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January 25

Category:Alpine countries

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: result. The Bushranger One ping only 02:42, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: This category currently (incorrectly) puts the article about France under Category:Central Europe and (because it contains country categories) incorrectly puts the articles such as Brittany under Category:Alps. Categorizing countries by a mountain range that (in some cases) is only a small part of the country has some of the same problems that categories such as "Mediterranean countries" had ( CFD). For info: There is a list at Alpine states. DexDor ( talk) 21:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete per nom. France and Italy are quite large countries but neither one is regularly described as an alpine country. A list would be fine but doesn't work as a cat.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 01:30, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom and per Obiwankenobi. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:21, 30 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 06:50, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Saddam Hussein family

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: rename. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:53, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rational, rename per Tulfah family. Charles Essie ( talk) 18:15, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Separation barriers

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: NO CONSENSUS to merge as nominated. There are various potential ways forward suggested. The final one, which covers a wider restructuring, could probably be handled best by editorial work elsewhere, eventually returning to CfD for cleanup. - Splash - tk 22:22, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Sorry, let me try this again. This virtually unpopulated intermediate category serves no useful function -- other than WP:OC#SHAREDNAMES -- that I can see between the eponymous Israeli construction and other geopolitical or security walls and fences that appear in the various parent categories. (Including Category:Obstacles, nominated below.) Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 15:48, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • It doesn't; the Separation barrier article is about the concept, not specifically about Israeli barrier(s) so shouldn't be moved into that category. DexDor ( talk) 22:13, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • The article selectively cites examples of where walls/fences have been called a "separation barrier," to advance idea that this is a distinct entity. I guess I'm not so convinced that I think Category:Separation barriers should even exist. Now, others might disagree and start applying it to other cited examples in that article, such as the Saudi–Yemen barrier, etc. But no one has, to date. The Israeli example is the category's sole example, currently. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 22:24, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • That article is rather muddled (see WP:REFERS), but it does appear that (for example) Belfast's peace walls are within the scope of the topic that it's trying to cover. DexDor ( talk) 23:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Oh, I didn't see that one. Interesting, too, that the Irish example is categorized under Category:Border barriers, despite the fact that the wall divides neighbourhoods and is no more a recognized "border" than Israel's, it seems to me. Anyway, some things would seem to need to be done, here, and we have this and the "obstacles" one below, as starters. And of course judged separately, on their respective merits. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 23:08, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Per my comments below, the bottom line is what the sources say in the relevant articles, not what WP:OR interpretations editors may choose to put on various articles. Carolmooredc ( Talkie-Talkie) 17:24, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
A couple editors have kept our eyes on this to remove more such WP:OR examples. at this diff and this diff I have used one The Guardian reporter's one-time use of "separation barrier" about the growing use of walls/barriers/etc worldwide in its proper context, reverting a recent effort to define the whole article by it. Also removed a section on an Indian "separation barrier", since the source called it a "separation wall".
Creating Category:Israeli separation barriers would remove the temptations to change the article's thrust with dubious sourcing and to make this a WP:OR super-category. Carolmooredc ( Talkie-Talkie) 04:35, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Progress templates

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: Speedy deletion. —  Malik Shabazz  Talk/ Stalk 23:09, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Completely superseded by Category:Wikipedia progress templates. I already moved all of the templates in this to the other category. Not even sure why this was created. APerson ( talk!) 14:54, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Is it possible that you don't recall that you had created it on January 14? Anyway, now that it's been emptied by you, I've placed a {{db-author}} tag on it, with explanation. If I understand correctly, this should be fairly simple to resolve, soon. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 19:53, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Guided missiles by conflict

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: RENAME ALL as per nomination. - Splash - tk 21:45, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Propose renaming
Nominator's rationale: We don't generally categorize mass-produced items by which conflicts they have been used in ( example CFD) as for some types it could lead to them being in dozens/hundreds of categories (and some may not be used in any conflict). Thus, these categories, which each just contain a category for the Cold War, should be renamed. It will then be possible to add corresponding subcats for the post-Cold War period. DexDor ( talk) 14:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Rename all. In some previous discussions, I did argue argue that some mass-produced weapons were defined by their use in particular conflicts, but there was a clear consensus not to do so, because of the risk of category clutter. The standard model for military hardware is now to categorise by era, and these categories should be renamed to conform. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:51, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete all. Even 'by era' categorisation has problems, and at the moment none of these have other than "Foo of the Cold War" subcategories. If kept they should be renamed per nom, but I believe that this entire scheme has insuperable problems and, therefore, it's best for this category tree to be felled. - The Bushranger One ping only 22:54, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
If you think the entire scheme (up to Category:Military equipment by period?) should be deleted then please explain what the "insuperable problems" are in a separate discussion. DexDor ( talk) 06:35, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Examples of misuse of statistics

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:32, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: This category appears to be being used to categorize articles in which there is some mention of the misuse of statistics (e.g. the Bicycle helmet article was in this category). For articles that are about misuse of statistics (i.e. for which it's a WP:DEFINING characteristic) there's Category:Misuse of statistics. DexDor ( talk) 13:55, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • I think what you are suggesting is a set category - the title of which would/should be "Misuses of statistics" (this is currently the only "Examples of ..." category in the whole of enwiki). However there aren't so many articles in Category:Misuse of statistics that a separate category is needed and if there were it would be better to have subcats for misuse of statistics in particular fields (politics/commerce/science etc). DexDor ( talk) 06:22, 26 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete unless someone can point to a number of articles which are themselves specific examples of and about misuse of statistics.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk)
  • Delete When a gubernatorial election article is in here, we know it is not being applied right. Articles on election are on elections, they are not examples of anything. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:32, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 06:51, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Obstacles

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:10, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: 4 (of 6) parent categories of this category are about road transport, but none of the pages in the category are about road transport - one is a redirect to an aviation article, one is about any obstacle (that page probably should be a disambiguation page or a redirect to Wiktionary), and two are about geopolitical separation barriers (not roads). The articles are in other (more suitable) categories. DexDor ( talk) 13:44, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Also, I seem to recall this category once being applied to landforms like rivers, yet I don't see a previous CfD, so perhaps I'm mistaken. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 16:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete this is essentially a performer by performance category - we should describe the thing a it is -eg a wall, vs what it does (obstructs). Also the scope is too broad and could cover anything which obstructs something else.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 01:36, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:French military firefighters

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: merge. Note that the second category's content is already in Category:Romanian firefighter personnel, a subcategory of Category:Firefighters, so it was only merged to the second target. The Bushranger One ping only 02:47, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: WP:SMALLCAT - These categories each have just one member and it is very unlikely that we're going to get a lot of people notable for being French/Romanian military firefighters. There is no "Military firefighters by country" categorization scheme for this to be part of. DexDor ( talk) 13:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Children of Holocaust survivors

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: NO CONSENSUS. I am going to keep my closure note relatively simple (for a change!). Clearly the weight of the debate is toward keeping. For me to nevertheless delete, the keeps would have to be seriously ill-founded in fact, policy, consistency, rebuttal, etc. But they obviously are not. Or, the deletes could have such a strong policy-based thread that it is nevertheless reasonable to import a wide-community consensus from the policy/policies into this debate and outweigh the keep side. That is not the case. On the other hand, the deleters' significant salient points relating to non-defining characteristic and non-inherited notability are very fairly argued, but not deconstructed enough to lead to a straight 'keep' outcome. We therefore have a case where the community has not sufficiently converged on a consensual outcome as to the disposition of this category, and we default to taking no action from this debate. - Splash - tk 00:33, 6 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: This category is categorizing people by a life experience of one/both of their parents - which is not something we normally do in WP. The main way we categorize people in WP is by what makes them notable (e.g. using a nationality-occupation category). We also categorize by some standard biographical characteristics (e.g. year of birth) - generally characteristics that place every person in one, and only one, category. This category is neither a reason-for-notability category nor a standard biographical characteristic category. This is the only "Children of ... survivors" category and we don't, AFAICS, have similar categories for children of survivors of pandemic/earthquake/war/terrorism. There are other "Children of <type of parent>" categories, but AFAICS those are all for where the parent is a monarch, president, pope etc - i.e. an occupation that makes the parent so notable that their children may inherit some notability. It may be argued that someone's parent(s) being Holocaust survivor(s) influenced the person (the subject of the WP article) - that may be of sufficient importance to be mentioned in the article text, but IMO it's not so important that it's a WP:DEFINING characteristic (and an exception from how we normally categorize); we don't, for example, categorize people by the religion or social status of their parents. For info: I've checked a sample of articles in this category and most don't mention this characteristic in the lead and all were in more appropriate categories. This category could be listified. Note: This category was previously discussed in 2011 resulting in a rename. DexDor ( talk) 08:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete this is not defining of the people in question. Being a holocaust survivor certainly is defining and often a source of fame/notability, but being the children of holocaust survivors while obviously influential on ones life is not in of itself defining.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 16:18, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete This is too weak a link. The time between when these people were born and when their parents survived the holocaust could be a lot. Plus, some of these people will be those who were alive during the holocaust, but due to where they lived or other circumstances did not directly suffer through it. Too many things to make these not a coherent group. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 19:06, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Keep I strongly disagree with the nominator on this subject and the continuing staggering display of ignorance is breathtaking. The previous CfD had only serious discussion of an alternate name, and nothing has changed since them. The second generation of survivors of the Holocaust have been the subject of numerous published works, including several books on the subject listed by this Google books search. The work of Art Spiegelman and his Maus books is just a small part of what is treated as a strong defining characteristic of the individuals involved and is frequently used as a means of categorization by the media and the second generation survivors themselves. This Google search demonstrates a breathtaking variety of organizations, articles and other sources directly relating to this rather strong defining characteristic. Alansohn ( talk) 03:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
You often make these sorts of points, which to me suggest a misunderstanding of "defining". Defining is a characteristic that 3rd party sources regularly describe a person as having. Defining is *not* 1) Something that is important to that person 2) Something that person is a member of a club for 3) Something that articles have been written about 4) Something that had an important impact on that person's life. The vast majority of "Children of holocaust survivors" are not notable and have no articles here, and those who *do* have articles here are notable almost always for other reasons; as such, when those people are described in the media, the fact that one or both of their parents survived the holocaust is, more often than not, not mentioned. And I know you hate this argument, but OTHERSTUFFCOULDPOTENTIALLYEXIST - like [1], which is an organization devoted to child survivors of the Holocaust, but it wouldn't make sense to defend Category:Child holocaust survivors based on this group any more than it makes sense to defend "Children of Holocaust survivors" based on the existence of books and media about them. While no-one will dispute that books and films and so on have been written about children of holocaust survivors, again, this is not enough to justify a category - it is likely quite more than enough to write an article (if one doesn't exist already). What's still missing is whether the subjects who are in this category are regularly described as such, and from the searches I've done, it doesn't seem to be the case.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 05:23, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep I do find Alansohn's rationale convincing. And on a personal note, the comment above about how being a Holocaust survivor is often "a source of fame" distasteful. I know it's not the intention, but the connotation is that somehow these poor souls are cashing in. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 03:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Struck fame above. wasn't my intent to suggest they were cashing in, obviously.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 05:01, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. Categorising people by the life experiences of their parents, however appalling those experiences, is a recipe for massive clutter in articles. The fact that there is a body of literature on the topic is a necessary criterion for such a category, but it is not a sufficient criterion. A WP:DEFINING characteristic is one that reliable sources routinely mention about the subject, or which is routinely mentioned in the lede of the wikipedia article. Neither of those tests is met in this case. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:41, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete People who are important as children of survivors write about it or are activists or do things that connect them directly back to holocaust subjects and categories. But a look at the larger contents of the list, which is almost all of it from what I have found in sampling it, reveals a remarkably heterogeneous group, up to including people I didn't even know were Jewish. As a rule the only connection is a sentence that says the the subject was born of one or more holocaust survivors. Notability is WP:NOTINHERITED from non-notable people who were caught up in a notable event. Mangoe ( talk) 16:40, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. For many, membership in this category is a life-defining characteristic. It needs to be established, of course, but in essence it's not more or less trivial ("defining of the people in question") than Category:People born in Ohio or Category:1978 births. Being born in 1978, as opposed to 1977 or 1968, can be life-defining, but is not inherently so. Obviously the article needs to make a verifiable case that someone's life is in part guided by having been the child (or descendant) of a Holocaust survivor, but that doesn't make the category itself worthless. Drmies ( talk) 17:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Well, yes, that's rather the point. The sheer variety of the membership and the relatively small numbers where there is any mention that the holocaust figures in their lives tends to argue that the categorization is of something that isn't significant enough. You could make the same argument about children of any parents who have been through a traumatic experience, but the proof is in the pudding. Right now my reading is that there is this assumption that the holocaust is so much more important and traumatic and determining that it must affect the next generation and perhaps those after. But right now what I see is that Art Spiegelman is the anomaly in the group, not the norm. Mangoe ( talk) 17:56, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Did you look at the lengthy list of publications linked to by Alansohn? I can understand a delete vote based on Wikipedia guidelines but to state that Art Spiegelman is somehow an "anomaly" seems to me to be willfully blind to examples provided here. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 18:02, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
No, no, no, you are completely missing the point. There is obviously room for a category of "children of holocaust survivors who write about it", but that's not this category. What we have here is a category of people whose lives may or may not make some reference to their parent's experiences—but when I look at the articles, I see mostly "not". Mangoe ( talk) 18:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
DrMies, as I pointed out above, there is a huge difference between "life-defining characteristic" and "defining for the purposes of wikipedia (I'm sure you realize we live in a bubble here... :) ). Examples of other life-defining characteristics include people who are married, people who are divorced, people who are orphans, people who lose one or more of their children to terrible childhood illnesses, people who are given up for adoption and live with a nasty foster family, people whose grandparents were slaves, people whose parents died on the Titanic, people who lost family members in 9/11, people whose family was wiped out in the Tsunami, and so on. An infinite number of things happen to people that greatly impact their lives, and I would never argue that having parents who went through the holocaust was anything short of life-changing, but the fact that we have organizations and membership groups and academic literature around orphans, etc does not mean that we should create a category of Category:Orphans; for the same reason all of the membership orgs for children/descendants of holocaust survivors does not mean that the notable people we talk about in wikipedia are DEFINED by this. Wolf Blitzer is a great example - in how many articles about Wolf does it mention that he is the son of holocaust survivors? It doesn't even make his official bio: [2]. Another example is Evelyn Lauder, who accomplished a great many things - in this official bio/obit her parent's escape from the Nazis was not mentioned: [3] (and indeed, she herself, having been born in 1936 in Austria, could technically be termed a holocaust survivor herself) The other examples you give, e.g. year/location of birth are basic biographical data and are more or less exceptions to the DEFINING rule, since we do them for everyone no matter what sources say.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 19:42, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • @ Drmies: you say that "the article needs to make a verifiable case that someone's life is in part guided by having been the child (or descendant) of a Holocaust survivor". However, many things may have some role in guiding a person's life, and the criteria are much tighter than "in part guided by", as set out at WP:DEFINING. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:58, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • BrownHairedGirl, and Obi, I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm probably less than transparent. My point goes toward the other end. I do not believe that "Dutch" in "Category:Dutch scientist" is automatically a defining characteristic. If someone is "born" Jewish, whatever that means these days, but is not a practicing Jew, we don't categorize them as such. We don't categorize "heterosexual", rightly or wrongly, because I suppose we still take it for granted--whereas one's heterosexuality (if that's what one has) is more defining than many, many other things, like whether one was born in 1977 or 1978. I would argue for tighter guidelines across the board, which in turn allows me to say "keep the category for those articles where it can be argued to have made an impact on what makes them notable in the first place for encyclopedic purposes"--or something like that. But Obi and I have covered this ground before, I think. Still, this "relevant" thing is what I'm sticking to. So that would probably mean pruning the list and stricter verification and talk page discussion, which is probably not what a lot of editors want. Drmies ( talk) 22:52, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I think there is some inconsistency that you're hitting upon - not all categories are equal, and some are just placed regardless of what sources say - like nationality, date of birth, location of birth, etc. Yes, there are scientists, and there are Danish scientists; people may say Nils Bohr is a famous physicist but they won't always say he was a famous Danish physicist - but we basically give an exception to the "defining" rules to by-nationality subdivisions - e.g. if you're nationality X, and you do job Y, you can be put in category XY even if no-one ever really describes you in that way. Similarly, we do that for ethnicity - if you're jewish or african american, and you play football or write novels, you get placed in {ethnicity} {job} even if no-one really defines you in that way - it suffices that sufficient members of your GROUP are defined in that way for the category to survive. (Side response: if you are born Jewish but not practicing, there is a well-developed tree of Category:People of Jewish descent, fwiw). Sexuality is different; we don't categorize heterosexuals, but we *could* categorize them if there was a profession where being heterosexual was itself defining or out of the norm; for example I could imagine something like Category:Heterosexual actors in gay porn films although I'd rather not... That's why, for example, we have Category:Male nurses but not Category:Female nurses and so on, and it's why we don't have Category:White novelists but we do have Category:African-American novelists. The main area where your "relevancy" argument comes in is for jobs and religious/political affiliations - people have many jobs over their lifetime, but most aren't defining - which is why all actors are not in the Category:Restaurant staff category, so for jobs we definitely do have a sort of "relevancy" test. The same applies for religion - many people are Catholic, but most people aren't so-categorized - it really comes down to how often they are described as Catholic in RS, so your relevancy test comes in there as well. The same would go for various opinions - many people are anti-communism or anti-fascism, but few are really defined as being anti-communists. Finally, I think you're using "defining" in the sense of "it defines who you are as a person", which is not the standard here.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:09, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Let's take another example: Bernice Eisenstein, who wrote a book about being the child of holocaust survivors. We have a redirect for her, but an article could probably be written. Now, above you seem to suggest, keep the category, but purge of everyone except those for whom this is truly relevant. This is a little problematic, in my view, as most such set-categories should be fully populated, because they're not about jobs or political views or so on, which have shades of defining-ness, it's instead a basic biographic category - in this case, someone clearly is, or isn't the child of a holocaust survivor, so if it's kept its rather hard to keep people out. But anyway, is Bernice defined by being the child of holocaust survivors? I would argue, no. What she is defined by is the fact that she is an author, a poet, and that she has produced a Category:Works about the Holocaust. Now, we don't have a category for Category:Memoirists of the holocaust but perhaps one should be created - we do have Category:Historians_of_the_Holocaust, and there is obviously a large body of work beyond history where the central theme is the holocaust, done by survivors, descendants of survivors, and even people who have no direct connection - so that *could* be a workable category for some of these people - e.g. Category:People who produced works about the holocaust - we have Category:Personal_accounts_of_the_Holocaust, so perhaps this could be divided into one category for personal accounts of the holocaust, and another category for people who wrote such accounts, there is a whole tree of Category:Writers_by_subject_area into which this could fit.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:24, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep On the premise that it is very far from every biography that bothers to mention 'subject's parents survived X' but with this "X" they regularly do, I'll go with defining enough. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 23:15, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
A simple search found these three, Varaz_Samuelian, Rabo_Karabekian, Arthur_Pinajian, all children whose parents survived the Armenian genocide - there are many google results, and works/books/groups about such children as well: [4]. At some point, we have to be consistent, so if this category is kept, we'd likely have to create Children of Armenian genocide survivors, and Children of Rwandan genocide survivors, and Children whose parents survived Pol Pot's death camps, etc. We have to be careful to avoid systemic bias as well, because many such descriptions/etc may not be in english or other european languages. -- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:39, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
That does not strike me as problematic: if biographers think the parent's 'survival of ___' is something to be regularly mentioned in their children's bio, then that's fine -- it's also, as you suggest, going to be limited to a few sets of cataclysms. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 00:06, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I'm not sure I agree. While there has been some important research in the news of late about mass killings outside the scope of Nazi death camps, it was the institutionalized, industrialized nature of the Holocaust that is unique. Entire communities were uprooted and transported across great distances. It was an event that reached across national borders, in all parts of the Nazi-controlled world. People were processed in a way that we not seen before or since. So I for one am not in agreement that this means we must then create other such children of survivor categories. I am not the child of a Holocaust survivor nor do I know what it means to be an Armenian, Rwandan, etc. But there is such a strong body of work about the child of Holocaust survivor experience. Could we not ensure via a category description that it is only be added to bio articles when there is evidence that it is a notable association? Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 18:16, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
In the Rwandan genocide, they were able to kill off more people, faster, than the Germans, using mostly machetes and clubs - it's a rather terrible fact that they were more efficient at killing than the Nazis (it didn't last as long, so fewer people overall were killed). This source says it was the most efficient mass killing since Hiroshima [5]. No-one disputes that the Holocaust was unique and horrible, but so were other genocides, even in this century. Admittedly, there is not the same amount of books/material/testimony about the Armenian genocide, or the Rwandan, or Cambodia, etc, but sources nonetheless exist in spades for all of these, and there are groupings of survivors and groupings of children of survivors, so per NPOV we should create cats for them all if we have sources describing people as children of "survivor of horrible thing" - if this category is kept.
As to your final point, that's the argument I'm having with Drmies and EQ; what would it mean to remove someone from this? What is a "notable association"? Suppose you have person X, who in their biography, explains that their parents escaped from Poland in 1939 after being stuck in the ghetto, while the rest of their family stayed behind and was killed, so they are really children of holocaust survivors and carry those memories. But, in the rest of their life, they don't mention it, they don't join conferences, they don't write further about it - they just note it for the record, a few other RS note it, and life goes on. I maintain it would be irredeemably cruel to remove this category from the bottom of their page, because it means a wikipedia editor is saying "Well, Jim, I know your parents barely made it out alive, but you didn't do enough during your life to merit this category. Sorry". Being a child of a holocaust survivor is not a job or a profession or even a belief. It is a simple binary fact, true or false.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 22:23, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per the arguments of Drmies, and in the spirit that categories are not meant to be exhaustive or comprehensive in order to be useful. We don't put every person who fits a characteristic of a category into that category, just those who have a noted connection with it. Not every person who writes poetry is put in Poets, etc. How will we determine who's in and who's out? How will we navigate these subtle distinctions and subjective qualities and determine relevant candidates? The same way we do now; individual editors will decide if the category applies to actual individual articles, some time may pass, and they'll be supported or opposed by other individual editors through consensus and discussion. I don't like the argument that a category should be removed because we'll somehow be compelled to fill it with every article or that keeping one in-use category will mean we'll "have to" create any or every similar category. And every category has the possibility that an article may be placed in it without sufficient whatever, or that there might have to be discussion to determine inclusion of borderline cases. Those scenarios are surmountable and everyday problems facing all categories, not valid arguments to delete. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:49, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Drmies's argument is that the characteristic is "not more ... trivial ... than Category:People born in Ohio or Category:1978 births", but, as Obi has explained above (and is mentioned in the nom) there are two types of categories - (1) those categories to directly help readers/editors find articles (e.g. nationality-occupation categories), (2) categories used by bots (and maybe by category intersection). The first type of category usually has no more than a few hundred members (any more and it is usually split). The second type can have thousands of members (e.g. Category:1978 births has more than 10,000 members). Each article can only be in a few categories of the second type (e.g. a person can only have one year of birth). Categories of the first type should be restricted to the things that make people notable (usually their occupation) - otherwise every one of hundreds of facts in an article (e.g. that someone was an orphan) could be categorized (see essay WP:DNWAUC). DexDor ( talk) 07:32, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I think I may have an explanation for EQ's argument above and why this is not like poets. In practice, we seem to be all inclusive on categories when membership is passive - eg where you can't actively do anything to become more of Z. Thus, someone born and raised in 1988 in Chicago as the daughter of a president can't *do* anything to make those statements about them more true- X born 1988, X from Chicago, X is African-American, X is the daughter of a president. However, X can actively pursue different things - become a poet, or a race car driver, or a politician, or a fervent anti-communist, and these things if done enough will become defining for that person. In a sense, we give everyone a free pass on things they can't change anyway, and I can't think of any biographical categories that we decline to add when someone doesn't have a choice in the matter. Thus EQs statement that categories are not meant to be all inclusive is simply wrong - some set categories, indeed most, are intended to be all inclusive, because addition to a category is the equivalent of assertion of a fact - eg X is a poet may be more or less true depending in the societal threshhold for dubbing someone a poet, but someone is never going to be *less* of a child of holocaust victims. If this cat remains, it would be absurd to remove people, as that's essentially saying "well, I know your grandparents were killed at auschwitz and your mother barely survived, but not enough RS have mentioned it therefore we're removing you from the category. It's absurd, as the person in question can't do anything to make the statement 'X is the child of holocaust survivors' more or less true. I'm stunned that you'd actually want editors to have such a debate. No- either the category is deleted, or completely filled with every notable child we have sourcing for. No middle ground would be reasonable nor fair to these people.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 12:29, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
What a muddle we have here. I'm stunned that you'd actually want editors to have such a debate. It's not debating the facts of a person's life, it's about category inclusion. I'm surprised (but not stunned) that you're arguing that non-inclusion of an article in a certain category is essentially the same as denying the actual person has a certain characteristic. This seems the opposite of what you would usually argue. You questioned the appropriateness of categorizing Wolf Blitzer in a category such as this and no one should assume you were in any way commenting on the actual experience of his parents. The inclusion of articles in Category:Holocaust survivors is by individual assessment. This doesn't make it deficient or non-useful as a category.
The idea that involuntary characteristics, by themselves, make us treat categories as exhaustively inclusive doesn't work, either. Most sub-cats in Category:People by medical or psychological condition and the Crime Victim cats are not inclusive, they have notable and unquestioned examples. We're not saying any subject not included has never been the victim of crimes, or that any possible subject not included in here must have parents that weren't missionary enough. Not all categories are comprehensive: For some "sensitive" categories, it is better to think of the category as a set of representative and unquestioned examples... __ E L A Q U E A T E 15:20, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
As you may recall from category-gate, inclusion or exclusion in a category has taken on political dimensions and non-inclusion in a category is indeed equivalent to making a statement of fact about someone's life (eg X isn't in American novelists therefore X isn't a real American novelist) What criteria would editors use to say Wolf is not enough of a child of survivors to merit inclusion? It's not workable, as Wolf can't do anything to merit inclusion in this category - he was or wasn't born in year X, and his parents did or didn't escape the Holocaust. It's binary, and there isn't room for debate. The question is, is this characteristic in general defining, and for the vast majority of notable people in this category, we haven't found it to be so. As for Holocaust survivors and other victim categories, again these are different than the other more basic biographical cats as they are about something that happened to you vs something that you simply are. That said I don't think anyone would dispute inclusion in any arbitrary crime category for people who were provably victims of that crime , we simply don't classify on all crimes since some are considered common and not defining - eg we don't have people who were robbed I don't think, but we do have people who were killed. The example of Wolf was intended to demonstrate that this cat isn't defining for him, as a high profile person about whom much is written but his official bio leaves this fact out - it was not intended to say he shouldn't be in this cat if it's kept - indeed if kept it should be filled up to the brim for everyone where we have sources. Now one other wrinkle is what is the definition of holocaust survivor - the common image is of people who were in the death camps but made it out alive, but there were plenty of people who escaped Europe, so that's a bit trickier - if your parents moved the family to New York in 1929 does that make them holocaust survivors? Anyway that's a different topic to be discussed elsewhere.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 15:47, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I still don't see the distinction you're making between a person that had no choice about being the victim of a crime, a person who had no choice about the parents they ended up with, and a person who has cancer. Some notable people are noted for having a characteristic and we categorize by it, and we don't always include everybody. Wolf Blitzer, as an example, has arguments for inclusion whether it's comprehensive or non-comprehensive, as it's a characteristic that has been repeatedly reported about him by reliable sources, whether as a notable cause for becoming interested in international news or as a characteristic of special significance when he interviews the David Dukes of the world, "official bio" notwithstanding. Your category-gate one seems like a red herring, as that doesn't look like it was trying to settle if Any person who wrote a novel should always be included as a noted novelist but rather how are they sub-categorized when they are included. It's probably best to leave that example aside. It's the same with your "robbed and killed" categories, as the difference between the two is one of gravity, not how individual articles are included. I don't think anyone would dispute inclusion in any arbitrary crime category for people who were provably victims of that crime. This statement strains credulity a bit, but I'll just suggest that when someone is non-notably (but provably) a victim of a crime (or subject to an involuntary but arguably-only-existential condition, narrowly defined) we sometimes don't categorize them as such and the world does not cave in. It's not an all-or-nothing scenario and certainly not an insurmountable barrier to having the category. I suspect this category would become more populated if kept, but not beyond its specificity and uncommonness. And you should certainly add all of the people you can find consensus for, don't think I'm suggesting otherwise. __ E L A Q U E A T E 18:03, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
EQ says: "I still don't see the distinction you're making between a person that had no choice about being the victim of a crime, a person who had no choice about the parents they ended up with, and a person who has cancer." I'm not making a distinction. In all those cases, the categories should be filled up fully with whoever qualifies. We don't always apply the WP:DEFINING test to category membership, in many cases in fact we do not - for people it really comes down to, in my experience, things where the person has agency - for those we use WP:DEFINING.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 22:59, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Obi's attempt to separate categorization characteristics into active and passive characteristics (i.e. whether it was the persons choice) is, IMO, unhelpful. For example, we categorize people by cause (and date) of death - some causes (e.g. murder, natural disaster) would (using Obi's definitions) be passive, some (e.g. suicide) would be active and some (e.g. dying whilst taking part in a high risk activity) may be somewhere in between. If we categorize people by the cause of their death then we shouldn't have different rules for different causes of death depending on how much choice the person had in their death. There is however, a distinction to be made between those categories that every biography article should have a standard set of (e.g. year of birth) and the reason-for-notability characteristics (where the number depends on how many fields the person has achieved notability in). DexDor ( talk) 20:38, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I think you misunderstand. I was trying to elaborate why certain categories, e.g. basic biographical ones, should be filled up fully, and they are, in practice: date of birth, where X is from, nationality, gender, and any relevant family relationships (e.g. son of a King, daughter of a president). These are passive characteristics, and we would never *remove* someone who is born in 1988 from the 1988 category (nor would we remove someone who died in 2013 from the "Died in 2013" category. Your death example is bad, because that's a basic biographic category - everyone dies, and everyone who is dead should be categorized by their means of death, if we have a category for the cause (we don't always). The point is, for most "passive" categories, wherein the person doesn't really have a choice in the matter, inclusion is a simple question of a single RS; if a single RS says that person X is blind, then we can place them in Category:Blind people - we don't need every source to mention that detail - in a way it's an exception to WP:DEFINING, on an individual level. OTOH, if a single source says person X wrote a great poem in high school and is a wonderful poet, we would not add them to the Category:Poets accordingly - it takes more. Looking at actual practice, jobs, religious beliefs, and political beliefs are all subject to WP:DEFINING; but descent/ethnicity, sexuality (if we have RS establishing that you are LGBT), year of birth/death, means of death, where you're from, and the few rare "child of" categories are all put as a matter of course and it would be extremely bizarre for someone to be removed from any of those cats. I personally think the reason is "passive" vs "active" membership, that's the best explanation I could find, but there may be another.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 22:35, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Actually, religions is not generally subjected to defining issues. As long as you can find reliable sources that shows that the individual in question has publicly identified as part of a religion they can be put in religion categories. Christine M. Durham is a Latter-day Saint, and so categorized, but whether it has any connection to her notability is hard to say. Although, considering the way politics and society actually function in Utah, if she had been a non-Mormon justice in Utah that would be noted. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:50, 29 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Obvious keep. Yeah, whatever ridiculous stamp-collector's hair-splitting is going on above about "defining" and "passive" aside, some random Google searches of "<NAME FROM CATEGORY> holocaust" shows that, at least for the category members, that it's defined them. Something the stamp-collectors need to remember: Categories are supposed to serve readers; it's not supposed to be that Wikipedia serves categories.
Also, go to Library of Congress catalog. Not only is there a "Children of Holocaust survivors" subject heading, there are 95 sub-headings, with 254 hits total. These include "Fiction" (32), "Psychology" (25), and "Mental health" (8), as well as "Biography" subcats for "United States" (15), "Israel" (7), "France" (6), and single titles for Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, New Zealand, Poland, and Romania. So yeah, the Library of Congress seems to think -- and the number of titles shows -- that "Children of Holocaust survivors" is in some way defining. -- Calton | Talk 23:05, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Just because it has spawned a collection of literature does not mean it is defining to the people involved enough to justify the category. We have to draw lines, even the survivors of the holocaust is questionable as a distinct group, but children of survivors puts together too many unlike people to be workable. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:33, 29 January 2014 (UTC) reply
"Just because" isn't an argument, it's vigorous hand-waving designed to cover the lack of one -- kind of like your evidence-free opinion about how the category is not "workable". Your -- and the other stamp collectors's -- inability to jam the world into neat, hermetically sealed subject boxes does a disservice to readers, who are the actual users and beneficiaries of a categorization system. Once again, a reminder: Categories are supposed to serve readers; it's not supposed to be that Wikipedia serves categories. -- Calton | Talk 21:59, 29 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I am not a stamp collector and would appreciate if you stopped falsely calling me that. Your attempts to marginalize people with false labels are just out of line. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:34, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Comment Having looked at our article on Holocaust survivors I see little evidence that there is an agreed upon definition. It says "residents of the parts of Europe occupied by the Axis powers during World War II who survived until the end of the Holocaust (and the war). The majority of the survivors on this list lived through the war in Nazi concentration camps." The more I think about this, the more problematic it is. Does this mean that people who emigrated from Germany in 1934 were Holocaust survivors, although they left before the killing began in any concerted way? The term is much less concise than people who want to claim it has any bearing on the lives of the children claim. If this was used only for those people who had one parent who had actually been put into some sort of concentration or death camp, or in some other clear way actually been threatened by death, it might work. However it is unclear that the Jewish populations in places like Albania, which was clearly under Axis control for most of the war, were ever actually threatened. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:42, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
    • Albania was under Italian control, so fewer people were sent to German deathcamps than if it was controlled by Germany, but honestly, what would possess you, what in the world would possess you, to say it's unclear if they were ever actually threatened? During WWII? When every Jew in Europe was threatened? Amazing. This is my new benchmark comment for obtuseness. Read The Holocaust in Albania. The only reason the Jewish population increased by the end of the war is because people were fleeing Nazis in other countries. That's not unthreatened people. As refugees, at least three quarters of the Jewish population of Albania were people who survived the direct threat of the Holocaust through involuntary flight from their home countries, the ones that weren't murdered or deported, of course. I think you're proving Alansohn's point about ignorance and showing no understanding of what "threatened by death" meant at that time. I have no idea from your comment what you'd consider "really" threatened. __ E L A Q U E A T E 05:09, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
    • Wow!?! I hope that User:Johnpacklambert didn't mean what he just said. Is he actually arguing that the term Holocaust survivor "is much less concise than people who want to claim it has any bearing on the lives of the children claim." If as he insists there is "little evidence that there is an agreed upon definition" for what it means to be Holocaust survivor, I can't even imagine the shitstorm that would hit the world media when the next logical step is taken and Category:Holocaust survivors is nominated for deletion, with claims that the inclusion criteria are too vague as it is unclear who meets the "actually been threatened by death" minimum standard he proposes. If we aren't aroused back to common sense, remember that the last time we turned CfD into a mockery for the world to see was with Category:American women novelists when headlines read "Is Wikipedia Ghettoizing Female Writers?". I can't imagine the headlines when the folks who are seen as the victims of horrifyingly bad judgment at CfD are Holocaust survivors. Please clarify what you could possibly mean by this, and do it fast, because the more I think about this line of reasoning, the more problematic it is. Alansohn ( talk) 05:41, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
      • I am not going to let your personalized attacks cause me to back down, and I will not let Amanda Filipacci destroy intelligent discussion on Wikipedia. I will not let her bullying win. I pointed out that our article on Holocaust Survivor does not provide a clear indication of what the term means, and indicates that its actual contours are ambiguous. If you want to attack me for reporting that this is the case, so be it. It is clear that there is some disagreement on what the limits of the term is, and the attacks on my for not accepting that there is a consensus on the meaning of the term, when in fact there is not consensus on the meaning of the term, is not justified. I would have thought this term was limited to people who were formally detained, but it is clear that it is not. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 22:34, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
        • I was pretty clear which part of your statements were problematic, and it's not what you're talking about here. If you make a statement like this: However it is unclear that the Jewish populations in places like Albania, which was clearly under Axis control for most of the war, were ever actually threatened. you should address the criticism of it instead of immediately focussing on your other views. It would be good if you gave some indication that you understand how your comments minimized the threat people actually faced, because otherwise it's hard to pay attention to any views you might have about who's a real Holocaust victim. __ E L A Q U E A T E 00:09, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
          • You are trying to make me an offender for a word. The relationship between the Nazis and the intentions of the Italian authorities is complex. I may have stated my point ineffeciantly, but the attempt to attack me on it by you and Alansohn shows an extreme example of not assuming good faith. This is the impression of the state of things in Albania I got from a class on the Holocaust. The fact that you two are willing to try to twist what someone else said to marginalize their contribution to a discussion is disturbing. We get this sentence that describes the situation in Albania "As up to 1,800 Jews were living in Albania at the end of the war, it is estimated that the country emerged from the Second World War with a population of Jews eleven times greater than at the beginning." Taboos that make it so people cannot discuss an issue without being attacked as somehow inherently flawed and a bad thing, and that is what the reaction to my initial statement amounted to. You are trying to make me an offender for a word, instead of paying attention to what I was actually trying to say. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 00:16, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
            • No, I was offering you a chance to address what you said, as ignoring it after it was criticized made you seem like you were being callous. I don't think you're an offender because of any word. But if you don't explain your ideas, you just have a statement that looks like you've minimized horrible things that happened. I have, however, explained why the Jewish population increase in Albania is not some good news story of people untouched by war. If you were actually trying to say that people in Albania were the kind of people who don't fit a strict definition of Holocaust survivor, then you should be challenged on that idea. The idea, not the words you used to express it. If that wasn't what you were implying, then you need to be clearer than you actually were. __ E L A Q U E A T E 00:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
      • I think people need to read this line "Those listed here were, at the very least, residents of the parts of Europe occupied by the Axis powers during World War II who survived until the end of the Holocaust (and the war)." What is the minimum requirement to be a "Holocaust Survivor"? Actually the fact that we have created a list without providing referenced sources of what this is is more disturbing than people will admit. Can we provide referenced sources? Almost certainly. However the current definition as provided in the aritlce List of Holocaust survivors does not explain why any person living in Germany in 1945 could be exluded from the term. Of course, people will say even pointing this out is absurd. However, since more non-Jews were killed in the Holocaust than Jews, it is clear we can not just limit the term to Jews. So we have to present some criteria, and that has not been done. It is high time that someone work on actually producing a workable explanation of the term, as opposed to engaging in bullying to try to avoid any discussion of the fact that our article on the matter has a weak heading and has not addressed the meaning of the term. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 22:49, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
        • OK, I will admit that my statements about the situation in Albania were made without properly understanding the situation on the ground there. However the fact that the number of Jews in Albania increased significantly during the war, and the fact that people do mention this from time to time, makes it hard to realize that this is not a totally accurate situation on the ground. However the fact remains that the majority of people killed in the Holocaust were not Jews even by the Nazi definition of Jews, which included many, many people that did not self identify as Jews. How much persecution does someone have to have experienced to be a survivor of the Holocaust. Additionally, if we set that threshold low, than how do Holocaust survivors differ from other people who lived through real threats of being killed? John Pack Lambert ( talk) 00:23, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
          • Stop repeating that "more non-Jews than Jews" non-statistic phrase of yours as if it's just a fact or in any way significant to this discussion. If you compare the levels of mass tragedy by listing death tolls, it could go either way which group died in some theoretical majority, based on our sourced estimates and who you consider dying from the Holocaust and who died from the war. It's not a contest and you shouldn't make a point of it like we should therefore give less attention to any group because they weren't a simple majority. There's no indication anyone here would only include Jews and exclude all non-Jews from consideration of this category. List of Holocaust survivors already includes Jews and non-Jews, so this is a non-issue. You're not pointing out anything novel, and this is not leading anywhere helpful. The numbers of dead shouldn't be used to prop up an argument that there are too many theoretical survivors to be categorized. Beyond being tasteless, it's not a good argument as there aren't an overwhelming amount of articles listed at places like List of Holocaust survivors now. This category will also not be larger than any other category that currently exists because categories are only made out of articles we have, not potential millions we don't have. Consider stopping this tasteless speculation. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:04, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
            • You are misunderstanding the point. The main point is that a large portion of those who died in the Holocaust were not easily identifiable as parts of groups who were all destined for death under the Nazis. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 17:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
              • We categorize specific articles where it's clear and there is consensus for inclusion. There are clear cases of people who were undeniably Holocaust survivors. Do you disagree with this? It does not help the overall discussion to treat them like unicorns that we could never truly find a clear example or who we'd be really sure about. (And just because you were arguing some point doesn't mean you shouldn't be challenged on using examples that rely on distortions of what we know of the Holocaust. My criticism of your interpretation in your examples stands). __ E L A Q U E A T E 18:52, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. As outlined above ad naseaum scholarly sources treat this category of people as a defining characteristic. -- brew crewer (yada, yada) 02:46, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete a corollary of the notability isn't inherited concept is that categories aren't either; classifying people by various experiences of their parents is just a can of worms; next we'll have Category:Children of divorce, Category:Children of same-sex couples, Category:Children of notable people, Category:Children of lawyers, Category:Children of survivors of aircrashes, Category:Children of cancer survivors, Category:Children born posthumously, ad nauseum. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 06:57, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The difference is that the circumstances relates to a specific, relatively recent historical event, not a continually recurrent event across cultures, such as divorce, for example. Considering that Wikipedia is a resource that people use for research, such a category would appear to meet the relevant criteria, such as notability.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 19:38, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep Distinctive. I know that psychology sees this as defining people with certain problems. In my native country these people are considered war victims and they even have right to certain monetary restitution. Debresser ( talk) 10:00, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep being a child of a Holocaust survivor would obviously be considered a potentially significant formative factor. I don't think sources would fail to mention such a factor. Parents are commonly mentioned when describing children. This might apply to such factors as the socioeconomic status of the parents, and I think it would also apply to a factor such as "Holocaust survival". It is not hard to imagine that the effects of a traumatic experience (probably an understatement in the case of the Holocaust) would be transmitted to children. I think Google hits for the exact wording "Children of Holocaust survivors" shows a considerable recognition of the group of people described that way. Such a Google search shows that beyond literature on "children of Holocaust survivors" there are organizations of or pertaining to "children of Holocaust survivors". Bus stop ( talk) 13:20, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep revise to Unclear scope Considering that there is already a body of work on the topic, and that the degree to which belonging to the category would have had an informative impact on the individual in terms of the nature-nurture question, this would seem to be a category that Wikipedia should have, as it is likely that researchers looking to Wikipedia might benefit from the existence of such a category.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 17:53, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete I could see an argument that children of a survivor of the concentration camps etc may be more notable, but the current category is children of anyone who lived through wwII in an occupied area. Thats basically the entire population of France (and other occupied territories) for the boomer Generation. The more narrow topic (Children of camp survivors?) (but why not children of holocaust victims too?) is certainly a notable topic for an article, but I fail to see it as a defining characteristic of the individuals without specific sourcing for each person making indicating its relevance. Gaijin42 ( talk) 22:56, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Definition of Holocaust survivor As JPL notes, there are differing views on the definition of Holocaust survivor. Here are a couple:
  • US Holocaust museum: "The Museum honors as survivors any persons, Jewish or non-Jewish, who were displaced, persecuted, or discriminated against due to the racial, religious, ethnic, social, and political policies of the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In addition to former inmates of concentration camps, ghettos, and prisons, this definition includes, among others, people who were refugees or were in hiding." [6]
  • Social Security Agency: "Member of a group of people who were systematically persecuted and exterminated by the Nazis: EXAMPLES: Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, Blacks, Asian or Pacific Islanders]; Misstated his/her age to avoid: Persecution by the Nazis, or Confinement in Nazi concentration camps, or Extermination in Nazi concentration camps, or Other threats to life by the Nazis. [7]
  • Kinder Transport Association: "A Holocaust survivor is a person who was displaced, persecuted, and/or discriminated against by the racial, religious, ethnic, and political policies of the Nazis and their allies. The Kindertransport children are child Holocaust survivors. " [8]
  • Yad Vashem: "Philosophically one might say that all Jews alive by the end of 1945 survived the Nazi genocidal intention, yet this is too broad to be useful, as it lacks the distinction between those who suffered the tyrannical Nazi boot on their neck, and those who would have, had the war against Nazism been lost. At Yad Vashem we define Shoah survivors as Jews who lived for any amount of time under Nazi domination, direct or indirect, and survived it. This includes French, Bulgarian and Romanian Jews who spent the entire war under anti-Jewish terror regimes but were not all deported, as well as Jews who forcefully left Germany in the 1930s. From a larger perspective, some think of other destitute Jewish refugees who escaped their countries in front of the invading German army, including those who spent years and sometimes died deep in the Soviet Union, also as Holocaust survivors. No historical definition can be completely satisfactory. " [9]. Note that Yad Vashem does not consider non-Jews, victims or survivors, to be victims of "Shoah"; rather they are considered victims of Nazi-ism: "At Yad Vashem, we define Shoah victims as Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis or their accomplices during the years of Nazi power, i.e. 1933-1945. Many non-Jews were also murdered at the same time, but they are counted as victims of Nazism, not as Shoah victims"
  • This recent article points out the discrepancy that differing definitions can bring: [10] - a difference of 400,000 people who are considered survivors by one methodology but not survivors by another.
  • Given the various contested definitions of survivor, Wikipedia should likely adopt a broader version (e.g. including non-Jews), so something like the first definition seems reasonable to me. That said, as Gaijin points out, that means that Poles, Gypsies, Blacks, and many other groups in occupied Europe would be considered holocaust survivors by wikipedia, and thus their children would be considered members of this category. I think it's far too broad to make a useful category, and as mentioned before, this is not defining - most reliable sources, when they discuss these people, do not mention what their parents went through.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:35, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • For what it is worth most of the "blacks" involved are mixed-race children of Malian, Senegalese or other West African (primarily from French West Africa) fathers, and German mothers. Although, I have to admit I only know of specific German attempts to wide-out this population that had originated in the Rhineland. If they went after West African immigrants or their full or mixed-race children in France itself for example I do not know. I would say we need to go with the broad definition, but does someone whose father was put in a concentration camp because he was a Communist really have something in common with someone whose mother was thrown in a concentration camp because her parent were Jews, even though she was baptized as Catholic at birth? Considering that the Nazis sought to wipe out all Roma just as much as they sought to wipe out all Jews, excluding Roma would be problematic. Considering that the Nazis killed about as many non-Jewish citizens of Poland as they killed Jewish citizens of Poland, the inclusion criteria for Poles needs to be willing to include at least all those who were sent to prison camps. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 00:09, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Is there a terminology problem with the category? If it is to be broad in the manner described above, would something like "Children of victims of Nazi ethnic cleansing", or something along those lines be more accurate? Maybe a broad category with subcategories?-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 10:03, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
a tighter category could be Children of people who survived Nazi concentration camps, which would limit the list and focus it. As it currently stands, young children who were sent to England on Kindertransport early in the war and then had children 20 or 30 years later, their children would be eligible for inclusion in this category, because holocaust survivor is actually a pretty broad class. As JPL points out, Poles suffered greatly at the hands of the. Nazis but does that mean children of all Poles who survived should be members of this category?-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 15:41, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
I would accept that Category:Children of people who survived Nazi concentration camps would be a better name. Does anyone know, if we changed it to that name, would anyone currently in the category still be there. There is another oddity of this category though. If someone was 25 in 1930, and emigrated from Germany to the US, and they had Jewish parents who remained in Germany and survived until after 1945, they go in this category. However their connection to the Holocaust seems to be very different than someone who was not born until after WWII, and was raised by one or both parents who were holocaust survivors. The placement of this category as a sub-cat of Category:Children, seems to emphasize the being rasied by holocaust survivors aspect, but there are lots of children of holocaust survivors who only became such in adulthood. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 17:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Obiwankenobi / Johnpacklambert Before this goes horribly wrong for both the two of you and for Wikipedia as a whole, I will emphasize that the issues that the two of you are trying to push here go to undermining the entire structure of Category:Holocaust survivors, not merely the Category:Children of Holocaust survivors under discussion here. The attempts to put female authors into Category:American women novelists still left all of the women within the Category:American novelists structure, while your approach here would entirely eliminate any connection to any Holocaust-related category for a huge swath of the people now included. However stupid and flatfooted Wikipedia looked with regard to women writers and their supporters, we will look far more out-of-touch with the most basic sense of reality and decency by pursuing this bizarre line of reasoning that the lack of a universally accepted definition means that "it's far too broad to make a useful category, and as mentioned before, this is not defining". Building on the definitions supplied above, a Holocaust survivor should be defined as someone who 1) meets the definitions developed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or the Social Security Administration or Yad Vashem or the Kindertransport Association; or 2) defines themselves as a Holocaust survivor as evidenced in reliable and verifiable source; or 3) is described as a Holocaust survivor in reliable and verifiable sources. Expanding from there, the definition of Category:Children of Holocaust survivors is someone who has a parent who was a Holocaust survivor. I'm not sure how many books one needs to write to be considered as belonging in Category:American novelists, nor do I know if anyone has defined how long a book needs to be to be considered a novel; I can assure you that there is no generally accepted, hard-and-fast definition that is universally accepted to define a "novelist" for Wikipedia categorization purposes. If we can't come to an agreed-upon definition of Holocaust survivor, the inevitable deletion of Category:Children of Holocaust survivors and Category:Holocaust survivors that would be demanded by the approach that the two of you have been taking will make the brouhaha over women novelists look like a little girl's doll tea party compared to the inevitable firestorm of criticism and ridicule we will face once either or both of these categories is deleted. Even the way this is being discussed here severely strains the credibility of this entire process. Be prepared to step away from the abyss or come up with truly fantastic reasons for why these categories are not defining, with reasoning that will convince all participants here and those reading in the mainstream press that we are dealing appropriately and sensitively with this issue. Just some thoughts to consider before this goes horribly wrong for everyone involved. Alansohn ( talk) 06:33, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Dear Alan, we appreciate the (misplaced) concern, but you've gone a bit too far this time. Just relax, take it easy, no-one is proposing to delete the Holocaust survivors category. I was simply pointing out that in the broadest definition, holocaust survivors would include large portions of the populations of Nazi-occupied Europe, and being a child of one of those people is not defining. You have yet to produce any evidence to the contrary. I'd suggest you start with frequency counts, analyzing the people in this category and how often the subject of their parents is brought up when discussing them. I think you'll find the answer to be "rarely". I'd also point out that your histrionics over whether or not holocaust survivor is a debated term, are, frankly, lame. A simple google search demonstrates that many reliable sources have covered the challenges inherent in defining who is a holocaust survivor, so your attack on JPL was completely misplaced, uncalled for, and unfair. I suggest you drop the stick and walk slowly away, your continued contributions here are not helping advance a rational discussion.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 04:00, 3 February 2014 (UTC) reply
The lead of the article on the Holocaust would seem to problematize the assertion that the definition is settled or the term used uniformly by everyone writing on the topic. If that is the case, then using the category in a manner that includes everyone that anyone classifies along those lines would seem to present issues related to policies such as WP:WEIGHT, WP:DUE/ WP:UNDUE, etc. Simply put, there are categories of victims that don't even fall under "ethnicity", whereas I had been under the impression that the Holocaust referred only to the victimization of Jews by the Nazis.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 11:13, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
That's the problem Carol... If someone were to create "Children of survivors of the 1994 Rwanda genocide" or "Children of survivors of North Korean prison camps" or xxx, even if we could find organizations and so on devoted to these people, the categories would likely be deleted; if such categories *aren't* deleted, then per NPOV we should create a lot of them, to cover most of the major events of the past centuries - Armenian genocide is another one where "child of survivor" is regularly used. Here we have a scholarly article looking at parental styles of parents who survived the Khmer rouge atrocities: [11]. Ultimately, I think expanding this scheme to other events would simply lead to category clutter, and these things simply aren't defining for the people in question, no evidence has demonstrated that people in this category are regularly referred to as "child of holocaust survivors", in fact in most RS it's not mentioned at all. Thus, I think the best solution is deletion.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 04:12, 3 February 2014 (UTC) reply
First, this Wikipedia search of "child of Holocaust survivors" actually does return 20+ uses by itself, some duplicative, but which suggest even with those strict criteria it should be accepted. Usually I do prefer such stricter standards, so that "parents were Holocaust victims" is at least in a gray area. My main point is that all categories should have same criteria be it only "child of" or "parents were" or be it at least 4 category members or at least 10 category members. I'd hate to see a "child of Holodomor survivors" (or whatever) category with 10 BLPs using that phrase removed because a bunch of editors thought it diminished the importance of this category. Carolmooredc ( Talkie-Talkie) 21:25, 4 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep, per the keeps above but particularly Alansohn's. This term has a meaning, one not measured in the lack of subject area knowledge of some individually confusable Wikipedians - David Gerard ( talk) 15:05, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
    • Reply. That's a straw man. Nobody disputes that the term has a meaning; the main point of objection is whether it meets the central categorisation test of WP:DEFINING, with a subsidiary concern about the definition of "holocaust survivor". The discussion above confirms that the definition is is not clearcut, and it is uncivil to allege that the issue arises only out of a lack of subject knowledge. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:07, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Agreed In light of the fact that it has come to my attention that the scope of the category would appear to be too broad or somewhat indeterminate, the usefulness of the category as an expedient search query for research purposes seems to have been called into question. If the category is to be useful, it would appear that taxonomically there should be more than one level of category, perhaps with something like "Victims of Nazi persecution" as the superordinate category, with the "Holocaust" being defined in the more narrow sense as a subcategory, along with subcategories for other victims. If some schema like that is unacceptable, then given the definitional issues related to "Holocaust"/"Holocaust survivor" the category would seem to be problematic from a policy perspective. -- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 05:52, 3 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • The lead of the Wikipedia article is itself somewhat confusing, as per the following excerpts

    The Holocaust...was the mass murder or genocide of approximately six million Jews during World War II

    Some scholars argue that the mass murder of the Romani and people with disabilities should be included in the definition, and some use the common noun "holocaust" to describe other Nazi mass murders, including those of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet civilians, and homosexuals.

    Maybe the lead of the Holocaust article should be edited to reflect the use of the above supplied definitions proposed (in use?) for the category of Holocaust survivor.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 16:19, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
The hits for the google search you link to would for the most part seem to be to links not corresponding to RS, on the one hand, and insofar as Wikipedia should be considered as a type of database with respect to categories to be queried, one would think that there needs to be a fairly close correspondence between the content of RS and the definition of categories.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 09:02, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per the arguments of Drmies and IZAK. -- Yoavd ( talk) 07:55, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep Would also support more 'Children of' cats if that also has significant defining relevancy. -- Shuki ( talk) 18:17, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Introduced amphibians of Hawaii

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: LISTIFY and DELETE. - Splash - tk 22:13, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: That an animal species (e.g. Cane toad or House Finch) has been introduced to somewhere is not a WP:DEFINING characteristic of that species. One article ( Japanese White-eye in Hawaii) should be (and is) in "invasive" categories. DexDor ( talk) 07:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Pseudohistorians

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: NO CONSENSUS to delete. Probably the 'misuse' issue is best handled by pruning in this case. It is harder to handle the 'your pseudohistory is my history' problem, but perhaps this indicates in the direction of a considered rename if criteria for a suitable name can be established. In any case, neither problem warrants outright deletion in consideration of the weight balance of the debate. - Splash - tk 21:54, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply

propose deleting: Category:Pseudohistorians

Rationale: I looked at a number of articles in this category and almost none that I found have any mention of pseudohistory. Instead this category seems to be used as an attack category for writers with theories that are outside the current dogma. I think inclusion here is essentially subjective, as all it would take is a single "mainstream" historian saying 'that book is bogus pseudohistory' to merit categorization here. Our own article admits that pseudohistory is a pejorative term, and we should avoid labeling people with pejorative categories. I can't think of a rename that would work here; a list of 'People whose historical theories are not accepted by mainstream academics' or something could work but this doesn't work as a category.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 04:26, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply

  • Keep - no doubt the subjects don't like it, but it's an accurate label and useful to the reader. Seriously, it's where David Irving belongs - David Gerard ( talk) 13:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Rename to Category:Writers on fringe historical theories or something. That many of these theories are really in the field of history (or pseudohistory) is questionable. What Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall is doing in this category needs explaining in his article, if he does belong. Johnbod ( talk) 14:45, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - it's a useful (and defining) category for historians / writers on history whose theories aren't accepted by the mainstream, or a significant part of the mainstream. No strong feelings about a rename, since that's what pseudohistory means: it's pejorative and dismissive, but that's the mainstream reaction to anything different (not just in history). But if a rename is helpful then User:Johnbod's seems fine. Eustachiusz ( talk) 16:46, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete This is a way to marginalize some people because the thrust of historical scholarship has gone in a different way. The inclusion of Margaret Murray just shows that it is best to avoid this label at all. While much of her views on witch-craft and anti-witch-craft trials has been rejected, many later scholars think that she was right that there is a real group involved in some witch-craft trials, and would only reject her view that they are essentially pagan, since many seem to have been believing Christians with a different view of the super-natural than the local Christian hierarchy. We can not be NPOV and apply this label in an even way. At a minimum we should purge many people from the list, but with changing views of history, one eras top historian will become the pseudo-historian of the next. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:24, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • keep, potential rename I appreciate JPL's concerns with the neutrality of the category name; however, we absolutely do need to have some category for people pushing historical nonsense. I would agree that Murray represents a particular problem in that her historical sins are ancillary to her primary religious interests, so perhaps a category name that does imply these people were primarily historians might serve better. Mangoe ( talk) 14:07, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
What would the inclusion criteria be though? Historians whose work has been critiqued by other historians? Historians who wikipedia editors have decided are full of bunk? I think you'd struggle to find the name pseudohistorian applied to most people in this category. I think this is tricky, because we need to be neutral. As JPL points out, yesterday's historian can become today's pseudohistorian. Many of the "classic" historians (or scientists in any field, social or otherwise) have produced theories that now seem dates and antiquated. -- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 15:59, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Well, Murray is a good example of the problem: she never worked professionally as a historian in the first place, but the line between anthropology and history is pretty blurry. Someone like Charles Berlitz, who wrote popular books on paranormal subjects with a lot of bad history in them, also defies categorization as a "historian", pseudo- or otherwise, on different grounds. On the other hand characterizing Gavin Menzies as a pseudo-historian (in either sense) is a fair statement. And it seems to me to make sense to group them all together as people whose fame/notoriety was based on their promulgation of spurious historical claims. And I would agree that we should exclude those proponents of mainstream historical ideas which fell out of favor, but from what I see those sorts aren't being included. Thus I see a category here, but the more I consider this the more strongly I am convinced that it needs a better name. Mangoe ( talk) 16:59, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep History is an (rigorous) academic discipline with standards related to what can be considered as valid "knowledge" in the field. Too many would-be pop historians just skew information with respect to some worldview they aim to promote. Such writing represents promotion of an ideology in the guise of history, not history.
Recent trends embrace a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach, yielding hybrid types of "knowledge" when done right, but that a fairly rare occurrence, an another topic. I would suggest that user's finding the category inaccurately applied raise the issue on the article talk page and follow standard dispute resolution procedures.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 17:27, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The problem is, any inclusion in this category would likely be subjective - e.g. up to the editor's opinions. We already have people saying "Well, X clearly belongs, but Y's theories were discredited but that doesn't make them pseudohistorians". Yes obviously contents can be disputed on a per-name basis, but in order the category to remain, we need inclusion criteria. So, what are they? People whose writings have regularly been described by RS as pseudohistory? People who have published theories that are at the fringe of current academic thinking? I think a rename is in order as well, if it's kept, to something capturing the fringe nature of these theories. This is all good meat for an article but problematic for categorization, esp of living people. For example, one could easily put Bill O'Reilly or Sarah Palin in here for their many books and theories which stretch the limits of widely accepted truth.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 19:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep; seems to be a relevant category, and maybe even a defining category for many members. If individual members aren't properly sourced, then take those ones out of the category. bobrayner ( talk) 19:30, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep I find this a bit hard to understand. It's a term used by professional historians so why should we avoid using it as the name of a category? Geoffrey of Monmouth is called a pseudo-historian in the book Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History [12] which is clearly a reliable source (see for instance this review. Like any category it may sometimes be misused, but that is no reason to get rid of it. Yes, editors should not be deciding who is a pseudohistorian, but also they should not be deciding who isn't - we rely on our sources for that. The category is a navigation aid to help people find authors who have been called pseudohistorians by reliable sources and should be neither deleted nor renamed. If we need another category for fringe writers who aren't referred to as pseudohistorians then that's fine although we probably have enough. Dougweller ( talk) 21:39, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
How many RS have to call you a pseudohistorian before you qualify for membership here? One? Ten? What if one source says you are, and the other says you aren't? How do we decide? In an article, we can deal with this by covering both sides, but for a contentious/defaming category like this, it's a zero sum game - the person ends up in the cat, or doesn't. That's the problem.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:47, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Here's an example: [13] - peer reviewed journal, which calls Clifford Geertz a practitioner of pseudo-history; Geertz is a respected professor and "the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States". But some people think some of his theories are full of sh*t. Should we add him to the category because a RS said so? -- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:53, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Theory is not history. Like I said above, some people try to interpret events in a forced manner through the application of a theory, which may or may not be correct, and the result is not always viable as knowledge in the field of history. It may be valid in the field of social theory, for example, as a failed theory that has led to further developments in theory. Geertz is a cultural anthropologist, not a historian. It would be relevant to the field of intellectual theory as it represents an important contribution that (mis)informed peoples understanding of a certain phenomenon in a schematic manner until it was proven errant. That said, I don't think that one errant theory explicated in terms of a historical paradigm would qualify Geertz for inclusion, because his theory and proposal were just errant, not assertions made on false premises and in denial of countervailing arguments. When he made his proposals, they made sense to some people for quite some time, but it wasn't the sort of knowledge like, say, British Israelism, which is based on false premises and supported by spurious pseudo-knowledge proposed in various fields, while its adherents assert that it is true history despite all the academic refutations.
Doug is correct, professional historians use the term to describe purveyors of history that is based on false premises. -- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 13:10, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. One scholar's pseudohistorian is another scholar's model; this can't be applied neutrally unless we apply this to anyone who's been called a pseudohistorian, and that would be as unhelpful as a "People accused of [crime]" category. "Pseudohistorians" is less useful, less defining, less common in the literature, etc. than "terrorists" or "dictators", but Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 April 27 deleted Category:Terrorists, and Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 May 22 deleted Category:Dictators. Meanwhile, consider the "Father of History", Herodotus — he's eminently reliable for certain things, generally reliable for many others, and completely disbelieved for others. Would we put him in here if a single author called him a pseudohistorian? Finally, "pseudo"-anything has a thoroughly negative perspective; it is inherently incompatible with maintaining a neutral point of view. Nyttend ( talk) 23:29, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
RS calling Herodotus a pseudo-historian here: [14]. It's like rule 34 - take a popular, well-known historian, and I can find you a RS that calls some part of their work pseudo-history. He has now joined the category, with the others...-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. WP:LABEL is quite clear that words beginning with "pseudo" are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject, in which case use in-text attribution. WP:ASSERT reinforces that: "Wikipedia articles should not assert opinions but should assert facts". Describing someone as a "pseudohistoroian" is a value judgement on their work, and the body text of an article should of course report the fact that some people hold that view of the subject; but that opinion should be attributed, as should any contrary opinions.
    Categories cannot attribute the judgement, so a categ such as this is asserting an unattributed opinion, contrary to all our guidelines.
    There is a further problem that a category such as this is WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE. Just how poor does a writer's scholarship have to be to push them over the line from "bad historian" to "pseudohistorian"? With categories, we can't nuance the labelling by noting that "X and Y called him a sloppy researcher, while Z called his work pseudohistory; however W defended him as a rigorous scholar pursuing an unorthodox path"; we either apply the label or we don't. That's why categories are such a poor tool for conveying this sort of judgement. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:25, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
That is a somewhat specious argument, as the validity of a category isn't negated simply because it is somewhat difficult to apply. The application of the category is largely a question of WP:COMPETENCE, and if there is such a thing as a categories notice board, then specific cases could be addressed there.
Professional historians use the term to describe people whose propositions mimic history in form only, and is otherwise based on false premises. There are many subjects as a whole that are considered to be psuedohistory because they are based on false premises, such as British Israelism, for example. I would suggest that people read the article historical method, philosophy of history, etc. Wikipedia editors do not have the clout to override the statements of academic historians published in reliable sources; moreover, if they use the terms pseudohitory and pseudohistorian, then those should obviously be viable categories.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 13:10, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
No, its not a matter of WP:COMPETENCE. It's a matter of subjectivity which leads to a divergence of views about the application of this prejudicial term, and policy requires that we do not use use such prejudicial language without attributing it. The reasons I have advanced above are the same as those which led to the deletion of Category:Terrorists or Category:Homophobes.
If there is a WP:COMPETENCE issue here, it may lie in the reluctance of some editors to study the relevant policies. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:05, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
It seems to me that there are too many uncontroversial instances of pseudohistory to ascribe "subjectiveness" to assigning such an attribute. Once again, British Israelism and other such thoroughly refuted "histories" clearly fall under the category and the exponents of that pseudohistory are pseudohistorians. There are too many people trying to use Wikipedia to promote such false doctrines as actual history, so I think that the existence of the category is important.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 17:42, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
@ Ubikwit: With any such topic, there are usually a number of cases which are uncontroversial; sometimes it is a large number. However, hard cases make bad law. The problem is the large number of borderline cases, which cause time-wasting disputes and leads to edit wars between good-faith editors.
I quite agree that some people try to promote false history, and that assessmment of their work should be asserted and attributed with due prominence in the article. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:36, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per BHG, if another useful category can do some of this work then create it. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 00:33, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep or rename The arguments against it seem to focus on how it could be abused as a category and as a way to violate policy rather than the usefulness of the category itself. I think Wikipedia:SUSCEPTIBLE has some relevance here. Category:Confidence tricksters is a category that could be horribly subjective in the ways described here, but it's still a useful and legitimate category. I don't think articles should be included as editorial attacks, but there are clearly people who have purported to be historians and have been reliably, specifically, and consistently discredited by a field of reliable sources well beyond Wikipedia editors. Alternately I could see a rename/move to a scheme like Category:Scientific misconduct, Category:Plagiarism controversies, Category:Hoaxes in science, Category:Academic scandals which all contain articles about specific individuals of all types, without naming it as their occupation. But Pseudohistory should be considered a categorizable topic, including those individuals who are broadly and reliably connected to it by sources, as Category:Pseudoscience or any of the other categories I've mentioned. __ E L A Q U E A T E 19:17, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Comment I think many of the protectors of this category need to study Wikipedia's NPOV rules. The role of Wikipedia is not to pass judgment, and this is especially true of categories that lack the nuance needed. Also, categories are hard to maintain because there is no way to get notices of additions, so it is hard to police against malicious and petty additions of people who do not belong. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:55, 29 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Again, Wikipedia:SUSCEPTIBLE. All articles have the same amount of protection against any type of vandalism, in whatever form it takes. I'm sure the same people who would police other changes in an article would notice the addition of a category. It's not an extra job. And you might want to take a look at the NPOV rules yourself. NPOV is quite clear that it should not be used to give pseudoscience undue weight and that classifying things rejected by the scientific community as a fringe theory or pseudoscience is actually demanded, not discouraged, by NPOV. __ E L A Q U E A T E 23:59, 29 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Elaqueate, this discussion is not about categorising theories; it is about categorising people. It is also not about science, but about a humanities discipline, which uses different methodologies.
WP:WEIGHT requires that the text of the article fairly represents all significant viewpoints, and if someone is an intellectual fraud that should be spelt out in the lede of the article. You want the category system to provide a warning abut the article's contents, but that is not what categories are for, and it's a function they are very poor at because the category list is right at the bottom of the article. Look at Zecharia Sitchin: the lede is very clear about how discredited his work is. If the aim is to warn readers that Sitchin's work is thoroughly unreliable, then the lede does that job very well, while the huge criticism section sets out the problems in detail. The lack of a category would in no way undermine the very clear thrust of the article. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:30, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The pseudoscience/fringe theory guidelines are contained in the same policies. It includes more than science, it includes things like historical revisionism. I could have said pseudoscholarship of course, but all my points stand. There are many categories that list the specific people who somehow promote bad theories, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, various crimes; I don't see this as a barrier to having a category of this type. I don't want the category to provide the warning, I want the article to educate per policy, including warning of fringe if needed per NPOV, and I want the category to navigating similar topics. A lack of a category would make it harder to find articles, including ones with warnings we find valuable, neutral, and sourced. I never said any category should take the place of what's in the article. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:38, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep if for no other reason than Margaret Murray. 76.107.171.90 ( talk) 02:03, 30 January 2014 (UTC) reply
    • Reply @ 76.107.171.90: That's an excellent example of how this sort of category can be misused. The article Margaret Murray mentions the string "pseudo" only in the category listing; in other words, she has been added to the category on the basis of some editor's opinion rather than because that's the label applied to her by the balance of reliable sources. Sure, there are several refs about criticism of her work, and I assume (without having checked) that they are reliable sources. But the article provides no sourced assertion that someone other than a Wikipedia editor has called her a pseudohistorian, so applying the category is a clear breach of WP:LABEL.
      (BTW, I hold no view either way on Murray's work. She may well have been a terrible scholar, and I have no interest in either defending or criticising her work. But the article should conform to Wikipedia's policies, and at the moment it doesn't.)-- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:39, 30 January 2014 (UTC) reply
      • I agree that Margaret Murray is probably a misuse of the category, as she seems to have been an recognized scholar working in the field of history with a historical theory that was after-the-fact picked up by religious people. But WP:NPOV makes this distinction here and when it links here. Calling topics "conspiracy theories" is also controversial, should be handled with care, and reserved for those the academic community explicitly rejects per here. I know it's a pain to work out the difference, and to judge who was within a scientific community and who wasn't, but NPOV says that effort has to be made in order to remain truly neutral. If some articles don't belong, some do, including the confessed; Yuri Dmitrievich Petukhov, Gérard_de_Sède or the widely and specifically denounced such as Zecharia Sitchin, Lobsang Rampa, Oscar Kiss Maerth or Paul Dunbavin or whose theories are recognized as based on source-recognized non-history like Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels or W. Raymond Drake. Again I could see a merge up to Pseudohistory to avoid calling it an occupation, but for some of these people it was a source-recognized occupation. And if people insist that history began with cannibalistic space-ape-astronauts and insist it's based on historical rigor, then they should be categorized as reliable sources would categorize them, per NPOV. We have an active duty to not give the impression they might be on to something, when reliable sources tell us they're actually rejected. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
        • Elaqueate, you make several inappropriate assumptions.
          Firstly, the links you supply refer to science, but history is not a science. It shares some attributes common to other academic disciplines, such as not falsifying evidence, but historical research is a very different process to science. Judging history as if it was a science leads to serious misunderstandings.
          Secondly, one of those misunderstandings is the notion that pseudohistory is a clearcut issue; it is not, as can be seen from the discursive nature of the criteria set out in pseudohistory.
          Thirdly, you appear to think that it is somehow the job of the category system to warn readers that someone is bad at what they do. That's entirely wrong; the category system is a navigational tool, not a labelling mechanism to alert readers that someone is regarded by their peers as bad at their job. That sort of information belongs in the text of the article, where it can be attributed and referenced per WP:LABEL. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs)
          • The links I provided covered fringe theories and other fringe subjects beyond pseudoscience. This also applies to other fringe subjects, for instance, forms of historical revisionism.... Second, I don't misunderstand it to be a clearcut issue; I know it's not and said as much. I said it was a pain to judge. But so is determining what's jazz and what's not, what's a conspiracy theory and what's not. We shouldn't get rid of categories based on the possibility we might have to read sources or come to consensus on individual inclusion. Third, it is the job of an article to portray pseudoscience and fringe subjects as such, attributed and referenced, per WP:NPOV, including the controversial subject section of WP:NPOV. We should not call people frauds if it's not in the sources but we also don't categorize Astrology a science even when astrologers do. Those articles that are attributed and referenced as a fringe subject should be categorized to help navigation as I don't see any advice in WP:CAT that we should not categorize controversial things. __ E L A Q U E A T E 03:10, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
            • Sourcing is not the issue. All categories require sources; nothing should be in an article or a category unless sourced. That's policy, per WP:V.
              The problem is that is rarely pejorative to call someone a jazz player, even if they would style themselves differently. However, it is deeply pejorative to call someone a pseudohistorian, which is why WP:LABEL is clear that any such label must be used only by asserting that a particular source has applied it. That's why Category:Terrorist organizations was deleted at CFD 2006 June 12, and Category:Terrorists was deleted at CFD 2009 April 27. Instead we have Category:Organizations designated as terrorist, which is a container category of categories which attribute the label in accordance with WP:LABEL. If someone identifies significant sources which make a similarly wide set of assessments in this field, then we could quite appropriately have Category:People designated as pseudohistorians by Foo. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:09, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
              • You're completely right that WP:LABEL does not forbid pejorative labels, and explains they should only be used with care and when widely sourced. I don't see any disagreement here. We also agree that things should have sources. But we have many other categories beyond "Terrorist" that would clearly be pejorative if assigned to the wrong article. WP:NPOV does not have the same guidance about Terrorism that it does for Fringe Theories. Identifying Conspiracy Theorists is broadly encouraged in a way that labelling people terrorists never will be. I was fairly warm to the idea that the category could be changed to not identify the people directly, but I'm starting to see that things like Conspiracy Theorists and Pseudoscientists are current and broadly supported categories. I'm sure there's disputes about who should be categorized, but that doesn't seem to have stopped people from using them. Maybe you should take this to the WP:NPOV level? Or maybe there's something to your suggest category scheme, I'll have to go look at the terrorism one. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:38, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
                • Please read WP:LABEL . The point is not that such labels should be sourced; everything should be sourced. The point is that they should be used only when explicitly attributed. That does not happen with the category. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:35, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
I read that, and it still seems to me that the logical course would be to have the category--useful for people doing research here on Wikipedia--and direct disputes as to the characterization of a given topic as belonging to the category or not, and not against the category itself. The category does not represent a subjective judgment, but a reflection as to whether a given set of statements meets the academic criteria to be considered as belonging to the discipline of "history" or not, and further as to whether something that is presented as history qualifies as being "pseudohistory" or not. Academics use the terms because history is a rigorously defined discipline, and the fact that it is considered to present authoritative accounts of events, etc., is the reason that some dubious people try to appropriate the category to present false information in a form that mimics history without fulfilling the rigorous criteria. And therefore, it is important that Wikipedia reflects the use as found in academia here.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 16:06, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
I read it too. WP:LABEL says that, in articles, there should be in-text attribution. Organizing material based on the article text is treated differently in policy. We sometimes use pejorative labels in Article Titles, disambiguatory links, etc. when they have in-text attribution in the article they direct to. H:CAT advises that A category name can be any string that would be a legitimate page title. Wikipedia:POVTITLE says that Resolving such debates depends on whether the article title is a name derived from reliable sources or a descriptive title created by Wikipedia editors. Article titles do not need in-line attribution; they need to direct to in-article in-line attribution derived from reliable sources. Category names are under Article title guidelines, which don't involve in-line citation, (but certainly must point to where it can be found).
And terrorists aren't the only example here. A category containing a label that can be considered pejorative such as Pseudoscientist (as an example, not saying history is equivalent to science) was upheld at CFD 2006 August 12 and CFD 2007 June 2 and Category:Confidence tricksters was upheld at CFD 2010 June 12. This doesn't include the many categories that contain possibly pejorative terms that haven't faced challenges at all. __ E L A Q U E A T E 16:39, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. One person's history is another's pseudohistory. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 07:00, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per Dougweller and although I'd compromise with renaming per Johnbod and Mangoe. Chris Troutman ( talk) 07:08, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per Ubikwit. Term is used in field, provides distinction made by authorities in field. - - MrBill3 ( talk) 19:28, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Uruguayan women jurists

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: keep. The Bushranger One ping only 02:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Merge. The categorization by gender is innecesary in this area of knowledge. Zerabat ( talk) 02:40, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
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Category:Terms for males

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: NO CONSENSUS. Probably best is to follow something along the lines of DexDor's suggestion to improve the categorisation of the articles such that these categories become naturally unnnecessary. - Splash - tk 22:01, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Propose deleting:
Nominator's rationale: The articles in these categories are about substantive topics, not about terminology. Note that the sibling Category:Terms for females was deleted at CFD 2013 September 16.
Editors may want to listify these categories before deletion. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:34, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose straight deletion. Many of these articles (e.g. Dude) do (at least in the lead) appear to be about a term rather than about the concept that the term refers to and hence should stay under Category:Slang etc. Similarly, many of the articles (e.g. Boy) should not be removed from Category:Males. The articles should be checked (e.g. fixing text per WP:REFERS and correcting categorization). DexDor ( talk) 06:59, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Listify Wikipedia is a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. Categorization should be based on what articles are, not what they are called. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:33, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep until you sort out the nomination. The sibling category of Category:Slang terms for men‎ is Category:Slang terms for women, which has not been deleted, and seems to be alive and thriving. As I said when I created the former in November 2010‎, it is pretty unthinkable that we should have a category of slang terms for women, and not the equivalent one for men. I recommend that either they both go or they both stay, but the present nomination makes the overall situation pretty unclear. -- Nigelj ( talk) 23:23, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
    • @ Nigelj:: good catch. Category:Slang terms for women‎ added in this edit. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:54, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
      Well, it makes more sense now, but the rationale is that one cat from a set of four is gone, so the other three must follow. I don't know much about the categorisation system, its purpose, or its aims, and I do understand how Wikipedia articles are not dictionary entries, i.e. that they are about the subject stated, not about the words used in the title. I see the point in this in an article like Global warming, that we are writing about the warming of the planet, not about the phrase global warming, how it has been used and misused, or how it relates, in science and the popular media, to the term climate change. But if we have articles like Beach bunny, Bimbo, Soccer mom, Beefcake and Hooray Henry, surely the lines are sufficiently blurred? Surely, if these are not just to be redirects to woman and man, then they have to have some relevance to the existence of the terms themselves? I'm not concerned, personally, about the content of such articles, but it still strikes me that if there is any purpose to categories, I would have thought that using cats to acknowledge that these are all slang terms for people, and grouping them as such must be of benefit to some readers, at some point. There's a thought, how about Category:Slang terms for people? -- Nigelj ( talk) 15:27, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
      • @ Nigelj: please read the rationale before commenting on it. (Hint: the deletion of another category is noted. The substantive reason is in the first sentence). -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:08, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom & precedent. Is " Dead white men" really a term for males - or is this cat a catchall for anything that may contain the word "men"? Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 07:02, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_January_25&oldid=1127488352"
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< January 24 January 26 >

January 25

Category:Alpine countries

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: result. The Bushranger One ping only 02:42, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: This category currently (incorrectly) puts the article about France under Category:Central Europe and (because it contains country categories) incorrectly puts the articles such as Brittany under Category:Alps. Categorizing countries by a mountain range that (in some cases) is only a small part of the country has some of the same problems that categories such as "Mediterranean countries" had ( CFD). For info: There is a list at Alpine states. DexDor ( talk) 21:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete per nom. France and Italy are quite large countries but neither one is regularly described as an alpine country. A list would be fine but doesn't work as a cat.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 01:30, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom and per Obiwankenobi. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 22:21, 30 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 06:50, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Saddam Hussein family

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: rename. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:53, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rational, rename per Tulfah family. Charles Essie ( talk) 18:15, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Separation barriers

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: NO CONSENSUS to merge as nominated. There are various potential ways forward suggested. The final one, which covers a wider restructuring, could probably be handled best by editorial work elsewhere, eventually returning to CfD for cleanup. - Splash - tk 22:22, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Sorry, let me try this again. This virtually unpopulated intermediate category serves no useful function -- other than WP:OC#SHAREDNAMES -- that I can see between the eponymous Israeli construction and other geopolitical or security walls and fences that appear in the various parent categories. (Including Category:Obstacles, nominated below.) Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 15:48, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • It doesn't; the Separation barrier article is about the concept, not specifically about Israeli barrier(s) so shouldn't be moved into that category. DexDor ( talk) 22:13, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • The article selectively cites examples of where walls/fences have been called a "separation barrier," to advance idea that this is a distinct entity. I guess I'm not so convinced that I think Category:Separation barriers should even exist. Now, others might disagree and start applying it to other cited examples in that article, such as the Saudi–Yemen barrier, etc. But no one has, to date. The Israeli example is the category's sole example, currently. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 22:24, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • That article is rather muddled (see WP:REFERS), but it does appear that (for example) Belfast's peace walls are within the scope of the topic that it's trying to cover. DexDor ( talk) 23:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Oh, I didn't see that one. Interesting, too, that the Irish example is categorized under Category:Border barriers, despite the fact that the wall divides neighbourhoods and is no more a recognized "border" than Israel's, it seems to me. Anyway, some things would seem to need to be done, here, and we have this and the "obstacles" one below, as starters. And of course judged separately, on their respective merits. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 23:08, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Per my comments below, the bottom line is what the sources say in the relevant articles, not what WP:OR interpretations editors may choose to put on various articles. Carolmooredc ( Talkie-Talkie) 17:24, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
A couple editors have kept our eyes on this to remove more such WP:OR examples. at this diff and this diff I have used one The Guardian reporter's one-time use of "separation barrier" about the growing use of walls/barriers/etc worldwide in its proper context, reverting a recent effort to define the whole article by it. Also removed a section on an Indian "separation barrier", since the source called it a "separation wall".
Creating Category:Israeli separation barriers would remove the temptations to change the article's thrust with dubious sourcing and to make this a WP:OR super-category. Carolmooredc ( Talkie-Talkie) 04:35, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Progress templates

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: Speedy deletion. —  Malik Shabazz  Talk/ Stalk 23:09, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Completely superseded by Category:Wikipedia progress templates. I already moved all of the templates in this to the other category. Not even sure why this was created. APerson ( talk!) 14:54, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Is it possible that you don't recall that you had created it on January 14? Anyway, now that it's been emptied by you, I've placed a {{db-author}} tag on it, with explanation. If I understand correctly, this should be fairly simple to resolve, soon. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 19:53, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Guided missiles by conflict

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: RENAME ALL as per nomination. - Splash - tk 21:45, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Propose renaming
Nominator's rationale: We don't generally categorize mass-produced items by which conflicts they have been used in ( example CFD) as for some types it could lead to them being in dozens/hundreds of categories (and some may not be used in any conflict). Thus, these categories, which each just contain a category for the Cold War, should be renamed. It will then be possible to add corresponding subcats for the post-Cold War period. DexDor ( talk) 14:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Rename all. In some previous discussions, I did argue argue that some mass-produced weapons were defined by their use in particular conflicts, but there was a clear consensus not to do so, because of the risk of category clutter. The standard model for military hardware is now to categorise by era, and these categories should be renamed to conform. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:51, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete all. Even 'by era' categorisation has problems, and at the moment none of these have other than "Foo of the Cold War" subcategories. If kept they should be renamed per nom, but I believe that this entire scheme has insuperable problems and, therefore, it's best for this category tree to be felled. - The Bushranger One ping only 22:54, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
If you think the entire scheme (up to Category:Military equipment by period?) should be deleted then please explain what the "insuperable problems" are in a separate discussion. DexDor ( talk) 06:35, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Examples of misuse of statistics

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:32, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: This category appears to be being used to categorize articles in which there is some mention of the misuse of statistics (e.g. the Bicycle helmet article was in this category). For articles that are about misuse of statistics (i.e. for which it's a WP:DEFINING characteristic) there's Category:Misuse of statistics. DexDor ( talk) 13:55, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • I think what you are suggesting is a set category - the title of which would/should be "Misuses of statistics" (this is currently the only "Examples of ..." category in the whole of enwiki). However there aren't so many articles in Category:Misuse of statistics that a separate category is needed and if there were it would be better to have subcats for misuse of statistics in particular fields (politics/commerce/science etc). DexDor ( talk) 06:22, 26 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete unless someone can point to a number of articles which are themselves specific examples of and about misuse of statistics.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk)
  • Delete When a gubernatorial election article is in here, we know it is not being applied right. Articles on election are on elections, they are not examples of anything. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:32, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 06:51, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Obstacles

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: delete. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:10, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: 4 (of 6) parent categories of this category are about road transport, but none of the pages in the category are about road transport - one is a redirect to an aviation article, one is about any obstacle (that page probably should be a disambiguation page or a redirect to Wiktionary), and two are about geopolitical separation barriers (not roads). The articles are in other (more suitable) categories. DexDor ( talk) 13:44, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. Also, I seem to recall this category once being applied to landforms like rivers, yet I don't see a previous CfD, so perhaps I'm mistaken. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 16:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete this is essentially a performer by performance category - we should describe the thing a it is -eg a wall, vs what it does (obstructs). Also the scope is too broad and could cover anything which obstructs something else.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 01:36, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:French military firefighters

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: merge. Note that the second category's content is already in Category:Romanian firefighter personnel, a subcategory of Category:Firefighters, so it was only merged to the second target. The Bushranger One ping only 02:47, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: WP:SMALLCAT - These categories each have just one member and it is very unlikely that we're going to get a lot of people notable for being French/Romanian military firefighters. There is no "Military firefighters by country" categorization scheme for this to be part of. DexDor ( talk) 13:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Children of Holocaust survivors

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: NO CONSENSUS. I am going to keep my closure note relatively simple (for a change!). Clearly the weight of the debate is toward keeping. For me to nevertheless delete, the keeps would have to be seriously ill-founded in fact, policy, consistency, rebuttal, etc. But they obviously are not. Or, the deletes could have such a strong policy-based thread that it is nevertheless reasonable to import a wide-community consensus from the policy/policies into this debate and outweigh the keep side. That is not the case. On the other hand, the deleters' significant salient points relating to non-defining characteristic and non-inherited notability are very fairly argued, but not deconstructed enough to lead to a straight 'keep' outcome. We therefore have a case where the community has not sufficiently converged on a consensual outcome as to the disposition of this category, and we default to taking no action from this debate. - Splash - tk 00:33, 6 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: This category is categorizing people by a life experience of one/both of their parents - which is not something we normally do in WP. The main way we categorize people in WP is by what makes them notable (e.g. using a nationality-occupation category). We also categorize by some standard biographical characteristics (e.g. year of birth) - generally characteristics that place every person in one, and only one, category. This category is neither a reason-for-notability category nor a standard biographical characteristic category. This is the only "Children of ... survivors" category and we don't, AFAICS, have similar categories for children of survivors of pandemic/earthquake/war/terrorism. There are other "Children of <type of parent>" categories, but AFAICS those are all for where the parent is a monarch, president, pope etc - i.e. an occupation that makes the parent so notable that their children may inherit some notability. It may be argued that someone's parent(s) being Holocaust survivor(s) influenced the person (the subject of the WP article) - that may be of sufficient importance to be mentioned in the article text, but IMO it's not so important that it's a WP:DEFINING characteristic (and an exception from how we normally categorize); we don't, for example, categorize people by the religion or social status of their parents. For info: I've checked a sample of articles in this category and most don't mention this characteristic in the lead and all were in more appropriate categories. This category could be listified. Note: This category was previously discussed in 2011 resulting in a rename. DexDor ( talk) 08:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete this is not defining of the people in question. Being a holocaust survivor certainly is defining and often a source of fame/notability, but being the children of holocaust survivors while obviously influential on ones life is not in of itself defining.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 16:18, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete This is too weak a link. The time between when these people were born and when their parents survived the holocaust could be a lot. Plus, some of these people will be those who were alive during the holocaust, but due to where they lived or other circumstances did not directly suffer through it. Too many things to make these not a coherent group. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 19:06, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Strong Keep I strongly disagree with the nominator on this subject and the continuing staggering display of ignorance is breathtaking. The previous CfD had only serious discussion of an alternate name, and nothing has changed since them. The second generation of survivors of the Holocaust have been the subject of numerous published works, including several books on the subject listed by this Google books search. The work of Art Spiegelman and his Maus books is just a small part of what is treated as a strong defining characteristic of the individuals involved and is frequently used as a means of categorization by the media and the second generation survivors themselves. This Google search demonstrates a breathtaking variety of organizations, articles and other sources directly relating to this rather strong defining characteristic. Alansohn ( talk) 03:21, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
You often make these sorts of points, which to me suggest a misunderstanding of "defining". Defining is a characteristic that 3rd party sources regularly describe a person as having. Defining is *not* 1) Something that is important to that person 2) Something that person is a member of a club for 3) Something that articles have been written about 4) Something that had an important impact on that person's life. The vast majority of "Children of holocaust survivors" are not notable and have no articles here, and those who *do* have articles here are notable almost always for other reasons; as such, when those people are described in the media, the fact that one or both of their parents survived the holocaust is, more often than not, not mentioned. And I know you hate this argument, but OTHERSTUFFCOULDPOTENTIALLYEXIST - like [1], which is an organization devoted to child survivors of the Holocaust, but it wouldn't make sense to defend Category:Child holocaust survivors based on this group any more than it makes sense to defend "Children of Holocaust survivors" based on the existence of books and media about them. While no-one will dispute that books and films and so on have been written about children of holocaust survivors, again, this is not enough to justify a category - it is likely quite more than enough to write an article (if one doesn't exist already). What's still missing is whether the subjects who are in this category are regularly described as such, and from the searches I've done, it doesn't seem to be the case.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 05:23, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep I do find Alansohn's rationale convincing. And on a personal note, the comment above about how being a Holocaust survivor is often "a source of fame" distasteful. I know it's not the intention, but the connotation is that somehow these poor souls are cashing in. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 03:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Struck fame above. wasn't my intent to suggest they were cashing in, obviously.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 05:01, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. Categorising people by the life experiences of their parents, however appalling those experiences, is a recipe for massive clutter in articles. The fact that there is a body of literature on the topic is a necessary criterion for such a category, but it is not a sufficient criterion. A WP:DEFINING characteristic is one that reliable sources routinely mention about the subject, or which is routinely mentioned in the lede of the wikipedia article. Neither of those tests is met in this case. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 05:41, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete People who are important as children of survivors write about it or are activists or do things that connect them directly back to holocaust subjects and categories. But a look at the larger contents of the list, which is almost all of it from what I have found in sampling it, reveals a remarkably heterogeneous group, up to including people I didn't even know were Jewish. As a rule the only connection is a sentence that says the the subject was born of one or more holocaust survivors. Notability is WP:NOTINHERITED from non-notable people who were caught up in a notable event. Mangoe ( talk) 16:40, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. For many, membership in this category is a life-defining characteristic. It needs to be established, of course, but in essence it's not more or less trivial ("defining of the people in question") than Category:People born in Ohio or Category:1978 births. Being born in 1978, as opposed to 1977 or 1968, can be life-defining, but is not inherently so. Obviously the article needs to make a verifiable case that someone's life is in part guided by having been the child (or descendant) of a Holocaust survivor, but that doesn't make the category itself worthless. Drmies ( talk) 17:20, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Well, yes, that's rather the point. The sheer variety of the membership and the relatively small numbers where there is any mention that the holocaust figures in their lives tends to argue that the categorization is of something that isn't significant enough. You could make the same argument about children of any parents who have been through a traumatic experience, but the proof is in the pudding. Right now my reading is that there is this assumption that the holocaust is so much more important and traumatic and determining that it must affect the next generation and perhaps those after. But right now what I see is that Art Spiegelman is the anomaly in the group, not the norm. Mangoe ( talk) 17:56, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Did you look at the lengthy list of publications linked to by Alansohn? I can understand a delete vote based on Wikipedia guidelines but to state that Art Spiegelman is somehow an "anomaly" seems to me to be willfully blind to examples provided here. Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 18:02, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
No, no, no, you are completely missing the point. There is obviously room for a category of "children of holocaust survivors who write about it", but that's not this category. What we have here is a category of people whose lives may or may not make some reference to their parent's experiences—but when I look at the articles, I see mostly "not". Mangoe ( talk) 18:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
DrMies, as I pointed out above, there is a huge difference between "life-defining characteristic" and "defining for the purposes of wikipedia (I'm sure you realize we live in a bubble here... :) ). Examples of other life-defining characteristics include people who are married, people who are divorced, people who are orphans, people who lose one or more of their children to terrible childhood illnesses, people who are given up for adoption and live with a nasty foster family, people whose grandparents were slaves, people whose parents died on the Titanic, people who lost family members in 9/11, people whose family was wiped out in the Tsunami, and so on. An infinite number of things happen to people that greatly impact their lives, and I would never argue that having parents who went through the holocaust was anything short of life-changing, but the fact that we have organizations and membership groups and academic literature around orphans, etc does not mean that we should create a category of Category:Orphans; for the same reason all of the membership orgs for children/descendants of holocaust survivors does not mean that the notable people we talk about in wikipedia are DEFINED by this. Wolf Blitzer is a great example - in how many articles about Wolf does it mention that he is the son of holocaust survivors? It doesn't even make his official bio: [2]. Another example is Evelyn Lauder, who accomplished a great many things - in this official bio/obit her parent's escape from the Nazis was not mentioned: [3] (and indeed, she herself, having been born in 1936 in Austria, could technically be termed a holocaust survivor herself) The other examples you give, e.g. year/location of birth are basic biographical data and are more or less exceptions to the DEFINING rule, since we do them for everyone no matter what sources say.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 19:42, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • @ Drmies: you say that "the article needs to make a verifiable case that someone's life is in part guided by having been the child (or descendant) of a Holocaust survivor". However, many things may have some role in guiding a person's life, and the criteria are much tighter than "in part guided by", as set out at WP:DEFINING. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:58, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • BrownHairedGirl, and Obi, I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm probably less than transparent. My point goes toward the other end. I do not believe that "Dutch" in "Category:Dutch scientist" is automatically a defining characteristic. If someone is "born" Jewish, whatever that means these days, but is not a practicing Jew, we don't categorize them as such. We don't categorize "heterosexual", rightly or wrongly, because I suppose we still take it for granted--whereas one's heterosexuality (if that's what one has) is more defining than many, many other things, like whether one was born in 1977 or 1978. I would argue for tighter guidelines across the board, which in turn allows me to say "keep the category for those articles where it can be argued to have made an impact on what makes them notable in the first place for encyclopedic purposes"--or something like that. But Obi and I have covered this ground before, I think. Still, this "relevant" thing is what I'm sticking to. So that would probably mean pruning the list and stricter verification and talk page discussion, which is probably not what a lot of editors want. Drmies ( talk) 22:52, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I think there is some inconsistency that you're hitting upon - not all categories are equal, and some are just placed regardless of what sources say - like nationality, date of birth, location of birth, etc. Yes, there are scientists, and there are Danish scientists; people may say Nils Bohr is a famous physicist but they won't always say he was a famous Danish physicist - but we basically give an exception to the "defining" rules to by-nationality subdivisions - e.g. if you're nationality X, and you do job Y, you can be put in category XY even if no-one ever really describes you in that way. Similarly, we do that for ethnicity - if you're jewish or african american, and you play football or write novels, you get placed in {ethnicity} {job} even if no-one really defines you in that way - it suffices that sufficient members of your GROUP are defined in that way for the category to survive. (Side response: if you are born Jewish but not practicing, there is a well-developed tree of Category:People of Jewish descent, fwiw). Sexuality is different; we don't categorize heterosexuals, but we *could* categorize them if there was a profession where being heterosexual was itself defining or out of the norm; for example I could imagine something like Category:Heterosexual actors in gay porn films although I'd rather not... That's why, for example, we have Category:Male nurses but not Category:Female nurses and so on, and it's why we don't have Category:White novelists but we do have Category:African-American novelists. The main area where your "relevancy" argument comes in is for jobs and religious/political affiliations - people have many jobs over their lifetime, but most aren't defining - which is why all actors are not in the Category:Restaurant staff category, so for jobs we definitely do have a sort of "relevancy" test. The same applies for religion - many people are Catholic, but most people aren't so-categorized - it really comes down to how often they are described as Catholic in RS, so your relevancy test comes in there as well. The same would go for various opinions - many people are anti-communism or anti-fascism, but few are really defined as being anti-communists. Finally, I think you're using "defining" in the sense of "it defines who you are as a person", which is not the standard here.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:09, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Let's take another example: Bernice Eisenstein, who wrote a book about being the child of holocaust survivors. We have a redirect for her, but an article could probably be written. Now, above you seem to suggest, keep the category, but purge of everyone except those for whom this is truly relevant. This is a little problematic, in my view, as most such set-categories should be fully populated, because they're not about jobs or political views or so on, which have shades of defining-ness, it's instead a basic biographic category - in this case, someone clearly is, or isn't the child of a holocaust survivor, so if it's kept its rather hard to keep people out. But anyway, is Bernice defined by being the child of holocaust survivors? I would argue, no. What she is defined by is the fact that she is an author, a poet, and that she has produced a Category:Works about the Holocaust. Now, we don't have a category for Category:Memoirists of the holocaust but perhaps one should be created - we do have Category:Historians_of_the_Holocaust, and there is obviously a large body of work beyond history where the central theme is the holocaust, done by survivors, descendants of survivors, and even people who have no direct connection - so that *could* be a workable category for some of these people - e.g. Category:People who produced works about the holocaust - we have Category:Personal_accounts_of_the_Holocaust, so perhaps this could be divided into one category for personal accounts of the holocaust, and another category for people who wrote such accounts, there is a whole tree of Category:Writers_by_subject_area into which this could fit.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:24, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep On the premise that it is very far from every biography that bothers to mention 'subject's parents survived X' but with this "X" they regularly do, I'll go with defining enough. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 23:15, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
A simple search found these three, Varaz_Samuelian, Rabo_Karabekian, Arthur_Pinajian, all children whose parents survived the Armenian genocide - there are many google results, and works/books/groups about such children as well: [4]. At some point, we have to be consistent, so if this category is kept, we'd likely have to create Children of Armenian genocide survivors, and Children of Rwandan genocide survivors, and Children whose parents survived Pol Pot's death camps, etc. We have to be careful to avoid systemic bias as well, because many such descriptions/etc may not be in english or other european languages. -- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:39, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
That does not strike me as problematic: if biographers think the parent's 'survival of ___' is something to be regularly mentioned in their children's bio, then that's fine -- it's also, as you suggest, going to be limited to a few sets of cataclysms. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 00:06, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I'm not sure I agree. While there has been some important research in the news of late about mass killings outside the scope of Nazi death camps, it was the institutionalized, industrialized nature of the Holocaust that is unique. Entire communities were uprooted and transported across great distances. It was an event that reached across national borders, in all parts of the Nazi-controlled world. People were processed in a way that we not seen before or since. So I for one am not in agreement that this means we must then create other such children of survivor categories. I am not the child of a Holocaust survivor nor do I know what it means to be an Armenian, Rwandan, etc. But there is such a strong body of work about the child of Holocaust survivor experience. Could we not ensure via a category description that it is only be added to bio articles when there is evidence that it is a notable association? Shawn in Montreal ( talk) 18:16, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
In the Rwandan genocide, they were able to kill off more people, faster, than the Germans, using mostly machetes and clubs - it's a rather terrible fact that they were more efficient at killing than the Nazis (it didn't last as long, so fewer people overall were killed). This source says it was the most efficient mass killing since Hiroshima [5]. No-one disputes that the Holocaust was unique and horrible, but so were other genocides, even in this century. Admittedly, there is not the same amount of books/material/testimony about the Armenian genocide, or the Rwandan, or Cambodia, etc, but sources nonetheless exist in spades for all of these, and there are groupings of survivors and groupings of children of survivors, so per NPOV we should create cats for them all if we have sources describing people as children of "survivor of horrible thing" - if this category is kept.
As to your final point, that's the argument I'm having with Drmies and EQ; what would it mean to remove someone from this? What is a "notable association"? Suppose you have person X, who in their biography, explains that their parents escaped from Poland in 1939 after being stuck in the ghetto, while the rest of their family stayed behind and was killed, so they are really children of holocaust survivors and carry those memories. But, in the rest of their life, they don't mention it, they don't join conferences, they don't write further about it - they just note it for the record, a few other RS note it, and life goes on. I maintain it would be irredeemably cruel to remove this category from the bottom of their page, because it means a wikipedia editor is saying "Well, Jim, I know your parents barely made it out alive, but you didn't do enough during your life to merit this category. Sorry". Being a child of a holocaust survivor is not a job or a profession or even a belief. It is a simple binary fact, true or false.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 22:23, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per the arguments of Drmies, and in the spirit that categories are not meant to be exhaustive or comprehensive in order to be useful. We don't put every person who fits a characteristic of a category into that category, just those who have a noted connection with it. Not every person who writes poetry is put in Poets, etc. How will we determine who's in and who's out? How will we navigate these subtle distinctions and subjective qualities and determine relevant candidates? The same way we do now; individual editors will decide if the category applies to actual individual articles, some time may pass, and they'll be supported or opposed by other individual editors through consensus and discussion. I don't like the argument that a category should be removed because we'll somehow be compelled to fill it with every article or that keeping one in-use category will mean we'll "have to" create any or every similar category. And every category has the possibility that an article may be placed in it without sufficient whatever, or that there might have to be discussion to determine inclusion of borderline cases. Those scenarios are surmountable and everyday problems facing all categories, not valid arguments to delete. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:49, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Drmies's argument is that the characteristic is "not more ... trivial ... than Category:People born in Ohio or Category:1978 births", but, as Obi has explained above (and is mentioned in the nom) there are two types of categories - (1) those categories to directly help readers/editors find articles (e.g. nationality-occupation categories), (2) categories used by bots (and maybe by category intersection). The first type of category usually has no more than a few hundred members (any more and it is usually split). The second type can have thousands of members (e.g. Category:1978 births has more than 10,000 members). Each article can only be in a few categories of the second type (e.g. a person can only have one year of birth). Categories of the first type should be restricted to the things that make people notable (usually their occupation) - otherwise every one of hundreds of facts in an article (e.g. that someone was an orphan) could be categorized (see essay WP:DNWAUC). DexDor ( talk) 07:32, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I think I may have an explanation for EQ's argument above and why this is not like poets. In practice, we seem to be all inclusive on categories when membership is passive - eg where you can't actively do anything to become more of Z. Thus, someone born and raised in 1988 in Chicago as the daughter of a president can't *do* anything to make those statements about them more true- X born 1988, X from Chicago, X is African-American, X is the daughter of a president. However, X can actively pursue different things - become a poet, or a race car driver, or a politician, or a fervent anti-communist, and these things if done enough will become defining for that person. In a sense, we give everyone a free pass on things they can't change anyway, and I can't think of any biographical categories that we decline to add when someone doesn't have a choice in the matter. Thus EQs statement that categories are not meant to be all inclusive is simply wrong - some set categories, indeed most, are intended to be all inclusive, because addition to a category is the equivalent of assertion of a fact - eg X is a poet may be more or less true depending in the societal threshhold for dubbing someone a poet, but someone is never going to be *less* of a child of holocaust victims. If this cat remains, it would be absurd to remove people, as that's essentially saying "well, I know your grandparents were killed at auschwitz and your mother barely survived, but not enough RS have mentioned it therefore we're removing you from the category. It's absurd, as the person in question can't do anything to make the statement 'X is the child of holocaust survivors' more or less true. I'm stunned that you'd actually want editors to have such a debate. No- either the category is deleted, or completely filled with every notable child we have sourcing for. No middle ground would be reasonable nor fair to these people.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 12:29, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
What a muddle we have here. I'm stunned that you'd actually want editors to have such a debate. It's not debating the facts of a person's life, it's about category inclusion. I'm surprised (but not stunned) that you're arguing that non-inclusion of an article in a certain category is essentially the same as denying the actual person has a certain characteristic. This seems the opposite of what you would usually argue. You questioned the appropriateness of categorizing Wolf Blitzer in a category such as this and no one should assume you were in any way commenting on the actual experience of his parents. The inclusion of articles in Category:Holocaust survivors is by individual assessment. This doesn't make it deficient or non-useful as a category.
The idea that involuntary characteristics, by themselves, make us treat categories as exhaustively inclusive doesn't work, either. Most sub-cats in Category:People by medical or psychological condition and the Crime Victim cats are not inclusive, they have notable and unquestioned examples. We're not saying any subject not included has never been the victim of crimes, or that any possible subject not included in here must have parents that weren't missionary enough. Not all categories are comprehensive: For some "sensitive" categories, it is better to think of the category as a set of representative and unquestioned examples... __ E L A Q U E A T E 15:20, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
As you may recall from category-gate, inclusion or exclusion in a category has taken on political dimensions and non-inclusion in a category is indeed equivalent to making a statement of fact about someone's life (eg X isn't in American novelists therefore X isn't a real American novelist) What criteria would editors use to say Wolf is not enough of a child of survivors to merit inclusion? It's not workable, as Wolf can't do anything to merit inclusion in this category - he was or wasn't born in year X, and his parents did or didn't escape the Holocaust. It's binary, and there isn't room for debate. The question is, is this characteristic in general defining, and for the vast majority of notable people in this category, we haven't found it to be so. As for Holocaust survivors and other victim categories, again these are different than the other more basic biographical cats as they are about something that happened to you vs something that you simply are. That said I don't think anyone would dispute inclusion in any arbitrary crime category for people who were provably victims of that crime , we simply don't classify on all crimes since some are considered common and not defining - eg we don't have people who were robbed I don't think, but we do have people who were killed. The example of Wolf was intended to demonstrate that this cat isn't defining for him, as a high profile person about whom much is written but his official bio leaves this fact out - it was not intended to say he shouldn't be in this cat if it's kept - indeed if kept it should be filled up to the brim for everyone where we have sources. Now one other wrinkle is what is the definition of holocaust survivor - the common image is of people who were in the death camps but made it out alive, but there were plenty of people who escaped Europe, so that's a bit trickier - if your parents moved the family to New York in 1929 does that make them holocaust survivors? Anyway that's a different topic to be discussed elsewhere.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 15:47, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I still don't see the distinction you're making between a person that had no choice about being the victim of a crime, a person who had no choice about the parents they ended up with, and a person who has cancer. Some notable people are noted for having a characteristic and we categorize by it, and we don't always include everybody. Wolf Blitzer, as an example, has arguments for inclusion whether it's comprehensive or non-comprehensive, as it's a characteristic that has been repeatedly reported about him by reliable sources, whether as a notable cause for becoming interested in international news or as a characteristic of special significance when he interviews the David Dukes of the world, "official bio" notwithstanding. Your category-gate one seems like a red herring, as that doesn't look like it was trying to settle if Any person who wrote a novel should always be included as a noted novelist but rather how are they sub-categorized when they are included. It's probably best to leave that example aside. It's the same with your "robbed and killed" categories, as the difference between the two is one of gravity, not how individual articles are included. I don't think anyone would dispute inclusion in any arbitrary crime category for people who were provably victims of that crime. This statement strains credulity a bit, but I'll just suggest that when someone is non-notably (but provably) a victim of a crime (or subject to an involuntary but arguably-only-existential condition, narrowly defined) we sometimes don't categorize them as such and the world does not cave in. It's not an all-or-nothing scenario and certainly not an insurmountable barrier to having the category. I suspect this category would become more populated if kept, but not beyond its specificity and uncommonness. And you should certainly add all of the people you can find consensus for, don't think I'm suggesting otherwise. __ E L A Q U E A T E 18:03, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
EQ says: "I still don't see the distinction you're making between a person that had no choice about being the victim of a crime, a person who had no choice about the parents they ended up with, and a person who has cancer." I'm not making a distinction. In all those cases, the categories should be filled up fully with whoever qualifies. We don't always apply the WP:DEFINING test to category membership, in many cases in fact we do not - for people it really comes down to, in my experience, things where the person has agency - for those we use WP:DEFINING.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 22:59, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Obi's attempt to separate categorization characteristics into active and passive characteristics (i.e. whether it was the persons choice) is, IMO, unhelpful. For example, we categorize people by cause (and date) of death - some causes (e.g. murder, natural disaster) would (using Obi's definitions) be passive, some (e.g. suicide) would be active and some (e.g. dying whilst taking part in a high risk activity) may be somewhere in between. If we categorize people by the cause of their death then we shouldn't have different rules for different causes of death depending on how much choice the person had in their death. There is however, a distinction to be made between those categories that every biography article should have a standard set of (e.g. year of birth) and the reason-for-notability characteristics (where the number depends on how many fields the person has achieved notability in). DexDor ( talk) 20:38, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I think you misunderstand. I was trying to elaborate why certain categories, e.g. basic biographical ones, should be filled up fully, and they are, in practice: date of birth, where X is from, nationality, gender, and any relevant family relationships (e.g. son of a King, daughter of a president). These are passive characteristics, and we would never *remove* someone who is born in 1988 from the 1988 category (nor would we remove someone who died in 2013 from the "Died in 2013" category. Your death example is bad, because that's a basic biographic category - everyone dies, and everyone who is dead should be categorized by their means of death, if we have a category for the cause (we don't always). The point is, for most "passive" categories, wherein the person doesn't really have a choice in the matter, inclusion is a simple question of a single RS; if a single RS says that person X is blind, then we can place them in Category:Blind people - we don't need every source to mention that detail - in a way it's an exception to WP:DEFINING, on an individual level. OTOH, if a single source says person X wrote a great poem in high school and is a wonderful poet, we would not add them to the Category:Poets accordingly - it takes more. Looking at actual practice, jobs, religious beliefs, and political beliefs are all subject to WP:DEFINING; but descent/ethnicity, sexuality (if we have RS establishing that you are LGBT), year of birth/death, means of death, where you're from, and the few rare "child of" categories are all put as a matter of course and it would be extremely bizarre for someone to be removed from any of those cats. I personally think the reason is "passive" vs "active" membership, that's the best explanation I could find, but there may be another.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 22:35, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Actually, religions is not generally subjected to defining issues. As long as you can find reliable sources that shows that the individual in question has publicly identified as part of a religion they can be put in religion categories. Christine M. Durham is a Latter-day Saint, and so categorized, but whether it has any connection to her notability is hard to say. Although, considering the way politics and society actually function in Utah, if she had been a non-Mormon justice in Utah that would be noted. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:50, 29 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Obvious keep. Yeah, whatever ridiculous stamp-collector's hair-splitting is going on above about "defining" and "passive" aside, some random Google searches of "<NAME FROM CATEGORY> holocaust" shows that, at least for the category members, that it's defined them. Something the stamp-collectors need to remember: Categories are supposed to serve readers; it's not supposed to be that Wikipedia serves categories.
Also, go to Library of Congress catalog. Not only is there a "Children of Holocaust survivors" subject heading, there are 95 sub-headings, with 254 hits total. These include "Fiction" (32), "Psychology" (25), and "Mental health" (8), as well as "Biography" subcats for "United States" (15), "Israel" (7), "France" (6), and single titles for Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, New Zealand, Poland, and Romania. So yeah, the Library of Congress seems to think -- and the number of titles shows -- that "Children of Holocaust survivors" is in some way defining. -- Calton | Talk 23:05, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Just because it has spawned a collection of literature does not mean it is defining to the people involved enough to justify the category. We have to draw lines, even the survivors of the holocaust is questionable as a distinct group, but children of survivors puts together too many unlike people to be workable. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:33, 29 January 2014 (UTC) reply
"Just because" isn't an argument, it's vigorous hand-waving designed to cover the lack of one -- kind of like your evidence-free opinion about how the category is not "workable". Your -- and the other stamp collectors's -- inability to jam the world into neat, hermetically sealed subject boxes does a disservice to readers, who are the actual users and beneficiaries of a categorization system. Once again, a reminder: Categories are supposed to serve readers; it's not supposed to be that Wikipedia serves categories. -- Calton | Talk 21:59, 29 January 2014 (UTC) reply
I am not a stamp collector and would appreciate if you stopped falsely calling me that. Your attempts to marginalize people with false labels are just out of line. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:34, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Comment Having looked at our article on Holocaust survivors I see little evidence that there is an agreed upon definition. It says "residents of the parts of Europe occupied by the Axis powers during World War II who survived until the end of the Holocaust (and the war). The majority of the survivors on this list lived through the war in Nazi concentration camps." The more I think about this, the more problematic it is. Does this mean that people who emigrated from Germany in 1934 were Holocaust survivors, although they left before the killing began in any concerted way? The term is much less concise than people who want to claim it has any bearing on the lives of the children claim. If this was used only for those people who had one parent who had actually been put into some sort of concentration or death camp, or in some other clear way actually been threatened by death, it might work. However it is unclear that the Jewish populations in places like Albania, which was clearly under Axis control for most of the war, were ever actually threatened. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 02:42, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
    • Albania was under Italian control, so fewer people were sent to German deathcamps than if it was controlled by Germany, but honestly, what would possess you, what in the world would possess you, to say it's unclear if they were ever actually threatened? During WWII? When every Jew in Europe was threatened? Amazing. This is my new benchmark comment for obtuseness. Read The Holocaust in Albania. The only reason the Jewish population increased by the end of the war is because people were fleeing Nazis in other countries. That's not unthreatened people. As refugees, at least three quarters of the Jewish population of Albania were people who survived the direct threat of the Holocaust through involuntary flight from their home countries, the ones that weren't murdered or deported, of course. I think you're proving Alansohn's point about ignorance and showing no understanding of what "threatened by death" meant at that time. I have no idea from your comment what you'd consider "really" threatened. __ E L A Q U E A T E 05:09, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
    • Wow!?! I hope that User:Johnpacklambert didn't mean what he just said. Is he actually arguing that the term Holocaust survivor "is much less concise than people who want to claim it has any bearing on the lives of the children claim." If as he insists there is "little evidence that there is an agreed upon definition" for what it means to be Holocaust survivor, I can't even imagine the shitstorm that would hit the world media when the next logical step is taken and Category:Holocaust survivors is nominated for deletion, with claims that the inclusion criteria are too vague as it is unclear who meets the "actually been threatened by death" minimum standard he proposes. If we aren't aroused back to common sense, remember that the last time we turned CfD into a mockery for the world to see was with Category:American women novelists when headlines read "Is Wikipedia Ghettoizing Female Writers?". I can't imagine the headlines when the folks who are seen as the victims of horrifyingly bad judgment at CfD are Holocaust survivors. Please clarify what you could possibly mean by this, and do it fast, because the more I think about this line of reasoning, the more problematic it is. Alansohn ( talk) 05:41, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
      • I am not going to let your personalized attacks cause me to back down, and I will not let Amanda Filipacci destroy intelligent discussion on Wikipedia. I will not let her bullying win. I pointed out that our article on Holocaust Survivor does not provide a clear indication of what the term means, and indicates that its actual contours are ambiguous. If you want to attack me for reporting that this is the case, so be it. It is clear that there is some disagreement on what the limits of the term is, and the attacks on my for not accepting that there is a consensus on the meaning of the term, when in fact there is not consensus on the meaning of the term, is not justified. I would have thought this term was limited to people who were formally detained, but it is clear that it is not. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 22:34, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
        • I was pretty clear which part of your statements were problematic, and it's not what you're talking about here. If you make a statement like this: However it is unclear that the Jewish populations in places like Albania, which was clearly under Axis control for most of the war, were ever actually threatened. you should address the criticism of it instead of immediately focussing on your other views. It would be good if you gave some indication that you understand how your comments minimized the threat people actually faced, because otherwise it's hard to pay attention to any views you might have about who's a real Holocaust victim. __ E L A Q U E A T E 00:09, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
          • You are trying to make me an offender for a word. The relationship between the Nazis and the intentions of the Italian authorities is complex. I may have stated my point ineffeciantly, but the attempt to attack me on it by you and Alansohn shows an extreme example of not assuming good faith. This is the impression of the state of things in Albania I got from a class on the Holocaust. The fact that you two are willing to try to twist what someone else said to marginalize their contribution to a discussion is disturbing. We get this sentence that describes the situation in Albania "As up to 1,800 Jews were living in Albania at the end of the war, it is estimated that the country emerged from the Second World War with a population of Jews eleven times greater than at the beginning." Taboos that make it so people cannot discuss an issue without being attacked as somehow inherently flawed and a bad thing, and that is what the reaction to my initial statement amounted to. You are trying to make me an offender for a word, instead of paying attention to what I was actually trying to say. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 00:16, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
            • No, I was offering you a chance to address what you said, as ignoring it after it was criticized made you seem like you were being callous. I don't think you're an offender because of any word. But if you don't explain your ideas, you just have a statement that looks like you've minimized horrible things that happened. I have, however, explained why the Jewish population increase in Albania is not some good news story of people untouched by war. If you were actually trying to say that people in Albania were the kind of people who don't fit a strict definition of Holocaust survivor, then you should be challenged on that idea. The idea, not the words you used to express it. If that wasn't what you were implying, then you need to be clearer than you actually were. __ E L A Q U E A T E 00:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
      • I think people need to read this line "Those listed here were, at the very least, residents of the parts of Europe occupied by the Axis powers during World War II who survived until the end of the Holocaust (and the war)." What is the minimum requirement to be a "Holocaust Survivor"? Actually the fact that we have created a list without providing referenced sources of what this is is more disturbing than people will admit. Can we provide referenced sources? Almost certainly. However the current definition as provided in the aritlce List of Holocaust survivors does not explain why any person living in Germany in 1945 could be exluded from the term. Of course, people will say even pointing this out is absurd. However, since more non-Jews were killed in the Holocaust than Jews, it is clear we can not just limit the term to Jews. So we have to present some criteria, and that has not been done. It is high time that someone work on actually producing a workable explanation of the term, as opposed to engaging in bullying to try to avoid any discussion of the fact that our article on the matter has a weak heading and has not addressed the meaning of the term. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 22:49, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
        • OK, I will admit that my statements about the situation in Albania were made without properly understanding the situation on the ground there. However the fact that the number of Jews in Albania increased significantly during the war, and the fact that people do mention this from time to time, makes it hard to realize that this is not a totally accurate situation on the ground. However the fact remains that the majority of people killed in the Holocaust were not Jews even by the Nazi definition of Jews, which included many, many people that did not self identify as Jews. How much persecution does someone have to have experienced to be a survivor of the Holocaust. Additionally, if we set that threshold low, than how do Holocaust survivors differ from other people who lived through real threats of being killed? John Pack Lambert ( talk) 00:23, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
          • Stop repeating that "more non-Jews than Jews" non-statistic phrase of yours as if it's just a fact or in any way significant to this discussion. If you compare the levels of mass tragedy by listing death tolls, it could go either way which group died in some theoretical majority, based on our sourced estimates and who you consider dying from the Holocaust and who died from the war. It's not a contest and you shouldn't make a point of it like we should therefore give less attention to any group because they weren't a simple majority. There's no indication anyone here would only include Jews and exclude all non-Jews from consideration of this category. List of Holocaust survivors already includes Jews and non-Jews, so this is a non-issue. You're not pointing out anything novel, and this is not leading anywhere helpful. The numbers of dead shouldn't be used to prop up an argument that there are too many theoretical survivors to be categorized. Beyond being tasteless, it's not a good argument as there aren't an overwhelming amount of articles listed at places like List of Holocaust survivors now. This category will also not be larger than any other category that currently exists because categories are only made out of articles we have, not potential millions we don't have. Consider stopping this tasteless speculation. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:04, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
            • You are misunderstanding the point. The main point is that a large portion of those who died in the Holocaust were not easily identifiable as parts of groups who were all destined for death under the Nazis. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 17:37, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
              • We categorize specific articles where it's clear and there is consensus for inclusion. There are clear cases of people who were undeniably Holocaust survivors. Do you disagree with this? It does not help the overall discussion to treat them like unicorns that we could never truly find a clear example or who we'd be really sure about. (And just because you were arguing some point doesn't mean you shouldn't be challenged on using examples that rely on distortions of what we know of the Holocaust. My criticism of your interpretation in your examples stands). __ E L A Q U E A T E 18:52, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep. As outlined above ad naseaum scholarly sources treat this category of people as a defining characteristic. -- brew crewer (yada, yada) 02:46, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete a corollary of the notability isn't inherited concept is that categories aren't either; classifying people by various experiences of their parents is just a can of worms; next we'll have Category:Children of divorce, Category:Children of same-sex couples, Category:Children of notable people, Category:Children of lawyers, Category:Children of survivors of aircrashes, Category:Children of cancer survivors, Category:Children born posthumously, ad nauseum. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 06:57, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The difference is that the circumstances relates to a specific, relatively recent historical event, not a continually recurrent event across cultures, such as divorce, for example. Considering that Wikipedia is a resource that people use for research, such a category would appear to meet the relevant criteria, such as notability.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 19:38, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep Distinctive. I know that psychology sees this as defining people with certain problems. In my native country these people are considered war victims and they even have right to certain monetary restitution. Debresser ( talk) 10:00, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep being a child of a Holocaust survivor would obviously be considered a potentially significant formative factor. I don't think sources would fail to mention such a factor. Parents are commonly mentioned when describing children. This might apply to such factors as the socioeconomic status of the parents, and I think it would also apply to a factor such as "Holocaust survival". It is not hard to imagine that the effects of a traumatic experience (probably an understatement in the case of the Holocaust) would be transmitted to children. I think Google hits for the exact wording "Children of Holocaust survivors" shows a considerable recognition of the group of people described that way. Such a Google search shows that beyond literature on "children of Holocaust survivors" there are organizations of or pertaining to "children of Holocaust survivors". Bus stop ( talk) 13:20, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep revise to Unclear scope Considering that there is already a body of work on the topic, and that the degree to which belonging to the category would have had an informative impact on the individual in terms of the nature-nurture question, this would seem to be a category that Wikipedia should have, as it is likely that researchers looking to Wikipedia might benefit from the existence of such a category.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 17:53, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • delete I could see an argument that children of a survivor of the concentration camps etc may be more notable, but the current category is children of anyone who lived through wwII in an occupied area. Thats basically the entire population of France (and other occupied territories) for the boomer Generation. The more narrow topic (Children of camp survivors?) (but why not children of holocaust victims too?) is certainly a notable topic for an article, but I fail to see it as a defining characteristic of the individuals without specific sourcing for each person making indicating its relevance. Gaijin42 ( talk) 22:56, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Definition of Holocaust survivor As JPL notes, there are differing views on the definition of Holocaust survivor. Here are a couple:
  • US Holocaust museum: "The Museum honors as survivors any persons, Jewish or non-Jewish, who were displaced, persecuted, or discriminated against due to the racial, religious, ethnic, social, and political policies of the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945. In addition to former inmates of concentration camps, ghettos, and prisons, this definition includes, among others, people who were refugees or were in hiding." [6]
  • Social Security Agency: "Member of a group of people who were systematically persecuted and exterminated by the Nazis: EXAMPLES: Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, Blacks, Asian or Pacific Islanders]; Misstated his/her age to avoid: Persecution by the Nazis, or Confinement in Nazi concentration camps, or Extermination in Nazi concentration camps, or Other threats to life by the Nazis. [7]
  • Kinder Transport Association: "A Holocaust survivor is a person who was displaced, persecuted, and/or discriminated against by the racial, religious, ethnic, and political policies of the Nazis and their allies. The Kindertransport children are child Holocaust survivors. " [8]
  • Yad Vashem: "Philosophically one might say that all Jews alive by the end of 1945 survived the Nazi genocidal intention, yet this is too broad to be useful, as it lacks the distinction between those who suffered the tyrannical Nazi boot on their neck, and those who would have, had the war against Nazism been lost. At Yad Vashem we define Shoah survivors as Jews who lived for any amount of time under Nazi domination, direct or indirect, and survived it. This includes French, Bulgarian and Romanian Jews who spent the entire war under anti-Jewish terror regimes but were not all deported, as well as Jews who forcefully left Germany in the 1930s. From a larger perspective, some think of other destitute Jewish refugees who escaped their countries in front of the invading German army, including those who spent years and sometimes died deep in the Soviet Union, also as Holocaust survivors. No historical definition can be completely satisfactory. " [9]. Note that Yad Vashem does not consider non-Jews, victims or survivors, to be victims of "Shoah"; rather they are considered victims of Nazi-ism: "At Yad Vashem, we define Shoah victims as Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis or their accomplices during the years of Nazi power, i.e. 1933-1945. Many non-Jews were also murdered at the same time, but they are counted as victims of Nazism, not as Shoah victims"
  • This recent article points out the discrepancy that differing definitions can bring: [10] - a difference of 400,000 people who are considered survivors by one methodology but not survivors by another.
  • Given the various contested definitions of survivor, Wikipedia should likely adopt a broader version (e.g. including non-Jews), so something like the first definition seems reasonable to me. That said, as Gaijin points out, that means that Poles, Gypsies, Blacks, and many other groups in occupied Europe would be considered holocaust survivors by wikipedia, and thus their children would be considered members of this category. I think it's far too broad to make a useful category, and as mentioned before, this is not defining - most reliable sources, when they discuss these people, do not mention what their parents went through.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:35, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • For what it is worth most of the "blacks" involved are mixed-race children of Malian, Senegalese or other West African (primarily from French West Africa) fathers, and German mothers. Although, I have to admit I only know of specific German attempts to wide-out this population that had originated in the Rhineland. If they went after West African immigrants or their full or mixed-race children in France itself for example I do not know. I would say we need to go with the broad definition, but does someone whose father was put in a concentration camp because he was a Communist really have something in common with someone whose mother was thrown in a concentration camp because her parent were Jews, even though she was baptized as Catholic at birth? Considering that the Nazis sought to wipe out all Roma just as much as they sought to wipe out all Jews, excluding Roma would be problematic. Considering that the Nazis killed about as many non-Jewish citizens of Poland as they killed Jewish citizens of Poland, the inclusion criteria for Poles needs to be willing to include at least all those who were sent to prison camps. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 00:09, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Is there a terminology problem with the category? If it is to be broad in the manner described above, would something like "Children of victims of Nazi ethnic cleansing", or something along those lines be more accurate? Maybe a broad category with subcategories?-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 10:03, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
a tighter category could be Children of people who survived Nazi concentration camps, which would limit the list and focus it. As it currently stands, young children who were sent to England on Kindertransport early in the war and then had children 20 or 30 years later, their children would be eligible for inclusion in this category, because holocaust survivor is actually a pretty broad class. As JPL points out, Poles suffered greatly at the hands of the. Nazis but does that mean children of all Poles who survived should be members of this category?-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 15:41, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
I would accept that Category:Children of people who survived Nazi concentration camps would be a better name. Does anyone know, if we changed it to that name, would anyone currently in the category still be there. There is another oddity of this category though. If someone was 25 in 1930, and emigrated from Germany to the US, and they had Jewish parents who remained in Germany and survived until after 1945, they go in this category. However their connection to the Holocaust seems to be very different than someone who was not born until after WWII, and was raised by one or both parents who were holocaust survivors. The placement of this category as a sub-cat of Category:Children, seems to emphasize the being rasied by holocaust survivors aspect, but there are lots of children of holocaust survivors who only became such in adulthood. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 17:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Obiwankenobi / Johnpacklambert Before this goes horribly wrong for both the two of you and for Wikipedia as a whole, I will emphasize that the issues that the two of you are trying to push here go to undermining the entire structure of Category:Holocaust survivors, not merely the Category:Children of Holocaust survivors under discussion here. The attempts to put female authors into Category:American women novelists still left all of the women within the Category:American novelists structure, while your approach here would entirely eliminate any connection to any Holocaust-related category for a huge swath of the people now included. However stupid and flatfooted Wikipedia looked with regard to women writers and their supporters, we will look far more out-of-touch with the most basic sense of reality and decency by pursuing this bizarre line of reasoning that the lack of a universally accepted definition means that "it's far too broad to make a useful category, and as mentioned before, this is not defining". Building on the definitions supplied above, a Holocaust survivor should be defined as someone who 1) meets the definitions developed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum or the Social Security Administration or Yad Vashem or the Kindertransport Association; or 2) defines themselves as a Holocaust survivor as evidenced in reliable and verifiable source; or 3) is described as a Holocaust survivor in reliable and verifiable sources. Expanding from there, the definition of Category:Children of Holocaust survivors is someone who has a parent who was a Holocaust survivor. I'm not sure how many books one needs to write to be considered as belonging in Category:American novelists, nor do I know if anyone has defined how long a book needs to be to be considered a novel; I can assure you that there is no generally accepted, hard-and-fast definition that is universally accepted to define a "novelist" for Wikipedia categorization purposes. If we can't come to an agreed-upon definition of Holocaust survivor, the inevitable deletion of Category:Children of Holocaust survivors and Category:Holocaust survivors that would be demanded by the approach that the two of you have been taking will make the brouhaha over women novelists look like a little girl's doll tea party compared to the inevitable firestorm of criticism and ridicule we will face once either or both of these categories is deleted. Even the way this is being discussed here severely strains the credibility of this entire process. Be prepared to step away from the abyss or come up with truly fantastic reasons for why these categories are not defining, with reasoning that will convince all participants here and those reading in the mainstream press that we are dealing appropriately and sensitively with this issue. Just some thoughts to consider before this goes horribly wrong for everyone involved. Alansohn ( talk) 06:33, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Dear Alan, we appreciate the (misplaced) concern, but you've gone a bit too far this time. Just relax, take it easy, no-one is proposing to delete the Holocaust survivors category. I was simply pointing out that in the broadest definition, holocaust survivors would include large portions of the populations of Nazi-occupied Europe, and being a child of one of those people is not defining. You have yet to produce any evidence to the contrary. I'd suggest you start with frequency counts, analyzing the people in this category and how often the subject of their parents is brought up when discussing them. I think you'll find the answer to be "rarely". I'd also point out that your histrionics over whether or not holocaust survivor is a debated term, are, frankly, lame. A simple google search demonstrates that many reliable sources have covered the challenges inherent in defining who is a holocaust survivor, so your attack on JPL was completely misplaced, uncalled for, and unfair. I suggest you drop the stick and walk slowly away, your continued contributions here are not helping advance a rational discussion.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 04:00, 3 February 2014 (UTC) reply
The lead of the article on the Holocaust would seem to problematize the assertion that the definition is settled or the term used uniformly by everyone writing on the topic. If that is the case, then using the category in a manner that includes everyone that anyone classifies along those lines would seem to present issues related to policies such as WP:WEIGHT, WP:DUE/ WP:UNDUE, etc. Simply put, there are categories of victims that don't even fall under "ethnicity", whereas I had been under the impression that the Holocaust referred only to the victimization of Jews by the Nazis.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 11:13, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
That's the problem Carol... If someone were to create "Children of survivors of the 1994 Rwanda genocide" or "Children of survivors of North Korean prison camps" or xxx, even if we could find organizations and so on devoted to these people, the categories would likely be deleted; if such categories *aren't* deleted, then per NPOV we should create a lot of them, to cover most of the major events of the past centuries - Armenian genocide is another one where "child of survivor" is regularly used. Here we have a scholarly article looking at parental styles of parents who survived the Khmer rouge atrocities: [11]. Ultimately, I think expanding this scheme to other events would simply lead to category clutter, and these things simply aren't defining for the people in question, no evidence has demonstrated that people in this category are regularly referred to as "child of holocaust survivors", in fact in most RS it's not mentioned at all. Thus, I think the best solution is deletion.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 04:12, 3 February 2014 (UTC) reply
First, this Wikipedia search of "child of Holocaust survivors" actually does return 20+ uses by itself, some duplicative, but which suggest even with those strict criteria it should be accepted. Usually I do prefer such stricter standards, so that "parents were Holocaust victims" is at least in a gray area. My main point is that all categories should have same criteria be it only "child of" or "parents were" or be it at least 4 category members or at least 10 category members. I'd hate to see a "child of Holodomor survivors" (or whatever) category with 10 BLPs using that phrase removed because a bunch of editors thought it diminished the importance of this category. Carolmooredc ( Talkie-Talkie) 21:25, 4 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep, per the keeps above but particularly Alansohn's. This term has a meaning, one not measured in the lack of subject area knowledge of some individually confusable Wikipedians - David Gerard ( talk) 15:05, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
    • Reply. That's a straw man. Nobody disputes that the term has a meaning; the main point of objection is whether it meets the central categorisation test of WP:DEFINING, with a subsidiary concern about the definition of "holocaust survivor". The discussion above confirms that the definition is is not clearcut, and it is uncivil to allege that the issue arises only out of a lack of subject knowledge. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:07, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Agreed In light of the fact that it has come to my attention that the scope of the category would appear to be too broad or somewhat indeterminate, the usefulness of the category as an expedient search query for research purposes seems to have been called into question. If the category is to be useful, it would appear that taxonomically there should be more than one level of category, perhaps with something like "Victims of Nazi persecution" as the superordinate category, with the "Holocaust" being defined in the more narrow sense as a subcategory, along with subcategories for other victims. If some schema like that is unacceptable, then given the definitional issues related to "Holocaust"/"Holocaust survivor" the category would seem to be problematic from a policy perspective. -- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 05:52, 3 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • The lead of the Wikipedia article is itself somewhat confusing, as per the following excerpts

    The Holocaust...was the mass murder or genocide of approximately six million Jews during World War II

    Some scholars argue that the mass murder of the Romani and people with disabilities should be included in the definition, and some use the common noun "holocaust" to describe other Nazi mass murders, including those of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet civilians, and homosexuals.

    Maybe the lead of the Holocaust article should be edited to reflect the use of the above supplied definitions proposed (in use?) for the category of Holocaust survivor.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 16:19, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
The hits for the google search you link to would for the most part seem to be to links not corresponding to RS, on the one hand, and insofar as Wikipedia should be considered as a type of database with respect to categories to be queried, one would think that there needs to be a fairly close correspondence between the content of RS and the definition of categories.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 09:02, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per the arguments of Drmies and IZAK. -- Yoavd ( talk) 07:55, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep Would also support more 'Children of' cats if that also has significant defining relevancy. -- Shuki ( talk) 18:17, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Introduced amphibians of Hawaii

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: LISTIFY and DELETE. - Splash - tk 22:13, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: That an animal species (e.g. Cane toad or House Finch) has been introduced to somewhere is not a WP:DEFINING characteristic of that species. One article ( Japanese White-eye in Hawaii) should be (and is) in "invasive" categories. DexDor ( talk) 07:36, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Pseudohistorians

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: NO CONSENSUS to delete. Probably the 'misuse' issue is best handled by pruning in this case. It is harder to handle the 'your pseudohistory is my history' problem, but perhaps this indicates in the direction of a considered rename if criteria for a suitable name can be established. In any case, neither problem warrants outright deletion in consideration of the weight balance of the debate. - Splash - tk 21:54, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply

propose deleting: Category:Pseudohistorians

Rationale: I looked at a number of articles in this category and almost none that I found have any mention of pseudohistory. Instead this category seems to be used as an attack category for writers with theories that are outside the current dogma. I think inclusion here is essentially subjective, as all it would take is a single "mainstream" historian saying 'that book is bogus pseudohistory' to merit categorization here. Our own article admits that pseudohistory is a pejorative term, and we should avoid labeling people with pejorative categories. I can't think of a rename that would work here; a list of 'People whose historical theories are not accepted by mainstream academics' or something could work but this doesn't work as a category.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 04:26, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply

  • Keep - no doubt the subjects don't like it, but it's an accurate label and useful to the reader. Seriously, it's where David Irving belongs - David Gerard ( talk) 13:04, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Rename to Category:Writers on fringe historical theories or something. That many of these theories are really in the field of history (or pseudohistory) is questionable. What Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall is doing in this category needs explaining in his article, if he does belong. Johnbod ( talk) 14:45, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - it's a useful (and defining) category for historians / writers on history whose theories aren't accepted by the mainstream, or a significant part of the mainstream. No strong feelings about a rename, since that's what pseudohistory means: it's pejorative and dismissive, but that's the mainstream reaction to anything different (not just in history). But if a rename is helpful then User:Johnbod's seems fine. Eustachiusz ( talk) 16:46, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete This is a way to marginalize some people because the thrust of historical scholarship has gone in a different way. The inclusion of Margaret Murray just shows that it is best to avoid this label at all. While much of her views on witch-craft and anti-witch-craft trials has been rejected, many later scholars think that she was right that there is a real group involved in some witch-craft trials, and would only reject her view that they are essentially pagan, since many seem to have been believing Christians with a different view of the super-natural than the local Christian hierarchy. We can not be NPOV and apply this label in an even way. At a minimum we should purge many people from the list, but with changing views of history, one eras top historian will become the pseudo-historian of the next. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:24, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • keep, potential rename I appreciate JPL's concerns with the neutrality of the category name; however, we absolutely do need to have some category for people pushing historical nonsense. I would agree that Murray represents a particular problem in that her historical sins are ancillary to her primary religious interests, so perhaps a category name that does imply these people were primarily historians might serve better. Mangoe ( talk) 14:07, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
What would the inclusion criteria be though? Historians whose work has been critiqued by other historians? Historians who wikipedia editors have decided are full of bunk? I think you'd struggle to find the name pseudohistorian applied to most people in this category. I think this is tricky, because we need to be neutral. As JPL points out, yesterday's historian can become today's pseudohistorian. Many of the "classic" historians (or scientists in any field, social or otherwise) have produced theories that now seem dates and antiquated. -- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 15:59, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Well, Murray is a good example of the problem: she never worked professionally as a historian in the first place, but the line between anthropology and history is pretty blurry. Someone like Charles Berlitz, who wrote popular books on paranormal subjects with a lot of bad history in them, also defies categorization as a "historian", pseudo- or otherwise, on different grounds. On the other hand characterizing Gavin Menzies as a pseudo-historian (in either sense) is a fair statement. And it seems to me to make sense to group them all together as people whose fame/notoriety was based on their promulgation of spurious historical claims. And I would agree that we should exclude those proponents of mainstream historical ideas which fell out of favor, but from what I see those sorts aren't being included. Thus I see a category here, but the more I consider this the more strongly I am convinced that it needs a better name. Mangoe ( talk) 16:59, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep History is an (rigorous) academic discipline with standards related to what can be considered as valid "knowledge" in the field. Too many would-be pop historians just skew information with respect to some worldview they aim to promote. Such writing represents promotion of an ideology in the guise of history, not history.
Recent trends embrace a multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary approach, yielding hybrid types of "knowledge" when done right, but that a fairly rare occurrence, an another topic. I would suggest that user's finding the category inaccurately applied raise the issue on the article talk page and follow standard dispute resolution procedures.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 17:27, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The problem is, any inclusion in this category would likely be subjective - e.g. up to the editor's opinions. We already have people saying "Well, X clearly belongs, but Y's theories were discredited but that doesn't make them pseudohistorians". Yes obviously contents can be disputed on a per-name basis, but in order the category to remain, we need inclusion criteria. So, what are they? People whose writings have regularly been described by RS as pseudohistory? People who have published theories that are at the fringe of current academic thinking? I think a rename is in order as well, if it's kept, to something capturing the fringe nature of these theories. This is all good meat for an article but problematic for categorization, esp of living people. For example, one could easily put Bill O'Reilly or Sarah Palin in here for their many books and theories which stretch the limits of widely accepted truth.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 19:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep; seems to be a relevant category, and maybe even a defining category for many members. If individual members aren't properly sourced, then take those ones out of the category. bobrayner ( talk) 19:30, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep I find this a bit hard to understand. It's a term used by professional historians so why should we avoid using it as the name of a category? Geoffrey of Monmouth is called a pseudo-historian in the book Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History [12] which is clearly a reliable source (see for instance this review. Like any category it may sometimes be misused, but that is no reason to get rid of it. Yes, editors should not be deciding who is a pseudohistorian, but also they should not be deciding who isn't - we rely on our sources for that. The category is a navigation aid to help people find authors who have been called pseudohistorians by reliable sources and should be neither deleted nor renamed. If we need another category for fringe writers who aren't referred to as pseudohistorians then that's fine although we probably have enough. Dougweller ( talk) 21:39, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
How many RS have to call you a pseudohistorian before you qualify for membership here? One? Ten? What if one source says you are, and the other says you aren't? How do we decide? In an article, we can deal with this by covering both sides, but for a contentious/defaming category like this, it's a zero sum game - the person ends up in the cat, or doesn't. That's the problem.-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:47, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Here's an example: [13] - peer reviewed journal, which calls Clifford Geertz a practitioner of pseudo-history; Geertz is a respected professor and "the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States". But some people think some of his theories are full of sh*t. Should we add him to the category because a RS said so? -- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:53, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Theory is not history. Like I said above, some people try to interpret events in a forced manner through the application of a theory, which may or may not be correct, and the result is not always viable as knowledge in the field of history. It may be valid in the field of social theory, for example, as a failed theory that has led to further developments in theory. Geertz is a cultural anthropologist, not a historian. It would be relevant to the field of intellectual theory as it represents an important contribution that (mis)informed peoples understanding of a certain phenomenon in a schematic manner until it was proven errant. That said, I don't think that one errant theory explicated in terms of a historical paradigm would qualify Geertz for inclusion, because his theory and proposal were just errant, not assertions made on false premises and in denial of countervailing arguments. When he made his proposals, they made sense to some people for quite some time, but it wasn't the sort of knowledge like, say, British Israelism, which is based on false premises and supported by spurious pseudo-knowledge proposed in various fields, while its adherents assert that it is true history despite all the academic refutations.
Doug is correct, professional historians use the term to describe purveyors of history that is based on false premises. -- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 13:10, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. One scholar's pseudohistorian is another scholar's model; this can't be applied neutrally unless we apply this to anyone who's been called a pseudohistorian, and that would be as unhelpful as a "People accused of [crime]" category. "Pseudohistorians" is less useful, less defining, less common in the literature, etc. than "terrorists" or "dictators", but Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 April 27 deleted Category:Terrorists, and Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 May 22 deleted Category:Dictators. Meanwhile, consider the "Father of History", Herodotus — he's eminently reliable for certain things, generally reliable for many others, and completely disbelieved for others. Would we put him in here if a single author called him a pseudohistorian? Finally, "pseudo"-anything has a thoroughly negative perspective; it is inherently incompatible with maintaining a neutral point of view. Nyttend ( talk) 23:29, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
RS calling Herodotus a pseudo-historian here: [14]. It's like rule 34 - take a popular, well-known historian, and I can find you a RS that calls some part of their work pseudo-history. He has now joined the category, with the others...-- Obi-Wan Kenobi ( talk) 23:55, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. WP:LABEL is quite clear that words beginning with "pseudo" are best avoided unless widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject, in which case use in-text attribution. WP:ASSERT reinforces that: "Wikipedia articles should not assert opinions but should assert facts". Describing someone as a "pseudohistoroian" is a value judgement on their work, and the body text of an article should of course report the fact that some people hold that view of the subject; but that opinion should be attributed, as should any contrary opinions.
    Categories cannot attribute the judgement, so a categ such as this is asserting an unattributed opinion, contrary to all our guidelines.
    There is a further problem that a category such as this is WP:OC#SUBJECTIVE. Just how poor does a writer's scholarship have to be to push them over the line from "bad historian" to "pseudohistorian"? With categories, we can't nuance the labelling by noting that "X and Y called him a sloppy researcher, while Z called his work pseudohistory; however W defended him as a rigorous scholar pursuing an unorthodox path"; we either apply the label or we don't. That's why categories are such a poor tool for conveying this sort of judgement. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:25, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
That is a somewhat specious argument, as the validity of a category isn't negated simply because it is somewhat difficult to apply. The application of the category is largely a question of WP:COMPETENCE, and if there is such a thing as a categories notice board, then specific cases could be addressed there.
Professional historians use the term to describe people whose propositions mimic history in form only, and is otherwise based on false premises. There are many subjects as a whole that are considered to be psuedohistory because they are based on false premises, such as British Israelism, for example. I would suggest that people read the article historical method, philosophy of history, etc. Wikipedia editors do not have the clout to override the statements of academic historians published in reliable sources; moreover, if they use the terms pseudohitory and pseudohistorian, then those should obviously be viable categories.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 13:10, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
No, its not a matter of WP:COMPETENCE. It's a matter of subjectivity which leads to a divergence of views about the application of this prejudicial term, and policy requires that we do not use use such prejudicial language without attributing it. The reasons I have advanced above are the same as those which led to the deletion of Category:Terrorists or Category:Homophobes.
If there is a WP:COMPETENCE issue here, it may lie in the reluctance of some editors to study the relevant policies. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:05, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
It seems to me that there are too many uncontroversial instances of pseudohistory to ascribe "subjectiveness" to assigning such an attribute. Once again, British Israelism and other such thoroughly refuted "histories" clearly fall under the category and the exponents of that pseudohistory are pseudohistorians. There are too many people trying to use Wikipedia to promote such false doctrines as actual history, so I think that the existence of the category is important.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 17:42, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
@ Ubikwit: With any such topic, there are usually a number of cases which are uncontroversial; sometimes it is a large number. However, hard cases make bad law. The problem is the large number of borderline cases, which cause time-wasting disputes and leads to edit wars between good-faith editors.
I quite agree that some people try to promote false history, and that assessmment of their work should be asserted and attributed with due prominence in the article. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:36, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per BHG, if another useful category can do some of this work then create it. Alanscottwalker ( talk) 00:33, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep or rename The arguments against it seem to focus on how it could be abused as a category and as a way to violate policy rather than the usefulness of the category itself. I think Wikipedia:SUSCEPTIBLE has some relevance here. Category:Confidence tricksters is a category that could be horribly subjective in the ways described here, but it's still a useful and legitimate category. I don't think articles should be included as editorial attacks, but there are clearly people who have purported to be historians and have been reliably, specifically, and consistently discredited by a field of reliable sources well beyond Wikipedia editors. Alternately I could see a rename/move to a scheme like Category:Scientific misconduct, Category:Plagiarism controversies, Category:Hoaxes in science, Category:Academic scandals which all contain articles about specific individuals of all types, without naming it as their occupation. But Pseudohistory should be considered a categorizable topic, including those individuals who are broadly and reliably connected to it by sources, as Category:Pseudoscience or any of the other categories I've mentioned. __ E L A Q U E A T E 19:17, 28 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Comment I think many of the protectors of this category need to study Wikipedia's NPOV rules. The role of Wikipedia is not to pass judgment, and this is especially true of categories that lack the nuance needed. Also, categories are hard to maintain because there is no way to get notices of additions, so it is hard to police against malicious and petty additions of people who do not belong. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:55, 29 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Again, Wikipedia:SUSCEPTIBLE. All articles have the same amount of protection against any type of vandalism, in whatever form it takes. I'm sure the same people who would police other changes in an article would notice the addition of a category. It's not an extra job. And you might want to take a look at the NPOV rules yourself. NPOV is quite clear that it should not be used to give pseudoscience undue weight and that classifying things rejected by the scientific community as a fringe theory or pseudoscience is actually demanded, not discouraged, by NPOV. __ E L A Q U E A T E 23:59, 29 January 2014 (UTC) reply
Elaqueate, this discussion is not about categorising theories; it is about categorising people. It is also not about science, but about a humanities discipline, which uses different methodologies.
WP:WEIGHT requires that the text of the article fairly represents all significant viewpoints, and if someone is an intellectual fraud that should be spelt out in the lede of the article. You want the category system to provide a warning abut the article's contents, but that is not what categories are for, and it's a function they are very poor at because the category list is right at the bottom of the article. Look at Zecharia Sitchin: the lede is very clear about how discredited his work is. If the aim is to warn readers that Sitchin's work is thoroughly unreliable, then the lede does that job very well, while the huge criticism section sets out the problems in detail. The lack of a category would in no way undermine the very clear thrust of the article. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:30, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The pseudoscience/fringe theory guidelines are contained in the same policies. It includes more than science, it includes things like historical revisionism. I could have said pseudoscholarship of course, but all my points stand. There are many categories that list the specific people who somehow promote bad theories, hoaxes, conspiracy theories, various crimes; I don't see this as a barrier to having a category of this type. I don't want the category to provide the warning, I want the article to educate per policy, including warning of fringe if needed per NPOV, and I want the category to navigating similar topics. A lack of a category would make it harder to find articles, including ones with warnings we find valuable, neutral, and sourced. I never said any category should take the place of what's in the article. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:38, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep if for no other reason than Margaret Murray. 76.107.171.90 ( talk) 02:03, 30 January 2014 (UTC) reply
    • Reply @ 76.107.171.90: That's an excellent example of how this sort of category can be misused. The article Margaret Murray mentions the string "pseudo" only in the category listing; in other words, she has been added to the category on the basis of some editor's opinion rather than because that's the label applied to her by the balance of reliable sources. Sure, there are several refs about criticism of her work, and I assume (without having checked) that they are reliable sources. But the article provides no sourced assertion that someone other than a Wikipedia editor has called her a pseudohistorian, so applying the category is a clear breach of WP:LABEL.
      (BTW, I hold no view either way on Murray's work. She may well have been a terrible scholar, and I have no interest in either defending or criticising her work. But the article should conform to Wikipedia's policies, and at the moment it doesn't.)-- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:39, 30 January 2014 (UTC) reply
      • I agree that Margaret Murray is probably a misuse of the category, as she seems to have been an recognized scholar working in the field of history with a historical theory that was after-the-fact picked up by religious people. But WP:NPOV makes this distinction here and when it links here. Calling topics "conspiracy theories" is also controversial, should be handled with care, and reserved for those the academic community explicitly rejects per here. I know it's a pain to work out the difference, and to judge who was within a scientific community and who wasn't, but NPOV says that effort has to be made in order to remain truly neutral. If some articles don't belong, some do, including the confessed; Yuri Dmitrievich Petukhov, Gérard_de_Sède or the widely and specifically denounced such as Zecharia Sitchin, Lobsang Rampa, Oscar Kiss Maerth or Paul Dunbavin or whose theories are recognized as based on source-recognized non-history like Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels or W. Raymond Drake. Again I could see a merge up to Pseudohistory to avoid calling it an occupation, but for some of these people it was a source-recognized occupation. And if people insist that history began with cannibalistic space-ape-astronauts and insist it's based on historical rigor, then they should be categorized as reliable sources would categorize them, per NPOV. We have an active duty to not give the impression they might be on to something, when reliable sources tell us they're actually rejected. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
        • Elaqueate, you make several inappropriate assumptions.
          Firstly, the links you supply refer to science, but history is not a science. It shares some attributes common to other academic disciplines, such as not falsifying evidence, but historical research is a very different process to science. Judging history as if it was a science leads to serious misunderstandings.
          Secondly, one of those misunderstandings is the notion that pseudohistory is a clearcut issue; it is not, as can be seen from the discursive nature of the criteria set out in pseudohistory.
          Thirdly, you appear to think that it is somehow the job of the category system to warn readers that someone is bad at what they do. That's entirely wrong; the category system is a navigational tool, not a labelling mechanism to alert readers that someone is regarded by their peers as bad at their job. That sort of information belongs in the text of the article, where it can be attributed and referenced per WP:LABEL. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs)
          • The links I provided covered fringe theories and other fringe subjects beyond pseudoscience. This also applies to other fringe subjects, for instance, forms of historical revisionism.... Second, I don't misunderstand it to be a clearcut issue; I know it's not and said as much. I said it was a pain to judge. But so is determining what's jazz and what's not, what's a conspiracy theory and what's not. We shouldn't get rid of categories based on the possibility we might have to read sources or come to consensus on individual inclusion. Third, it is the job of an article to portray pseudoscience and fringe subjects as such, attributed and referenced, per WP:NPOV, including the controversial subject section of WP:NPOV. We should not call people frauds if it's not in the sources but we also don't categorize Astrology a science even when astrologers do. Those articles that are attributed and referenced as a fringe subject should be categorized to help navigation as I don't see any advice in WP:CAT that we should not categorize controversial things. __ E L A Q U E A T E 03:10, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
            • Sourcing is not the issue. All categories require sources; nothing should be in an article or a category unless sourced. That's policy, per WP:V.
              The problem is that is rarely pejorative to call someone a jazz player, even if they would style themselves differently. However, it is deeply pejorative to call someone a pseudohistorian, which is why WP:LABEL is clear that any such label must be used only by asserting that a particular source has applied it. That's why Category:Terrorist organizations was deleted at CFD 2006 June 12, and Category:Terrorists was deleted at CFD 2009 April 27. Instead we have Category:Organizations designated as terrorist, which is a container category of categories which attribute the label in accordance with WP:LABEL. If someone identifies significant sources which make a similarly wide set of assessments in this field, then we could quite appropriately have Category:People designated as pseudohistorians by Foo. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 23:09, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
              • You're completely right that WP:LABEL does not forbid pejorative labels, and explains they should only be used with care and when widely sourced. I don't see any disagreement here. We also agree that things should have sources. But we have many other categories beyond "Terrorist" that would clearly be pejorative if assigned to the wrong article. WP:NPOV does not have the same guidance about Terrorism that it does for Fringe Theories. Identifying Conspiracy Theorists is broadly encouraged in a way that labelling people terrorists never will be. I was fairly warm to the idea that the category could be changed to not identify the people directly, but I'm starting to see that things like Conspiracy Theorists and Pseudoscientists are current and broadly supported categories. I'm sure there's disputes about who should be categorized, but that doesn't seem to have stopped people from using them. Maybe you should take this to the WP:NPOV level? Or maybe there's something to your suggest category scheme, I'll have to go look at the terrorism one. __ E L A Q U E A T E 01:38, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
                • Please read WP:LABEL . The point is not that such labels should be sourced; everything should be sourced. The point is that they should be used only when explicitly attributed. That does not happen with the category. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:35, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
I read that, and it still seems to me that the logical course would be to have the category--useful for people doing research here on Wikipedia--and direct disputes as to the characterization of a given topic as belonging to the category or not, and not against the category itself. The category does not represent a subjective judgment, but a reflection as to whether a given set of statements meets the academic criteria to be considered as belonging to the discipline of "history" or not, and further as to whether something that is presented as history qualifies as being "pseudohistory" or not. Academics use the terms because history is a rigorously defined discipline, and the fact that it is considered to present authoritative accounts of events, etc., is the reason that some dubious people try to appropriate the category to present false information in a form that mimics history without fulfilling the rigorous criteria. And therefore, it is important that Wikipedia reflects the use as found in academia here.-- Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 16:06, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
I read it too. WP:LABEL says that, in articles, there should be in-text attribution. Organizing material based on the article text is treated differently in policy. We sometimes use pejorative labels in Article Titles, disambiguatory links, etc. when they have in-text attribution in the article they direct to. H:CAT advises that A category name can be any string that would be a legitimate page title. Wikipedia:POVTITLE says that Resolving such debates depends on whether the article title is a name derived from reliable sources or a descriptive title created by Wikipedia editors. Article titles do not need in-line attribution; they need to direct to in-article in-line attribution derived from reliable sources. Category names are under Article title guidelines, which don't involve in-line citation, (but certainly must point to where it can be found).
And terrorists aren't the only example here. A category containing a label that can be considered pejorative such as Pseudoscientist (as an example, not saying history is equivalent to science) was upheld at CFD 2006 August 12 and CFD 2007 June 2 and Category:Confidence tricksters was upheld at CFD 2010 June 12. This doesn't include the many categories that contain possibly pejorative terms that haven't faced challenges at all. __ E L A Q U E A T E 16:39, 1 February 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. One person's history is another's pseudohistory. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 07:00, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per Dougweller and although I'd compromise with renaming per Johnbod and Mangoe. Chris Troutman ( talk) 07:08, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep per Ubikwit. Term is used in field, provides distinction made by authorities in field. - - MrBill3 ( talk) 19:28, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Uruguayan women jurists

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: keep. The Bushranger One ping only 02:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Merge. The categorization by gender is innecesary in this area of knowledge. Zerabat ( talk) 02:40, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Terms for males

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: NO CONSENSUS. Probably best is to follow something along the lines of DexDor's suggestion to improve the categorisation of the articles such that these categories become naturally unnnecessary. - Splash - tk 22:01, 5 February 2014 (UTC) reply
Propose deleting:
Nominator's rationale: The articles in these categories are about substantive topics, not about terminology. Note that the sibling Category:Terms for females was deleted at CFD 2013 September 16.
Editors may want to listify these categories before deletion. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 02:34, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose straight deletion. Many of these articles (e.g. Dude) do (at least in the lead) appear to be about a term rather than about the concept that the term refers to and hence should stay under Category:Slang etc. Similarly, many of the articles (e.g. Boy) should not be removed from Category:Males. The articles should be checked (e.g. fixing text per WP:REFERS and correcting categorization). DexDor ( talk) 06:59, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Listify Wikipedia is a dictionary, not an encyclopedia. Categorization should be based on what articles are, not what they are called. John Pack Lambert ( talk) 21:33, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Keep until you sort out the nomination. The sibling category of Category:Slang terms for men‎ is Category:Slang terms for women, which has not been deleted, and seems to be alive and thriving. As I said when I created the former in November 2010‎, it is pretty unthinkable that we should have a category of slang terms for women, and not the equivalent one for men. I recommend that either they both go or they both stay, but the present nomination makes the overall situation pretty unclear. -- Nigelj ( talk) 23:23, 25 January 2014 (UTC) reply
    • @ Nigelj:: good catch. Category:Slang terms for women‎ added in this edit. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:54, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
      Well, it makes more sense now, but the rationale is that one cat from a set of four is gone, so the other three must follow. I don't know much about the categorisation system, its purpose, or its aims, and I do understand how Wikipedia articles are not dictionary entries, i.e. that they are about the subject stated, not about the words used in the title. I see the point in this in an article like Global warming, that we are writing about the warming of the planet, not about the phrase global warming, how it has been used and misused, or how it relates, in science and the popular media, to the term climate change. But if we have articles like Beach bunny, Bimbo, Soccer mom, Beefcake and Hooray Henry, surely the lines are sufficiently blurred? Surely, if these are not just to be redirects to woman and man, then they have to have some relevance to the existence of the terms themselves? I'm not concerned, personally, about the content of such articles, but it still strikes me that if there is any purpose to categories, I would have thought that using cats to acknowledge that these are all slang terms for people, and grouping them as such must be of benefit to some readers, at some point. There's a thought, how about Category:Slang terms for people? -- Nigelj ( talk) 15:27, 27 January 2014 (UTC) reply
      • @ Nigelj: please read the rationale before commenting on it. (Hint: the deletion of another category is noted. The substantive reason is in the first sentence). -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:08, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom & precedent. Is " Dead white men" really a term for males - or is this cat a catchall for anything that may contain the word "men"? Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 07:02, 31 January 2014 (UTC) reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2014_January_25&oldid=1127488352"

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