trivial characteristic gives these examples of what to avoid: categories Bald People, Fictional characters who love to shop, Famous redheads; or categorizing based on someone's tastes in food, their favorite holiday destination, or the number of tattoos they have. Instead we should "categorize by what may be considered notable in a person's life." Surely you don't want to suggest that someone's Erdős number is as trivial as the number of tattoos, or as incidental as alopecia.  -- Lambiam 00:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • In my opinion it is you who attempts to narrow down the significance of this clause to where it basically can be circumvented in all cases but for the very few examples which it gives out explicitly. As for your appeal to common sense in recognizing the significant difference betwen these Erdős number categories and the examples given, you fail in my view. I could easily go with categories Bald People or Famous redheads before I would accept an individual's Erdős number as a defining characteristic.
As for your assertion that "It has already been pointed out that many categories do not fit the strict pattern of "defining characteristic" that is also an attempt to spin actual facts. Several people have argued that the categorization scheme for year of birth is equally trivial as Erdős number categories. Are there other examples? Is this example even valid? __ meco 07:53, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete as irrelevant to anything in reality. this is the essence of trivia, beyond at least n= 2 or 3. Mathematical genealogies are relevant and important , and should be constructed for other sciences. But this does not apply to what is mere position on a co-citation network for a single paper. This is one instance where consensus ought to change pretty drastically. I see it probably hasn't yet, at least among the devotees, but I continue with BHG to advocate that it ought to. DGG ( talk) 00:02, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment: I don't think anyone has raised this issue yet: there are major verifiability and original research problems with letting these categories stand. The "obvious" way to verify someone's Erdos number is to look it up using the MathSciNet collaboration distance tool. However, their database omits many authors, and even for people included in the database, the result it returns is higher than the minimal number. For example, while looking up my various friends and acquaintances I ran across someone for whom MathSciNet returns "5". I happen to know it's actually at most 4, but apparently MathSciNet's database doesn't know about the paper that gives this person an Erdos number of 4. Okay, so can I edit the article about this person and add them to the "Erdos number 4" category? I don't think it would be right for me to do that, because verifying this claim would require manually going to their publications web site and looking for people you know have a small Erdos number. And lots of other academics don't even *have* a publications list online. I could, when adding the person to the category, also edit their article to provide the path that witnesses their Erdos number, but that would be silly. If you accept that these categories should exist, the right thing to do would be for the category page to list both the person and the path that witnesses their Erdos number -- without having to pollute articles with that information -- but MediaWiki doesn't have any way to do that (AFAIK). So if you support keeping these categories, how do you address the verifiability issue? SparsityProblem 04:21, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • You change from categories to lists. __ meco 07:53, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Yes, see my detailed posts on this subject, just above. Turgidson 10:24, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • I don't see where your comments address my points. The numbers provided by MathSciNet are often too high. Many authors who have Erdos numbers -- particularly in computer science, my field -- are not listed at all. So is it "original research" to categorize someone as having an Erdos number you know they have, if MathSciNet doesn't agree? If not, where do you put the data that allows for verification of the category assignment? SparsityProblem 19:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. Nothing essential has changed from the previous deletion challenges for these categories. The arguments are the same and since they were correctly kept before that's appropriate this time as well. Personally I think that 6 is way too many cats, however, and Erdős numbers 4, 5, and 6 should go away. Nobody cares about an Erdős number > 3 (actually even 3 is pushing it, 1 and 2 are the only ones that really matter), and documenting it and even getting the numbers correct is hard for large n. Quale 05:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • One of the things that hasn't changed is that those in favour of keeping the category still seem unable to offer any evidence at all that an Erdős number is a defining characteristic of an individual mathematician, rather than a piece of trivia. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • Comment Evidence provided in my response to your challenge above. Gandalf61 13:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • And per my reply above, all you have found is evidence of the notability of the concept of an Erdos number, not evidence that it is a defining characteristic of a mathematician. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
          • Actually the primary thing that hasn't changed is the obsessive need of delete supporters to reply to every comment that disagrees with their view, repeating the same argument over and over again as if that might convince those several people who disagree with it. Quale 14:52, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
            • No, I see very little prospect of convincing them. But CfD isn't a vote count, and if the keep !voters want to retain the category, they need some evidence that having an Erdos number is more important than, for example, holding a PhD (which we don't categorise). This is the third debate in which the keep voters can only repeat that it's interesting and lots of people do it, but offer no evidence of how important it is to an individuals' career or reputation. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:09, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. Keeping these categories, which in reality tells us very little about the mathematicians other than that they've collaborated on papers with other mathematicians, seems pretty pointless. If we keep this, we might as well start including the "Bacon number" on every biography relating to the film industry; it contributes about as much useful information! MeegsC | Talk 13:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Comment And if my aunt had a beard she would be my uncle. In other words, if film stars spend as much time talking about, researching and documenting their Bacon numbers as mathematicians spend on polishing their Erdős numbers, then yes, we should include Bacon numbers in film industry biographies. If they don't, then Bacon numbers is a false analogy. Gandalf61 13:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • Many people also polish their cars obsessively, but we don't categorise their biographies as Category:Ford Escort drivers, Category:Toyota Camry drivers or whatever. Plenty of things can be very popular without being a defining characteristic. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:35, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
        • Comment Another false analogy - people change their cars, whereas once you have an Erdős number you have one for ever - it might decrease, but you never lose it. Can you explain what you mean by a "defining characteristic" ? You seem to reject the idea that it is a more-or-less permanent attribute that is important to an individual or to their culture or community - so what is it, then ? What exactly makes nationality or sexual orientation or political orientation or being an Olympic medalist defining characteristics, that is not also true of Erdős numbers ? Gandalf61 15:11, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
(deindent)Reply Unfortunately, I don't think we have any clear definition in the guidelines of "defining attribute". WP:CAT is where it should be (and this discussion suggests that it is much needed), but for now all I can offer is what I believe to be the rough consensus of many hundreds of CfD discussions. For biographical articles, the consensus appears to me to be that it is one or more the following:
a) a thing for which they are notable per WP:NOTE and/or WP:BIO, and hence the reason for which there is a wikipedia article on that person (e.g. being a notable mathematician); or, b) a fundamental detail of biographical data which assists in identifying the person through the usual records (e.g. nationality, year of birth and death); or, c) (more controversially) a significant quality of that individual which may be unrelated to either of the the above but which sets a person apart from the majority of her or his peers and which groups people with a similar quality, which is why for example we sometimes categorise LGBT people, through the principles set out at WP:CATGRS.
I hope that's a fair summary of the precdents, and I'll ask at WT:CFD for a review of my summary.
So the olympic medallist gets that category because it's exactly why they are known: Mark Spitz and Sonia O'Sullivan are known even by sporting ignoramuses like me, simply because they won medals. The category political orientation is used to describe the nature of the political stance taken by people who are notable for their political activities, and vague "supporters of X party" categories for non-activists have been ruthlessly purged. It's not an exact science, and like anything else on wikipedia some dross remains per WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. (CFD clears a lot of junk, but there's a never-ending tide of new junk, as well as of old stuff we missed)
I don't see that an Erdős number can be defining as in reason-for-notability; nor is it the sort of fundamental biographical detail which enables the person to be identified in a population register. So the question remaining is whether an Erdős number falls into the weaker and more controversial third area: a significant quality which sets a person apart from the majority of her or his peers. It seems clear to me that it's not, because it has a high degree of randomness and because it groups together people who may have very little in common. Consider a few examples:
  1. mathematical prodigy X, working alone at his home a remote island, successfully submits for publication a stunningly brilliant mathematical paper which is published under her own name: no collaboration, hence no Erdős number
  2. good but far-from-exceptional engineering graduate student Y, in a high-prestige university, hit it lucky and publishes a paper with her prof as a co-author. Prof (who initially trained as a mathematician) has an E.No. of 1, hence student gets E. No. of 2
  3. Similarly-talented mathematical graduate student Z, in an obscure college, publishes a paper with her prof as a co-author. Prof has E.No. of 6, hence student gets E. No. of 7
So the E-numbers don't group like with like, and they don't reflect reflect what sets someone apart from their peers. They are simply an application of a mathematical model of relationship mapping, which naturally generate much interest as a social meme amongst mathematicians, and in which no doubt many learned papers have been (and will be) written. But their significance is as a tool in group sociology, and not as a measure of the individual. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:20, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Exactly my point! Well said, BrownHairedGirl! -- MeegsC | Talk 18:30, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Maybe the significance should be interpreted purely at a group level, and not on the basis of individuals. But here at Wikipedia, we are concerned not with what information should be considered notable, but on how notable some information actually is now. We don't try to be trendsetters ourselves, but rather trend-followers. And, as it actually is used now, many mathematicians consider it a defining characteristic to the point where they publically announce their numbers on their web pages. Also, contra your claim that an Erdős number can't be defining as a reason-for-notability, I've seen low Erdős numbers used as supporting evidence in AfDs. Whether they should be so used is a different question, but they certainly can be. — David Eppstein 19:05, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
People announce all sorts of trivia on their own web pages, and if that's the best reason anyone can advance for the retention of these categories, their future looks short. Are they used by universities in listing their staff, with Erdős number as a column beside research interests and where they got their degrees? Are they used that way in academic gradings, or for listing conference participants? (It seems unlikely, because I would expect E numbers to converge amongst any group, as people collaborate with each other). -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:41, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Indeed. As a computer scientist who associates closely with mathematicians, I can give an emphatic "no" to all of those questions. Again, it's simply a given that all mathematicians who have done any joint work have an Erdos number of 6 or less, and almost all people in closely allied fields have an Erdos number of 8 or less. Whether you're a 2 or a 4 is an interesting bit of trivia to know about yourself or your own friends or collaborators, but it's not encyclopedic, any more than female mathematicians with teal hair should be a category on WP just because there's a list of such people out there. SparsityProblem 19:53, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Summary of my position Erdős number is an objective, verifiable and permanent attribute of a mathematician. The mathematics community thinks it is notable. Individual mathematicians think it is notable. It is quoted as evidence of notability in Wikipedia articles, in AfDs - and even appears in support of at least one RFA. If you want further evidence, you could ask some of your fellow Wikipedians to relate their first-hand experience. Erdős numbers 1-3 clearly qualify as a "defining attribute" under BrownHairedGirl's rule (a) - "a thing for which they are notable per WP:NOTE". I wouldn't personally go to bat for 4 and below. Gandalf61 20:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Objective it is, but it's neither easily verifiable given the way that the category system works -- the only way to make it verifiable is to insert the path to Erdos in the article for each person asserted to have a finite Erdos number, which I think we can all agree is a bad idea -- nor permanent (it can decrease). Notability doesn't prove that it should be a category. Having a PhD is notable, but we have no category for "people with doctoral degrees". And no, there is no way that having an Erdős numbers 1-3 qualifies as a "defining attribute". No one is notable for having an Erdős number of 3. Having collaborated with someone, or having collaborated with someone who collaborated with someone else, or having collaborated with a third person who collaborated with someone who collaborated with someone else, confers no notability on its own, though it certainly correlates with other characteristics that might confer notability. SparsityProblem 21:31, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
It's a variant on the old shibboleth of inherited notability, in this case in the form of notability-by-association. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:56, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep as a significant defining characteristic of mathematicians within the mathematics community. Also, the subject doesn't necessarily lend itself to list format. — Disavian ( talk/ contribs) 19:23, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete do not listify, as numbers can change, and thus it will be a housekeeping headache. Non-defining characteristic, of a trivial pasttime amongst mathematicians. Let's count how many angels can fit on the top of a pin instead. 132.205.99.122 19:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Comment if this is kept, I propose we establish the nth degrees of Kevin Bacon categories, since those are eminently MORE POPULAR 132.205.99.122 19:27, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - this won't list-ify well, and is not trivial, regardless of what the nom thinks. -- Cheeser1 20:14, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I think the question we need to ask our selves is: If there were no categories, would we then let sentences like "X has Erdős number 3" stay in articles? If not, then we should not write it using categories either. A list is no problem since you will not find it unless you are looking for it. -- Apoc2400 22:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Try looking through the articles in these categories. The more well-developed ones frequently have such sentences in them. The Erdős number of a notable person is an appropriate thing to include in the article, and when I have time I plan to add these sentences (and other significant information) to the articles I've categorized. The fact that you won't find a list unless you're looking for it is a weakness, in my opinion. The category system helps you find things you hadn't known existed. I am genuinely trying to understand the argument against these categories. Why would a reader who chooses to read an encyclopedia article on a mathematician be bothered that it contains that mathematician's Erdős number? It seems there is a misconception that the Erdős number has a similar status to the Bacon number. Bacon numbers are not taken seriously in Hollywood; Erdős numbers are taken seriously in mathematics. Ntsimp 22:34, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • There have been lots of assertions in this thread along the lines of yours that "Erdős numbers are taken seriously in mathematics", but the best evidence so far has been that it appears on some mathematicians homepages (which we don't usually treat as a |reliable source). Can you offer any more substantial evidence that the E.numbers of individual methematicians are treated as anything other than a common curiosity? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:17, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • I think it would be wildly inappropriate to mention someone's Erdos number in an article about them -- unless the subject was a close collaborator of Erdos, in which case it would be appropriate to discuss the work they did together -- and if I happened to run across such an article while browsing Wikipedia, I would remove that information. Moreover, some people seem to be under the misapprehension that only mathematicians have Erdos numbers. As I've tried to say several times, this is not so. Finally, I'm not sure on what basis you claim "Erdos numbers are taken seriously in mathematics". Can we see some evidence of this? In my experience as a computer scientist who knows many mathematicians, they are not taken seriously. They are at best a bit of fun trivia that people might amuse each other with at parties. SparsityProblem 23:42, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
      • I appreciate the value that coming into new fields of knowledge through mere curiosity about a term one hasn't heard of before entails. I often click on on such wikilinks, and it certainly was my impulse when I spotted Category:Erdős number 2 at the bottom of the article about Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter. When the article hasn't mentioned the term Erdős number I think a high percentage of readers would become curious like me to find out what this strange looking category could possibly be about. However, this positive experience/mechanism would remain whether or not the wikilink or category link one followed was notable, defining, accurate, noteworthy, etc, so that point is not very relevant, if at all. My rationale for nominating this categorial scheme is concern for the quality and integrity of Wikipedia's categry system at large, and specifically the negative precedent which is set by giving a clearly non-defining characteristic sanctuary basically because of a cult following and because it is "cute". The weak basis of several of the arguments that I have seen brought forward in this debate reinforces my perception that this is the mechanism for the clamorous support for keeping these categories which we see manifest in this discussion. __ meco 23:22, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I don't think you see the difference between a "cult" following (like, for example, "Pokemon by height") and a following by mathematicians (who are, by the way, exactly the people who write the reliable sources pertaining to mathematics). This isn't a group of fankids clamoring to categorize their favorite cute facts, it's something that mathematicians take particular note of. Someone's nationality is pretty trivial, but virtually every biography mentions it. The same could be said for someone's PhD-granting institution - that generally has little direct relevance, but is clearly of interest. -- Cheeser1 23:40, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • The question keeps being raised -- is this just a mere curiosity? Well, as a matter of fact people do study the "Erdős collaboration graph" per se; see for example the article
Vladimir Batagelj and Andrej Mrvar, Some Analyses of Erd˝os Collaboration Graph, Social Networks 22 (2000), no. 2, 173--186; reviewed in MR 1789607
The fact that the Erdős collaboration graph is the object of serious academic study (and not just a mere oddity, as some keep on arguing) should give some extra weight to the argument that we need to keep these categories. Turgidson 23:46, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Again, so? People write serious academic papers about the social networks latent in Facebook and LiveJournal, too, but we don't have "People with Facebook accounts" or "People with LiveJournal accounts" categories (despite that I could come up with at least a few subjects of Wikipedia articles who have accounts on these systems). Collaboration networks are a fascinating research topic, but that doesn't make any individual scientist's Erdos number a useful defining characteristic for the purposes of the Wikipedia category system. SparsityProblem 23:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Please--I am trying to make a serious argument, backed by reliable sources. Responding with non sequiturs does not advance the discussion. Turgidson 00:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I'm completely in earnest. If anything, the non sequitur is being advanced by you; we all agree that Erdos numbers are a notable concept, and no one is arguing the article on Erdos numbers should be deleted. What's up for debate here is whether a characteristic shared by tens of thousands of scientists is a useful defining characteristic. The fact that a characteristic is the object of serious academic study does not make it a defining characteristic. SparsityProblem 00:06, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete all trivial, non-defining, and not useful. Yet another cat to clog every biography. What's next, categories by blood type, astrological sign, Asian astrological year sign, people by the sum of their birth digits, people by whether the ascii conversion of their names is divisible by various numbers, and other numerological trivia? Carlossuarez46 01:35, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Yes, that's exactly what's next. Your extrapolation is insightful. -- Cheeser1 02:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
These topics are as important to some as erdos numbers are to their devotees - as your comment amply demonstrates. Carlossuarez46 03:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
There's really no need for that kind of sarcasm here. I think the analogy was a good one. Astrological sign, for example, is objective, verifiable, permanent, and some people believe it's very important. Who's to judge? SparsityProblem 04:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
In general, mathematicians who have a low Erdős number tend to cherish it, and mathematicians with a high Erdős number secretly envy them. I don't think that it is true in general that people who have an astrological sign tend to cherish it. Some may do, but most don't. Also, few people will think like Oh, she's a Scorpio – I wish I was a Scorpio.  -- Lambiam 06:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Comment As Cheeser1 says, Carlossuarez46's camel's nose argument is a straw man. No-one is proposing that every biography should have an Erdős number category. To put things into perspective, there are about 800 articles in the Erdős number 1-3 categories; there are over 1,800 articles in the Olympic gold, silver, bronze medalist categories for the United States alone. Gandalf61 09:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Maybe not everybody, but it seems likely to be most of them, The current categories extend as far as an Erdős number of 6. Can anyone provide a reasoned estimate of a) what proportion of mathematicians with a wikipedia biography have an Erdos number less than 3; b) what proportion have Erdos number less than 6? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:52, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Comment "Most of them" ??? Most of what ? Most biographies ? Definitely not. Most biographies of mathematicians ? Hardly, as around 30% of our mathematicians biographies are for pre-20th century mathematicians who cannot have an Erdős number. Most Wikipedia biographies of 20th and 21st century mathematicians ? Possibly yes, because for modern mathematicians a low Erdős number shows a high correlation with notability within the mathematics community, and thereby satisfies your criteria for a defining attribute. Gandalf61 11:30, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Exactly. Which is not true of any of the nonsense strawman analogies people have been setting up and knocking down. -- Cheeser1 14:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Reply to Gandalf61. Yes, I meant mathematicians from the 20th-century onwards: those whose careers are in the age where an Erdős number is a possibility. If most of them are going to have a lowish Erdos number, then what is gained by categorising in this way?
You have also neatly inverted the nature of a defining attribute. Mathematicians are not known because they have an Erdős number; rather they have an Erdős number because they have done things which establish notability, with the limitation that is a selective and inaccurate measure because an Erdős number ranking excludes the lone writers such as Bertrand Russell — it ranks collaboration in particular cultural milieu rather than notability. This has some similarities with categorising people by whether they are in a hall of fame; such categories are repeatedly deleted at CfD because they categorise a selective reflection of notability rather than reason for it.
Going back to your earlier analogy of the olympic medallist, people don't get an olympic medal because they are notable, they are notable because they got an olympic medal. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:41, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Reply to BrownHairedGirl There are so many logical flaws and straw men in your arguments that it is difficult to unpick them all, but I will try to highlight the most obvious errors:
  • I did not say that most modern mathematicians have a low Erdős number. I said that it is possible that most notable modern mathematicians (i.e. modern mathematicians with biographies on Wikipedia) have a low Erdős number. So the point of the Erdős number categories is that they provide a measure and demonstration of notability for modern mathematicians.
  • You say that Erdős numbers are similar to a "hall of fame". This is yet another false analogy. There is no similarity at all, because a "hall of fame" is both subjective and transient, whereas an Erdős number is objective and permanent.
  • Betrand Russell was certainly not a lone writer ! He collaborated extensively with other mathematicians and philosophers. The reason that he does not have an Erdős number is that his mathematical work was done before 1920, and his focus turned to philosophy after that. As Erdős was only born in 1913, their mathematical careers did not overlap.
  • You say that a sportsman/woman is notable because they have won an Olympic medal. What an absurd idea ! They are notable because they produce world-class performances. Winning an Olympic medal is one objective measure of this, but it only applies to certain sports - for tennis players, for example, there is an entirely different set of notability measures based around winning Grand Slam tournaments. In the same way, a mathematician is notable because of the wordl class quality of the work that they have done and published, and for modern mathematicians, a low Erdős number is one measure of this notability. Low Erdős numbers are highly correllated with other measures of notability in the mathematical community such as Category:Fields Medalists and Category:Wolf Prize in Mathematics laureates. Gandalf61 16:00, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
WP:AGF please, and less of the "straw man" allegations.
"I said that it is possible that most notable modern mathematicians (i.e. modern mathematicians with biographies on Wikipedia) have a low Erdős number." Ant references for that guess? "So the point of the Erdős number categories is that they provide a measure and demonstration of notability for modern mathematicians." Non-sequitur: "x may correlate with Y" is two jumps short of showing that Y is demonstrated by X.
On the Olympic medals, it's quite common for the 4th, 5th and many other competitors to produce world-class performances, but athletes who gets the attention are the ones who collect the medals, even, if their time was only a fraction of second faster.
You assert that " a mathematician is notable because of the world class quality of the work that they have done and published, and for modern mathematicians, a low Erdős number is one measure of this notability". As per my lengthy answer above, I believe that to be demonstrably false. You evidently disagree, so where are the references which show an Erdos number to be a useful measure? The correlation you cite doesn't show that: most eminent mathematicians have 2 eyes and 2 legs, but that doesn't mean that anything more than a tiny proportion of living 2-eyed bipeds are emijnent mathematicians. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:34, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Reply to BrownHairedGirl You say that Erdős numbers are trivial and are not a "defining attribute" because they do not indicate notability for individual modern mathematicians. I say that they are an indicator of notability, and hence a "defining attribute", because they correlate with other accepted measures of notability in the mathematical community. As evidence for this, a spot check of the 48 articles in Category:Fields Medalists shows that 37 of these mathematicians (over 75%) have an Erdős number, and 29 (over 60%) have an Erdős number of 3 or less. So - where is your evidence to back up your opinion ? Your "2 eyes and 2 legs" argument betrays such a lack of understanding of the meaning of "correlation" that it is not worth answering, so I am done here. Gandalf61 17:30, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
75% is not a great predictor, and 60% is pretty weak i it's being claimed as a defining characteristic, but let's try it the other way round. What proportion of mathematicians with a finite Erdos number have won a major prize? (Or those wih E. No <=3, if you prefer) -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:45, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep as this is often prominently listed on CVs, has been the subject of probably more than a dozen papers, and is otherwise significant. I think that an added advantage of the category the nominator may not have considered is that it discourages statements like "This mathematicians has an Erdos number of 3." CRGreathouse ( t | c) 19:44, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
A mathematician would, first and foremost, be notable for published work. This work is discussed in the article, presumably. The Erdős Number is clearly derived from having published mathematical work(s). The fact that not every mathematican can have paragraphs written about his/her Erdős Number is not open invitation to delete a helpful category that at least arguably conforms to policy. We should defer to precedent, or perhaps to the opinion of those at the relevant Wikiproject, or perhaps just err on the side of caution. If nothing else, there's a clear number of people who believe this category should be included, and regardless of whether or not the specific technicalities of policy regarding categories might compel you to delete it, don't forget that rules are just rules, and using a category that doesn't quite fit the rules is still allowed if it helps build a good encyclopedia. -- Cheeser1 20:05, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that these categories do help to build a good encyclopedia. Notability through academic publication is usually measured through counting citations, which is a much more reliable measure than this fickle measuring of relationship-through collaboration. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:44, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Fickle? What does that even mean? Fickle is a term used to describe indecisive people, not categories or ideas that you've decided are meaningless. Nobody but you is insisting that this must be an exact, precise, official, or properly ordered measure of collaboration. -- Cheeser1 15:59, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Fickle: likely to change, especially in affections, intentions, loyalties, or preferences; or Liable to sudden unpredictable change; or marked by lack of steadfastness, constancy, or stability; given to erratic changeableness. An Erdős number is a claimed attribute of an academic's notability which can change markedly not because they have published anything else or because their work has ever been cited by anyone, but simply because someone who they may never have met or worked with chose at some subsequent point to work with someone else on an unrelated subject. You may prefer "unreliable", "erratic", or some other such term, and I'd agree they are better, but fickle is a fairly good fit … and although it's used primarily for people, it's not only used that way. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:49, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Oh come on. You might as well say that one's academic affiliation is fickle, because faculty sometimes move from one university to another. Or that having a Nobel prize or Fields medal is fickle, because people who didn't have one previously sometimes acquire them. — David Eppstein 17:26, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Um, no. If I move from one university to another, that's through specific action of my own (and the choice of the new university to recognize me by offering me a job). If I win a Nobel prize or Fields medal, that's because the awarding body chose to recognize my accomplishments with an award. Note the emphasis on *me*. With Erdos numbers, on the other hand, as Bhg pointed out, my Erdos number can change *through no action of my own*, but merely because *a coauthor of one of my coauthors* chose to work with someone else. SparsityProblem 17:36, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Note that BHG's argument that someone's Erdős number can change because of the actions of someone they have never worked with does not apply to Erdős numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. It can only happen to someone whose Erdős number is 5 or above. Gandalf61 15:54, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per BrownHairedGirl, it is trivia, trivia, trivia and not a defining characteristic no matter how you look at it. Like "Recipient of XYZ Award" categories it should be deleted. Pavel Vozenilek 19:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Comment But no-one thinks that Category:Nobel laureates or Category:Olympic medalists should be deleted, because these are agreed to be notable awards. Therefore you need to provide evidence to back up your opinion that Erdős numbers are trivial, rather than notable. Gandalf61 17:28, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Keep. All arguments against the usefulness of Erdos Number miss the point. The real point is that it has significant cultural impact and therefore is worthy of preservation. If the concept is good enough for the American Mathematical Society (AMS) database, then it is good enough here in wikiville. Period. Wikipedia is about reflecting and summarizing what is already out there, not imposing our taste and POV. To delete this category is tantamount to POV. As for whether it should be a list or category...Cummon guys, we've been thru' this argument zillions of times before. A list would be a veritable nightmare to maintain. If it ain't broke don't fix it. bunix 20:49, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
This line of reasoning has little to do with any WP guidelines or rules; there are many culturally significant topics that don't correspond to any known categories on Wikipedia. Declining to categorize people on a particular basis is not POV; if anything, it's POV to give a person's Erdos number the undue weight that reifying this as a category entails. You could equally well say, by your logic, that there ought to be a "Vegetarian mathematicians" category because being a vegetarian is culturally significant. SparsityProblem 20:54, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Watch my lips carefully: "Vegetarian mathematicians are not on the AMS database." Your argument is a straw man. Leave Erdos alone, he's human! [4] bunix 21:06, 31 October 2007 (UTC). reply
Interpreting the belief that Erdos numbers aren't a particularly useful way to characterize individuals in an encyclopedia as a personal attack against the late Erdos summarizes everything that's wrong with this discussion, I think (even if that's meant to be a joke.) What about economists who have Erdos numbers? Computer scientists? Sociologists? Should they be placed in these categories? If so, why? They aren't (necessarily) in the AMS database. If not, why not? The categories are called "Erdos number 1" (and so on), not "Mathematicians with Erdos number 1". SparsityProblem 21:16, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I think these numbers may be more informative about the nature of someone's research in fields other than mathematics than in mathematics themselves: they give some idea how closely connected to modern mathematics the subject's research is. — David Eppstein 23:10, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
But why is it important to mention in every article about an academic how closely related their work is to mathematics and not, say, to physics or anthropology or history? What makes mathematics special? If the answer is that Erdos numbers have special cultural significance, then sure, they do -- *in mathematics*. So that would be begging the question. SparsityProblem 23:19, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Dear Sparsity, you need to take up your arguments with the AMS. Our job at Wikipedia is not to judge, but to report on what's out there. AMS is a respectable institution that has put Erdos number out there, via their very nice database. So it is a verifiable source that has cultural impact. We are not here to philosophize about Erdos number and its seeming arbitrariness. Rememember your choice of an origin on a graph is always artibitrary (if you want an analogy!). There are lot's of categories on wikipedia I don't necessarily like....but I have to butt out if there is a big subculture that likes that stuff. bunix 09:37, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Wikipedia doesn't report everything that's out there, which is why WP:NOT is such a long-standing document on wikipedia, predating many other policies and guidelines. And if we start categorising according to very factor that is recorded in the database of professional organisations or other major bodies, we are going to see a massive proliferation of categories. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:22, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Let's worry about the categories we have rather than trying to paint them as bad by association with unspecified categories that we don't have. — David Eppstein 16:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Actually, that inverse- OTHERSTUFF argument is much less applicable at CfD than at AfD, because of CfD's focus on maintaining consistency and coherence across the category tree, and particularly because an extra category may impact dozens or hundreds of articles in the way that an article need not. Wikipedia's category system would buckle under the strain of trying to replicate every field in a database, which is why it's-in-a-database is such a weak argument for retaining a fickle measure of academic notability. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:06, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Bunzil: it's a very strange argument indeed that every database needs to be mirrored in the Wikipedia category system. If we were proposing deleting the Erdos number article, then you would have a good argument. But nobody is proposing deleting the article. The choice of whether or not to make a category about something is not based only on verifiability (although as has been amply demonstrated, there are serious verifiability issues with making this into a category) and cultural significance, but on how well it fits into the existing category tree, and how useful it is for helping assist people who are browsing an encyclopedia. SparsityProblem 18:26, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
A $5 reward

Repeated requests for evidence of an Erdős number being a defining characteristic of individual mathematicians (rather than just an interesting or amusing way of analysing relationships) have produced nothing which seems to me to come close to meting those criteria. So I have offered a reward of US$5, payable as a donation to the wikimedia foundation: full details at Wikipedia:Reward board#Erdos_number.

Note that in order to create reasonably unambiguous criteria, I have specified the required information quite precisely. However, the threshold is not high, so I hope that it will be easily met. Please make me part with my cash! -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:48, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply

  • PS Note that the reward offers expires at 01:00, 2 November 2007 (UTC). The expiry date is set 12 hours before the earliest point at which the CfD may be closed (i.e. 5 days after it opened), to give time for any information to be considered by the CfD closer. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:56, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Let's see here:

  1. "Patterns of Research in Mathematics" from the Notices of the AMS. Article discusses collaboration and the differences between fields of mathematics and how collaborative graphs vary (including discussion of Erdős Numbers). This is related to your question, because collaborative publication (and publication in general) is probably the top criterion for hiring/tenure decisions, and this is a serious topic and one that is often discussed at length - including how specialization affects publication, which affects hiring/tenure and how fair (or not) that might be at a particular institution. Erdős was, for the most part, a combinatorist and combinatorics is a field in which papers are published relatively often, and collaboration is seen throughout the subject. He serves as an important, notable, and unique illustration of how collaboration, publication, and research work in the field - Erdős numbers are a way to quantify a mathematician's collaborative publications, and this number correlates (roughly) with not only publication ( = tenure), but also with notability (e.g. Ron Graham, Fan Chung, Endre Szemerédi, Paul Turán, etc).
  2. The The Department of Linguistics at The University of Massachusetts Amherst in this Weekly Newsletter chronicle the changes in their faculty's Erdős numbers. And they aren't even mathematicians.

I believe that meets your requirements. You can't possibly expect Erdős numbers to be a direct factor in hiring, tenure, or membership in a professional organization, but that doesn't change the fact that they are related, at least tacitly, with both notability and prominence in mathematics, as well as to hiring/tenure/etc. That this is more than enough to explain that this number is worth mentioning for any mathematician. -- Cheeser1 14:25, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Sorry, but neither of those comes anywhere close to what I asked for.
The first question I asked was for evidence that "Erdős numbers are used within the academic community of mathematicians to rank the contribution to the body of mathematical knowledge of individual mathematicians". The "Patterns of Research in Mathematics" article contains no such evidence at all; it analyses what Erdős numbers tell us about patterns of collaboration, and is possibly a useful piece of evidence for those constructing an argument that Erdős numbers could be used in this way, but I cannot find it any evidence at all that Erdős numbers are used in this way.
The weekly newsletter article also clearly fails the test: it is an article entitled "Erdős numbers for UMASS linguists", not as I asked for an example of the use of Enumbers in "a general list of mathematical academics". It isn't even about mathematicians!
I think you have missed the point here. I'm sure there are lots of articles about E numbers, and notability is clearly established for the subject of E.nunbers. But the $5 is donated when someone who can show E.numbers actually being used in institutional settings to rank or assert the notability of individual mathematicians. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Of course you are free to choose whatever criteria you wish for a reward you offer, but I don't see why what you're asking for should be considered necessary in order to keep these categories. I know you haven't explicitly said it should be. But I think multiple points have been conflated in this discussion. Having a low Erdős number is not sufficient to make a particular academic notable, and I don't think anyone is claiming that it is. Furthermore, there's no reason why someone with an Erdős number of 4 should be inherently more notable than someone with an Erdős number of 2, for example. Again, I don't believe anyone has made such a claim. The numbers are not used for an explicit "ranking" in that sense. But they shouldn't have to be used that way in order for the categories to be useful and appropriate on Wikipedia for categorizing articles about people who already meet the notability criteria. In other words, failing the very specific criteria you have given is not enough for the categories to cease to exist. Ntsimp 16:03, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
You seem to be advocating original research: that wikipedia should rank people by a measure not used for that purpose within the profession, at least not on evidence so far. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Who says Wikipedia should "rank people" in this way? The Erdős number is not a ranking. I'm saying Wikipedia should continue its practice of categorizing certain articles by Erdős number. That's not original research; outside sources are researching and keeping track of Erdős numbers. Ntsimp 16:50, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
1<2, 2<3, 3<4 etc; assigning numbers like this is a ranking, and the discussion above carries plenty of example of people asserting that a low Erdos number is more significant than a high one. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:19, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
You've apparently decided that since the natural numbers are well ordered, that anything that uses the natural numbers is well ordered. Does that mean the year 2007 is "ranked" as "better" than the year 2006??? The fact that they aren't a ranking system does not mean we can't use them. -- Cheeser1 17:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
If it's not a ranking, why the repeated emphasis on low Erdos numbers in the discussion above? Why categorise on number 1-06 rather than on numbers 7-12? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:57, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Because there are fewer such people. There are ~4000 people with an Erdős Number less than 7 at all (compared to several hundred thousand with smaller finite Erdős numbers). Now, you're not making sense because the fact that people have small/finite Erdős Numbers is relevant to their biographies. That does not require that the Erdős Number be a strict, ranked, official system by which mathematicians are judged. That's absurd. -- Cheeser1 18:46, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
If a low number matters more than a high number, that's a ranking. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Nobody said it mattered more, I just said that the vast majority of people fall into 1-6, and those are the ones that tend to be notable/encyclopedic. We can't have a category "Erdős Number 15" if no biography is of someone with such an Erdős Number. Furthermore, you've done more than to ask us to demonstrate that it could be construed as some sort of ranking. You want us to prove that it is a strict ranking used in things like hiring decisions. That's absurd. Obviously it's a ranking. Anything that involves integers could be a ranking. Number of teeth could be some sort of official ranking, that doesn't mean it is one (even though you could tacitly argue that having 32 teeth is better than having 31). Of course, number of teeth has no bearing on the notability of someone (except some bizarre case I don't know about), but Erdős number relates to the primary notability of a mathematician: publication. And it correlates with notability in mathematics. And it's well-documented. What more do you want? -- Cheeser1 20:15, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
It relates to publication, but only in a complex derivative way by measuring not publication but rather collaboration on publication against a particular benchmark. If you want to measure notability through publication, then count citations, which I believe is the normal way of measuring such things. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:14, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

More evidence: A mathematics department prominently lists one of its faculty as, among other things, having an Erdős Number of 1, here. -- Cheeser1 18:58, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply

That's more a collection of potted bios than a list, but in any case they don't list an Erdős Number for the others. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 20:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Your arbitrary criteria may be the mark to meet for the $5, but it doesn't preclude other evidence for keeping this category. I feel like this $5 prize nonsense is not a fair good way to make this a fair discussion - you've decided to make up your own criteria and while you don't say so, it's pretty clearly going to tilt the discussion towards whether or not sources meet your criteria, which is more precise and strict than the question of whether or not we should keep the category. -- Cheeser1 20:10, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
All this Wikilawyering about what it takes to win this award (regardless of what that has to do with whether we should keep this category), and how the various examples proposed so far somehow fail to meet her arbitrary standards, is strongly reminding me of the no true Scotsman fallacy. — David Eppstein 20:56, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I don't see Bhg's (clearly stated and unambiguous) criteria for the award as the least bit "arbitrary". People who have voted to keep these categories have claimed, as the basis for their votes, that Erdos numbers are important in the mathematical community and are used as a ranking criterion *by* other mathematicians. No one has provided any evidence of this. Articles about collaboration networks are not evidence of this. I really don't understand how anyone can confuse a characteristic that's interesting to devotees of certain kinds of trivia to a characteristic that's crucially important for categorizing scholars. Why is it useful to have a set of categories such that almost all scientists and mathematicians and many social scientists are included in one category in that set? SparsityProblem 21:12, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
You mean like Category:Academics by subject? I will concede that the set of categories we're discussing is less useful than that set, but by your reasoning it would be more useful.
I just re-read the entire discussion and failed to find a single example of a claim that Erdős numbers "are used as a ranking criterion". This is a straw man that the categories' opponents keep repeating. Ntsimp 21:36, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Are you seriously asserting that an academic's Erdos number is as important and readily identifiable as their subject area?
If we're looking for specific bad claims, I'd like to see sources backing up any and all of the following verbatim quotes:
  • "Individual mathematicians spend significant amounts of time and effort in researching their own Erdős number and presenting the results."
  • "the Erdos number provides some kind of context for a mathematician's work"
  • "finding someone with Erdős number 6 is no mean feat"
  • "Erdős number is an objective, verifiable and permanent attribute of a mathematician"
  • "The Erdős number of a notable person is an appropriate thing to include in the article"
  • "Bacon numbers are not taken seriously in Hollywood; Erdős numbers are taken seriously in mathematics."
  • "In general, mathematicians who have a low Erdős number tend to cherish it, and mathematicians with a high Erdős number secretly envy them."
I'm not sufficiently energetic at the moment to post a reward for backing up any of these claims, but I'm curious nonetheless. SparsityProblem 22:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
About point #3: "finding someone with Erdős number 6 is no mean feat". Yes, I said that, and I explained what I meant by that very thoroughly (just go back and look it up): clearly, "someone" meant someone that has an entry on WP, not your random Joe Shmoe. Also, someone who demonstrably (i.e., via MathSciNet) has E-number 6. You brought a bunch of possibilities, and I shot down several of them; I'm still not convinced about the others, but the burden of proof is not on me. I still haven't seen "someone" added to the E-6 category, besides the ones I put. My challenge stands. And I won't offer a $5 reward for it. Turgidson 23:32, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Why the fetishization of MathSciNet? I've already pointed out that there are many people with finite Erdos numbers who aren't in their database, and many people whose Erdos numbers are overreported by it. I can give you a list of names if you'd like. Since I already gave you a list of 22 people with Erdos number 6, I think the burden of proof is on *you* to show that more than two of them actually have smaller numbers. SparsityProblem 00:23, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Actually, I shot down 3 names from your list: Martin Kruskal, Vladimir Arnold, and Ilya Prigogine (just scroll up and look it up). Just because this is a heated argument should not be a reason for misrepresenting facts. And, finding 3 counterexamples to a purported theorem usually disqualifies that theorem in mathematics; similar criteria should hold in this discussion, methinks. Turgidson 00:57, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Please keep it civil; no one "misrepresented" any "facts". If the theorem is "there exists some member s of S such that P(s)", where |S| = 22, proving that not P(s) for distinct s_1, s_2, and s_3 in S does not disprove the theorem. SparsityProblem 01:05, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Arguing the precision of Erdős Numbers is irrelevant. The definition of these numbers is understood to be "if a link of length n exists, the Erdős number is at most n." Wikipedia is not perfect, nor is any source of any information. There is an obvious understanding that saying "Person X has Erdős number k" is simply asserting that a reliable source can show that there is a path of length k between X and Erdős. It's not up to us to prove that reliable sources are perfect or infallible. -- Cheeser1 01:02, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
So we have a ranking system based loosely on publication, but with two levels of remove from that; we have no evidence that it is widely used within academia for ranking mathematicians; and even though the primary source for it is not reliable and apparently does not claim to be reliable, we are still ask to accept its uncited use as the basis of categorisation of hundreds of articles? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:20, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Let me return to my question from earlier that nobody answered. Hypothetically, I know that Alice's Erdos number is 4. MathSciNet says Alice's Erdos number is 5. Do I edit the article about Alice to add her into Category:Erdos number 4? If so, someone else may come along and change it to 5 because MathSciNet says that her Erdos number is 5. The only remedy for this is to mention *in the article about Alice* that her Erdos number is 4, perhaps even including the chain of collaborators that witnesses this fact. But that would pollute the article with trivial information. On the other hand, if I *don't* do that, then I'm prevented from adding accurate information to Wikipedia. Can you explain how you would address this problem? SparsityProblem 17:44, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
This talk of "pollution" seems to be begging the question, and your hypothetical situation seems to be a technical concern far below the level that would make a difference to this CfD, but: have you considered leaving the justification for the categorization in an html comment? — David Eppstein 18:05, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I don't see how it's begging the question. Would you really argue that every article about a scientist, social scientist or mathematician who has a finite Erdis number should mention the chain of collaborators that witnesses the subject's Erdos number? I guess the HTML comment method would work, but it's certainly an out-of-band way to handle this situation. Finally, I don't think it's merely a "technical concern" at all; it's central to whether this kind of information can be described as verifiability, and verifiability is a prerequisite for categorization. SparsityProblem 18:14, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
In fact, there are many Wikipedia articles that already do mention the number, some including the chain of collaborators. I don't see what trouble this causes. I'm not going to argue strongly for the categories representing numbers greater than 4, since those numbers are more fluid and as you say harder to verify, but this CfD covers even numbers 1 and 2. — David Eppstein 18:22, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Your Google search turns up about 60 articles, half of which are in userspace. Of the remaining 30, some of them mention Erdos numbers in "Trivia" sections, which are deprecated in general. The question remains, though: for articles that don't mention this information already, do you think they should all be edited to add it? And since the category guidelines suggest that we shouldn't categorize articles about people on the basis of a characteristic that wouldn't be mentioned in the article, this is relevant. SparsityProblem 18:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
If your "deprecated" refers to WP:TRIVIA, please read that guideline more carefully: it's not about whether the information belongs in the article or not, it's about how to present it. — David Eppstein 18:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Yes, I'm familiar with WP:TRIVIA, which says (in part): "Such sections should not be categorically removed: it may be possible to integrate some items into the article text." I have yet to see a good example of "integrating" a statement like "X has Erdos number n" into the text of an article. The examples brought up by the Google search above generally mention this in its own paragraph; I think that when it's difficult to smoothly integrate something into the text of an article, that's a good sign it may not belong there. SparsityProblem 19:01, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
These sentences would fit perfectly well into a paragraph that describes how many collaborators the subject of the article has, whether they're all in the same field or span multiple disciplines, and who some of the more notable ones are. — David Eppstein 23:03, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Maybe for articles about combinatorists, but it's doubtful for articles about mathematicians in fields not closely related to combinatorics that a paragraph describing the subject's collaborators would naturally mention the Erdos number, and highly doubtful for articles about non-mathematicians. SparsityProblem 23:09, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Are you implying that it's only of interest to describe the close collaborators of combinatorists, and that other researchers shouldn't have such paragraphs? That seems a bizarre claim to me. The typical sentence here would be that "X has an Erdos number of Y due to his collaborations with A and B", and A and B are likely to be people working in a similar area with smaller Erdos numbers; I don't see how a sentence like that would have trouble fitting into a paragraph about research collaborations for any type of researcher, combinatorial or no. (Note: I don't think we have to give the whole chain, if at least one of A and B is noteworthy enough for a separate article with a similar sentence.) — David Eppstein 23:14, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
No, I implied no such thing. I only said that Erdos number information is unlikely to be relevant to a paragraph on collaborators unless the subject is a combinatorist or works in some other mathematical subfield closely related to areas Erdos worked in -- that is, if you're dedicated to providing useful biographical information, rather than dedicated to mentioning Erdos numbers in as many articles as possible. Sections on a mathematician/scientist's collaborators would certainly be interesting, but how does discussion of someone's Erdos number add any value to such a section if it's already well-elaborated? SparsityProblem 23:17, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

(undent)It is painfully obvious (to me at least) that this CFD will be closed as no consensus. As it stands, I don't think this bickering is helping anyone's general case, and I also doubt that either side will (ever) be convinced by the other. So why don't we just leave it to the closing admin while everyone's dignity is still intact? — Cronholm 144 12:36, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply

It seems to me that whether the closure is a "no consensus" will probably depend on whether the closing admin counts votes, or measures the arguments against policy, guidelines and precdents. But I don't envy who gets the job :( -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:45, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
It seems to me that the outcome will depend on whether or not the closing admin is interested in pedanitically nitpicking policy to delete a category, or to err in favor of building a helpful encyclopedia. Or you could just avoid mocking up your argument into speculation about what the closing admin will do. -- Cheeser1 15:57, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Glad we agree that these categories don't fit with current policies and guidelines. - BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:49, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
And I'm glad even an admin will stoop to putting words in someone else's mouth. I said no such thing. -- Cheeser1 21:40, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
If something does fit policies and guidelines, WP:IAR is irrelevant. And "defining characteristic" is not nitpicking, it's the core of WP:CAT which is why I have offered a cash bounty for evidence that Erdos numbers are used in ways which demonstrate it as a defining characteristic. Still waiting. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
It has become clear that you are not a mathematician. I dispute that the category is meaningless or unencyclopedic, but even if I hypothetically granted that it was, IAR could still apply in that case. I'll thank you to read my arguments more carefully and not do your best to misinterpret them as a way to argue against them. And it is fortunate that Wikipedians do not serve at your pleasure, because I have no intention of wasting my time meeting your arbitrary prize criteria when it's clear that you're deliberately setting (and re-setting) the bar in whatever place you'd like, to make a point rather than to spur discussion. -- Cheeser1 23:24, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Are you a mathematician? Your user page says "I'm going to go on to grad school soon" so I take it that you aren't one; perhaps you're a future mathematician. And anyway, let's keep this about content and not people. If "you have to be a mathematician to understand my point" is the best you can do, you may not have a good argument. I've talked to two mathematicians about this discussion, and both agree that it's absurd to retain the Erdos number categories (a point I bring up not in order to argue from authority, but only to illustrate that not all mathematicians necessarily believe that Erdos numbers are a defining characteristic of themselves and their colleagues). It would also be good if you assumed good faith.
I don't understand your point about IAR. Why is there a need to ignore rules if the path of action you support is supported by the rules? SparsityProblem 23:30, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
As a mathematician (undergraduate yes, but published, more than once), I find it sad that such simple logic is lost on people: I do not believe the policy/guidelines about categories precludes this category, but there is disagreement - even if we accept, for the purposes of argument, that the rules did preclude these categories, IAR tells us that we can ignore the rules if the category still helps us build a better encyclopedia. My point was simply that anyone who works in any field requiring an ounce of logical sense (e.g. a mathematician) would be able to comprehend the conditional logic of such an argument. -- Cheeser1 05:08, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
You're skating dangerously close to the personal attack edge there. Again, let's keep this about content; WP:AGF says that if someone else does not understand our argument, it means there's a problem with our argument or that we have not communicated it well, not that they lack logical sense. SparsityProblem 05:11, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Yes, quite a convenient misunderstanding, for the sake of her argument. I'm not making personal attacks - this stemmed from her putting words in my mouth (deliberately and quite tersely), not the other way around. If she's going to twist things I say to make it look like I'm contradicting or discrediting my own stance on an issue, she'd at least do well enough to read my argument throughly -- regardless of how much you could throw up your hands and hope it was just her mistake, and ignore the fact that her "misunderstanding" was essentially just a rude "see even you think you're wrong" side-comment. I'm not going to argue these incessant pedantics or spend any more time trying to meet this $5 prize mockery, which to me demonstrates what a circus this CfD has become. I've made my point, and if you and BHG want to rally around a strict constructionist reading of policy and throw caution to the wind, that's fine, but those of us who disagree aren't automatically wrong because your reading of policy may seem more precise or detailed. I'm a huge fan of obeying policy, but I prefer to do so wisely and within the spirit of the rules. Using them to exclude content that a plurality or large group of people believe is encyclopedic, and that does no harm to any article, and that has at least arguable merit within policy: that's quite alot to ask. -- Cheeser1 05:58, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Well, I agree with Cheeser1 - BHG's arguments in this discussion have sometimes been illogical, contain irrelevancies and factual errors, and are often based on misinterpretations of what others have said. However, I also agree with SparsityProblem - following AGF, we should assume that this is because BHG genuinely fails to understand the arguments put forward by other people, rather than imagining that she is deliberately trying to obscure and complicate this debate. Gandalf61 10:53, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Alternatively, you could assume that the problem is that some of the keep !voters don't understand the policies and guidelines and don't understand the arguments put forward by those advocating deletion. But wouldn't it be better to avoid personal attacks, and to try address some of the problems with Erdos numbers as criteria for categorisation, such as the fact that they can change massively because someone unknown to the subject has done something unconnected to the subject's career or to the notability of their work? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:18, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
<rmv indent>Response to BrownHairedGirl (a) Your understanding of WP:NPA seems to be flawed - I was commenting on the content of your posts, which is not a personal attack. (b) Your argument that someone's Erdős number can change because of actions by someone else "unknown to the subject" is not true for Erdős numbers 1, 2, 3 or 4. Only someone with an Erdős number of 5 or higher can have their Erdős number lowered because a collaborator of a collaborator (or someone at a more remote distance) lowers their own Erdős number. Gandalf61 15:44, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
a) Allegations of deliberately twisting things are a personal attck. Please WP:AGF.
b) You're quite correct about the collaborator of a collaborator. However, an Erdos number of 4 can still change because of the actions of a collaborator. For example, I write paper with you, and get myself an E.No of 4 because yours is 3, but although we never communicate again and our joint paper is never cited, my E num increases when you reduce your E-num to 2 ... and before the death of Erdős, the same could have applied even if my E number was as low as 3. So the problem actually extends to E numbers of 3 or higher. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:23, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
No, allegations of such things are not a personal attack - I am not commenting on your character, but on the substance (or lack thereof) of a particular point you were trying to make: that I agreed with you or that I was contracdicting myself or some such. You twisted my words and tersely snapped out "I'm glad we both agree that ..." - simply saying that you did what you did is not a personal attack. Let's not stoop to defending our actions by simply shrugging off allegations of illogicality or impropriety by saying that such allegations are personal attacks. -- Cheeser1 19:57, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to BrownHairedGirl (a)If your comment is directed at me, then please note that I did AGF. I specifically said we should not imagine that you are "twisting things" as there is the alternative explanation that you simply do not understand what other people are saying - as indeed you seem to have misunderstood many things that I have said. (b) You originally said "collaborator of a collaborator"; it seems that you are now moving the goalposts. Also, whatever might have applied before Erdős died is irrelevant to this discussion - please stick to the point. Gandalf61 20:09, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Oh dear. Leaving aside the resort to WP:IAR, what happened before Erdos died is highly relevant to the E. numbers of people who were his contemporaries, because wikipedia has articles on them too. I did indeed originally say the "collaborator of a collaborator", and stand by that point, but I have also identifed a problem in that an E. number as low as 3 could have been changed as the result of the subsequent and independent actions of a collaborator. If you disagree with that, perhaps you explain say why? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 08:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to BrownHairedGirl Let me explain in more detail. If someone now has an Erdős number of 1 or 2 they have that number permanently - it will never change. If someone now has an Erdős number of 3, that value will only change through their own actions (if they publish with a co-author who has an Erdős number of 1). If someone now has an Erdős number of 4, that value will only change through their own actions (if they publish with a co-author who has an Erdős number of 1 or 2) or the actions of one of their previous co-authors (if a co-author with Erdős number 3 lowers their Erdős number to 2). Therefore your claim that the Erdős number that someone has now can be changed by the actions of someone else is logically false for Erdős numbers 1,2 and 3, and your claim that the Erdős number that someone has now can be changed by the actions of a "collaborator of a collaborator" is also logically false for Erdős number 4. I hope that is now clear to you. If not, please leave a note on my talk page saying which parts you do not understand, and I can provide you with further help "off line". Gandalf61 10:40, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
WP:CIVIL, please, and please read what I wrote before sneering, with particular references to tenses. I was discussing how a person may have achieved a particular E-number, with respect to the role of collaborators, which was different at difft times. What happened before Erdis died is relevant because we are not only considering the allocation of Erdos nunbers to living people, and because it demonstrates some of the many ways in which the Erdos numbers which have been allocated to people can change by the actions of others. Consider one example: at his death in 1960, X had an E-number of 3, because his only published paper was co-authored with Y, who had an E-number of two. Thirty years later, Y wrote a paper with Erdos himself, posthumously raising X's E-number to two. That's nothing to do with X, and it is very strange to claim that a number changed by a posthumous irrelevancy is a defining characteristic of X. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:03, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to BrownHairedGirl I do not understand what part of my post above you think was not WP:CIVIL. I was simply trying to explain my refutation of your "collaborator of a collaborator" argument with as much clarity and precision as possible, to avoid misunderstanding. If you want to expand on your WP:CIVIL remark, please take it to my talk page, as I do not think it is relevant to this CfD discussion. Gandalf61 14:30, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
I don't see it as at all "painfully obvious". At this moment, there are 10 keep votes and 8 delete votes, with two and a half days left for further discussion. The outcome could go either way So far this has been a civil discussion and it should continue as long as there are more issues to be discussed. And as Bhg said, CFD decisions aren't made just based on vote counts, but on whether the arguments on either side are supported by policy. SparsityProblem 19:43, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment The concept of Erdős numbers is a mathematicians joke. The point of the joke is to rank mathematicians by a number that is obviously of no significance whatsoever, in order to see how many people are fooled into taking it seriously. Quite a lot, judging by the discussion above. R.e.b. 18:31, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Unlike Pokemon, which are extremely serious. -- Cheeser1 20:02, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
People have been asserting that Erdos numbers are "taken seriously by mathematicians" (almost a verbatim quote), so the comparison to Pokemon isn't too relevant. SparsityProblem 20:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to R.e.b. Do you, in any case, have a source that demonstrates that Erdős numbers are a joke that is not taken seriously by the mathematical community, or is that just your opinion ? Why is there a whole database devoted to the topic if it is only regarded as a joke ? Do you think that the Wikipedians with low Erdős numbers, some of whom have contributed to this discussion, regard it as a joke ? My impression is that they treat it with at least a moderate amount of seriousness. Gandalf61 20:07, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
I think R.e.b. counts as a reliable source here; he's as qualified as anyone to speak for the mathematical community. SparsityProblem 20:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to SparsityProblem Of course R.e.b. is as qualified as anyone to speak for the mathematical community, and we can balance his personal opinions against those of the other Wikipedian mathematicians who have contributed to this debate. However, the contributors who argue that Erdős numbers are notable and significant within the mathematical community have also provided multiple independent sources to support their claims. I was trying to determine whether R.e.b. has a similar independent source to support his view that "it's only a joke and has no significance", or whether this is just his personal opinion, in which case he is simply advancing a WP:IDONTCARE argument. Gandalf61 10:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Gandalf, you are still not distinguishing between the notability of a method of analysing relationships in a particular field, and the separate question of whether the tag attached to a particular individual by that technique is a defining attribute of the individual. Not one independent source has been offered in support of the latter claim, despite repeated requests. If the E.numbers of individuals were as significant as their defenders claim, we should have had screenfuls of references rather than the complete blank. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:41, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
Response to BrownHairedGirl Evidence of the importance of Erdős numbers to individuals has been provided, but you have rejected it all for various reasons. However, you are correct that I was adressing the issue of the notability of the concept of Erdős numbers in my comment above - because that was the issue that was raised by R.e.b. in his comment, to which I was responding. Quote from R.e.b. "The concept of Erdős numbers is a mathematicians joke". Quote from BrownHairedGirl : "I have seen plenty of evidence that the concept of Erdős numbers is notable". Gandalf61 14:18, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
For the record, I gave above a reference to a scholarly article that discusses in-depth the Erdős collaboration graph, and its significance. Here it is, again, since it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle:

Vladimir Batagelj and Andrej Mrvar, Some Analyses of Erd˝os Collaboration Graph, Social Networks 22 (2000), no. 2, 173--186; reviewed in MR 1789607

And here is another article, from the online publication of the Mathematical Association of America:

Ivars Peterson, "Groups, Graphs, and Erdös Numbers", MAA Online, June 12, 2004

Here's a brief quote from that article: "One can look at mathematical collaborations as a graph—an array of points connected by lines. Each point represents a mathematician, and lines join mathematicians who have collaborated with each other on at least one published paper. The resulting tangle is one of the largest, most elaborate graphs available to mathematicians. Some people have conjectured that this monstrous graph snares nearly every present-day mathematician and has threads into the physical, life, and social sciences (and even into movies and baseball). Its breadth is astonishing and vividly demonstrates the vital role of collaboration in math and science." Is this significant, or what? And, yes, the article ends with a screenful of references. Turgidson 13:28, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
My point made again, in both papers. The author of the frst notes the usefulness of E numbers as "techniques that can be used for analysis of large networks", while the second claims to have produced "one of the largest, most elaborate graphs" and that it "demonstrates the vital role of collaboration", but not that it provides a mechanism for meaningfully labelling the notability of individual mathematicians. Merely being a data point use in the construction of an informative graph is woefully insufficient as a criterion for categorisation. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:41, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I would like some way to cabin this categorizing practice and the perpetual ensuing debate. If it is kept, can we agree to limit it to (a) mathematicians (and maybe also computer scientists); (b) that, while trivia, it is non-precedential and unique to the circumstances of mathematicians etc.; and (c) that we have an annual debate about E-numbers to see if consensus has shifted, but do it on some dedicated page. We can announce it on CFD and link to it. Then we could generate an E-number-CFD number for everyone who has participated in a debate with someone who was in one of the annual CFDs. ... I'm only being half-farcical here. It seems to me that it is patently trivia but maybe such fiercely defended and such well-recognized trivia in some circles that it gets special treatment. As a matter of wikipedian collegiality if nothing else. -- lquilter 13:37, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply
    • If it's trivia, them it doesn't belong in mainspace, despite the devotion of its small but vociferous fan-club. But I don't see offhand any reason why it couldn't be applied to talk pages, just as we do with wikipedia maintenance categories. I'm not aware of any precedent for that usage of talk pages, but I can see how this could legitimately be implemented as a set of WikiProject categories, and the devotees could extend it to higher Erdos nunbers if they like. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:41, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply


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Apparitions

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The result of the debate was merge all as nominated. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 06:22, 5 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Suggest merging
Nominator's rationale: Merge. This is partly a tidyup nomination after a group CfD on October 5, for which some of these categories were tagged but not listed. This nomination does two things:
  1. it upmerges two small subcats about specific apparitions which have little potential for growth (see WP:OCAT#Small_with_no_potential_for_growth);
  2. it removes the split by whether apparitions were church-approved (which I presume refers to the Roman Catholic church, although this is not specified). Apart from being unclearly labelled, that distinction is not historically useful, because the RCC has at times revised its stance on various apparitions as it has on saints. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge all per nom, & thanks to Bhg for tidying some loose ends from my earlier nom. One of the categories says the "church" is the RC plus Orthodox churches, but all members seem to have occurred to Catholics. I initially left some of the "approval" splits, but now think these are untenable. Johnbod 14:21, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Your previous nom was a big one which cleared out a mass of overcategorisation, and it's often a good idea to approach this sort of huge mess in two passes. The first time around, there were so many sub-sub-categories that it wasn't entirely clear what we'd be left with once they were gone. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 15:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Upmerge per nom. Not only is the current category scheme unnecessary, some of the current names are also faintly ridiculous. I didn't realise that angels had to get church approval to appear anywhere - who do they apply to? Grutness... wha? 22:44, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Most literary sources agree that one of the worst things about being an angel is the paperwork :) 23:03, 28 October 2007 (UTC) Johnbod 23:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
But the Angels' Trade Union is getting very militant about this whole business of mostly having to work at night. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
And we all have heard how the angel got atop the Christmas tree. I'm sure a grievance was filed. Carlossuarez46 01:30, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Iron Man video games

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The result of the debate was merge to Category:Video games based on Marvel Comics -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:25, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Iron Man video games ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete. Very broad category, that is a clear form of overcategorization. There is no possible way to expand this, as Iron Man hasn't appeared in many video games overall. Contents should be moved into Category:Video games based on Marvel Comics. RobJ1981 11:42, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Spawn video games

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The result of the debate was upmerge. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:07, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Spawn video games ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete. Very small category. A good example of overcategorization. Articles in this category should be moved into Category:Video games based on comic books. RobJ1981 11:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Video games based on Image Comics

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The result of the debate was relisted at Nov 4. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 10:11, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Video games based on Image Comics ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Delete. Very small category, the contents basically duplicate the Spawn video games category. Contents should be moved into Category:Video games based on comic books. RobJ1981 11:33, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - seems a reasonable subcat of the video games based on comics category. Otto4711 13:11, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Common Lisp implementation

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The result of the debate was speedy rename (case of singular→plural). Since this has already been performed manually by the nominator and sole author of both categories in question, the original category can be deleted now. —  TKD:: Talk 08:05, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Common Lisp implementation ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Should have been Category:Common Lisp implementations as per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories). Tobias Bergemann 07:36, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Alfred P. Sloan Prize

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The result of the debate was Keep and Rename to Category:Alfred P. Sloan Prize winners. Vegaswikian 23:19, 8 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose merging Category:Alfred P. Sloan Prize into Category:Sundance Film Festival award winners
Nominator's rationale: The Alfred P. Sloan Prize is just one of at least 25 Sundance Film Festival awards, and it happens to be a relatively new one (started in 2003). Per Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Award winners, the information conveyed by this category is better suited to the "Awards" sections of individual film articles and to the article Alfred P. Sloan Prize, which contains a full list. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 07:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge per nom and per Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Award winners. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 09:37, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - While it is not the most prestigious of the awards given at Sundance every year, it is the only award with a cash purse. Also other then the random "Special Jury Prize for X" there are fewer awards given at recent Sundance Festivals then your quoted figure of 25 (the actual number is closer to 17.) Keep per Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Award winners, it is notable enough for both a category and an article. — A 09:38, 6 November 2007 (UTC) reply
    • Would it not, at least, need to be renamed to Category:Alfred P. Sloan Prize winners? The current category bundles together the main article, various film articles, and even three biographical articles. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 18:59, 6 November 2007 (UTC) reply
      • Then there would only be 5 articles in the category and it would increase at the rate of one per year; a sure-fire way to make sure a category gets merged/removed the next time this is up for discussion. Per my original edit, I do not think that any change is needed. — A 23:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC) reply
        • But it does not make sense to categorise these films and persons under this name. The films and people are not subtopics of the Alfred P. Sloan Prize ... they are merely affiliated with the Prize due to the fact that they are winners of it. The category name should reflect that. You seem to be arguing that we should sacrifice accuracy in naming simply for the sake of preserving the category. Incidentally, if the prize is indeed significant enough to justify categorisation per Wikipedia:Overcategorization#Award winners, then 5 category members is sufficient to justify retention. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 00:02, 7 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep and rename. I think the category should be kept, since it is the only award at Sundance that comes with a cash purse. I guess the category could be renamed Alfred P. Sloan Prize winners and the category removed from the Alfred P. Sloan Prize page. There are basically 9 kinds of awards at the Sundance Film Festival: Grand Jury Prizes, Audience Awards, Directing Awards, Cinematography Awards, Documentary Film Editing, the screenwriting award, Special Jury Prizes, awards for short films, and the Alfred P. Sloan Prize. I suppose it is a Sundance Film Festival award, in a broad sense, but I think it really is separate from the other awards. A separate foundation presents it, not juries or audiences. A separate jury selects the winner, they are not involved in any other selections. If the category is deleted, the films that won can still be seen at List of Sundance Film Festival award winners and Alfred P. Sloan Prize. It looks like every article for every film that has won the prize mentions it. But the people that have won it would not be listed — I suppose they could be listed at Alfred P. Sloan Prize as well. But to say that Werner Herzog is a one of several "Sundance Film Festival award winners" instead of one of several "Alfred P. Sloan Prize winners" is a bit misleading I think. -- Pixelface 00:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep and rename. Per Pixelface's rationale. The category is useful and informative. — Wise Kwai 08:04, 7 November 2007 (UTC) reply
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Scandinavian nuncios

The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was merge all, although changing target to Category:Apostolic Nuncios to Scandinavia for consistency with other related subcats. -- cjllw ʘ TALK 09:19, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Suggest merging Category:Apostolic Nuncio to Denmark, Category:Apostolic Nuncio to Iceland, Category:Apostolic Nuncio to Finland, Category:Apostolic Nuncio to Norway, and Category:Apostolic Nuncio to Sweden to Category:Apostolic Delegates to Scandinavia
Nominator's rationale: Merge, First of all, all these categories need to be changed from the singular "nuncio" to a plural form. I'd suggest merging, as the nunciatures of Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden are combined, with a single nuncio serving all five countries. He's also the Apostolic Delegate to the Scandinavian Bishops Conference, so using this title (or a similar one) allows us to have one category for this, essentially, singular office. Gentgeen 07:04, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge per nom. I have rarely seen so many categories created not just for one job but for just one person! -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:43, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Merge per both. Johnbod 18:02, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Railway architecture

The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was delete. Kbdank71 14:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Railway architecture ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Not really about architecture. Can be safely deleted since the two subcats are in other appropriate parents. Vegaswikian 05:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Suspected terrorists alleged to be associated with Tablighi Jamaat

The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was delete. Kbdank71 14:20, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Suspected terrorists alleged to be associated with Tablighi Jamaat ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: This category groups individuals on what seems to be a non-defining characteristic. The two category members are terrorism suspects who are alleged to have ties with Tablighi Jamaat, a Pakistan-based organisation. The latter part is not a defining characteristic for two reasons. First, it is not uncommon for Islamic terrorists to have ties with one or more Islamic organisations in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or southeast Asia. Second, mere "association" (or, in this case, allegations of association) is general a weak basis for categorisation, unlike membership. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 04:27, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. "Association" is a dangerously vague term, and "alleged" is a weasel word. We don't categorise on the basis that somebody somewhere has alleged something. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete The allegations are by the US authorities (except I suppose in the UK case now added), but associated is too vague. Johnbod 18:08, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • those two governments aren't always spot on in their allegations (they were really sure about this one) and vague or specific, we should use reliable sources. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:22, 30 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Cockpit games

The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was delete. Kbdank71 14:19, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Cockpit games ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Kind of a silly category. There's no main article for it. SharkD 02:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. This just a way of grouping flight and space games together. If each category contained a see-also link to the other, it would simplify the category tree and make navigation easier. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 08:58, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete 'Cockpit games' is not a widely used term, in fact I don't remember ever having come across it in 20 years of gaming. Pretty much all the items within belong to established genres which we have articles for, except for a 'vehicle simulation' article which will be written in due course. Someone another 12:56, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Women computer scientists

The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was keep. No consensus to delete (or rename), plus per convincing demonstration that the topic has a significant and citable presence in relevant literature.-- cjllw ʘ TALK 08:56, 4 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Women computer scientists ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: I'm shocked that this category has survived as long as it has; it was nominated for CFD before, but only in order to rename it to "Female computer scientists" (which had the result of no consensus). The problem is that there is no analogous "Male computer scientists" category -- indeed, such a category would be pointless, as it would include probably at least 90% of computer scientists who are the subjects of articles on Wikipedia. Categorizing female computer scientists under "Female computer scientists" and male computer scientists under "Computer scientists" suggests that computer scientists are expected to be male and women are a special case -- at best, this scheme could be seen as reflective of implicit bias.
In addition, people looking for "computer scientists" will be shown a list that doesn't include any female computer scientists (will most people notice the link to "Women computer scientists" in the list of subcategories?) I realize this is indicative of a more general problem with Wikipedia's category system, but nevertheless, I think the consequences in this case are especially bad. Delete. SparsityProblem 00:52, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. You are right. This should go. -- Bduke 07:48, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong keep, possibly rename to Category:Women in computing to match main article Women in computing. The relevant guideline is WP:CATGRS, which says "Dedicated group-subject subcategories ... should only be created where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right" and "Generally, this means that the basic criterion for such a category is whether the topic has already been established as academically or culturally significant by external sources." That test has already been met by the main article Women in computing.
    Per para 3 of WP:CATGRS#Other considerations a female category does not need to be balanced by a male category, so there is no reason to deprecate this category because of the lack of male equivalent. However, the ghettoisation problem mentioned by the nominator is covered by the guideline; and the solution is simply to check that no woman has been improperly removed from any of the 50 non-gendered categories of computer scientists because she is in the gendered one.
    It appears that the nominator was not aware of WP:CATGRS, and I invite SparsityProblem to withdraw the nomination. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 09:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
Reply: I've read WP:CATGRS and I think it supports my argument for deletion. First, the guidelines say "a gender/race/sexuality subcategory should never be implemented as the final rung in a category tree. If a category is not otherwise subdividable into more specific groupings, then do not create a gender/race/sexuality subcategory." Obviously, "Computer scientists" can be subdivided in many different ways, but the fact is that the category contains hundreds of articles that *aren't* in any subcategory thereof; if you're writing an article on a male computer scientist, you're not necessarily going to remember to put it in one of the "Computer scientists by nationality" subcategories, and there don't yet exist subcategories for all disciplines within computer science. Whereas female computer scientists will be put in the "Women computer scientists" category. Moreover, WP:CATGRS does say that an exception to the rule about not putting an article in both a main category and its subcategories can be made for gender/race/sexuality categories, but I wasn't aware of that, and I would bet that a lot of other editors aren't either. Finally, the guidelines say "Dedicated group-subject subcategories... should only be created where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right." I find this impossibly vague. It goes on to say, "If a substantial and encyclopedic head article (not just a list) cannot be written for such a category, then the category should not be created." Women in computing isn't substantial and consists mostly of a list. Maybe it's possible to write a good article on the subject (although note that the subject of women computer scientists is quite distinct from the subject of women in computing), but there isn't evidence that there is. I don't know of any published books on the subject of women computer scientists (in general, rather than biographies of specific ones), for example, although I am aware of books about (for example) women mathematicians.
So, by WP:IGNORE, I stand by my nomination.
If the category ends up being renamed to "Women in computing", it should no longer be a subcategory of Category:Computer scientists, as being in computing doesn't imply you are a computer scientist. In addition, if the category is kept, I will try to edit to make sure no one is listed in the main category, but in the relevant subcategories by nationality and subfield. SparsityProblem 17:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
A few quick replies:
  • WP:IGNORE -- in this case, I find that common sense and the need to avoid bias are more compelling than following a very convoluted and ill-specified set of guidelines. Others may disagree.
  • Diffusion -- ok.
  • Google hits are tenuous at best for proving article notability, and I think entirely irrelevant for category notability. Looking at another debate above, we both agree that the Erdos number categories should be deleted, but there are plenty of ghits for "Erdos numbers". SparsityProblem 20:54, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
I think that you misunderstand why I included those google links: not to establish notability, but because of the specific test applied to gendered categories that "The criterion of whether an encyclopedic article is possible should be the gauge". There is plenty of material in those google results alone to allow anyone with the inclination to write a very encylopedic article on the topic, starting with Ada Lovelace and including Alexandra Illmer Forsythe, who was the author of the first CS textbook.
"Common sense and the need to avoid bias" are the subject of very different views when it comes to gender and categories, which is why a huge amount of effort went into working out a guideline on the subject. You haven't provided any particular reason to ignore it in the case of this category, and your objection seems to be to the guideline itself. WT:CATGRS is the place to argue for its abolition or revision, but as of now it stands, and you have not explained how deleting this category would improve the encyclopedia. It seems to me that your concerns about ghettoization were misplaced, and are well covered in the guidelines ... and that the point in your nom about 90% of the wikipedia articles on comp.sci people being about men illustrates rather well why this category is needed. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs)
  • Keep and maybe rename, per Bhg. Johnbod 14:18, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep as in practice culturally significant. And I think the original name is the best fir for this. DGG ( talk) 00:04, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
    • I agree that the original name is best. SparsityProblem has rightly pointed out that "women in computing" is a broader topic, so I have struck out my renaming suggestion. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. The existence of conferences devoted to this subject shows its notability. That goes not just for the topic article but also for notability as the subject of a category. As a historically underrepresented segment of the population in this field, it serves an encyclopedic purpose to be able to conveniently point to a list of such women; e.g., I can easily imagine student projects in which the students are asked to choose and write something about one of these people. There is no symmetry here requiring a parallel list of male computer scientists, because males are not underrepresented in this area. — David Eppstein 17:33, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - Women have been and are still significantly under-represented in computing, to such an extent that the category is in fact often defining for its members. The underrepresentation is periodically covered in the media, both mainstream and industry-specific. Renaming to "female computer scientists" is fine if it makes the grammarians happy. -- lquilter 18:16, 29 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Keep per preceeding arguments. (I generally don't like to weigh in without adding something of substance to the discussion, but I'm trying to get caught up here after losing 2 days thanks to a lighting strike that fried my modem. Ouch.) Cgingold 12:00, 31 October 2007 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Keep as a distinct and often overlooked minority in the industry Women computer scientists is notable, especially with increasing trends promoting women in technology. Women teachers would be an overcategorization. Women computer scientists is not. WP:CATGRS#Other considerations definitly applies. CJ 13:43, 1 November 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Post-credits scene films

The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was speedy delete per CSD G4 and salt per continued re-creation against strong community consensus. Since this category was populated by a single user, I'll go through that user's contributions and depopulate it through rollback. —  TKD:: Talk 07:23, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply

Category:Post-credits scene films ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Speedy delete and salt - an anon added close to 200 articles to the (then-redlinked) category. I figured the easiest way to handle it would be to recreate the category and then speedy it. The anon deleted the speedy tag out-of-process so rather than get into an edit war, here it is. This category has been deleted twice previously, March 9 and November 10, 2006. It's likely that the category will continually be recreated unless salted. Suggest salting both versions. Otto4711 00:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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Category:Sports books

The following discussion is an archived debate regarding the category or categories above. 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.

The result of the debate was Rename. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:05, 2 November 2007 (UTC) reply

Propose renaming Category:Sports books to Category:Books about sports
Nominator's rationale: Rename - in line with the majority of the subcats of Category:Books by topic and to avoid any possible confusion that the category is for notable Sportsbooks. Otto4711 00:35, 28 October 2007 (UTC) reply
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