Home • Search • Translate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< May 21 May 23 >

May 22

Category:Albums produced by The Underdogs (production team)

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. It seems like there's some discomfort at the moment regarding the move, but assuming it sticks through discussion (or if no one objects enough to contest the move), this can be speedily renamed in the future. bibliomaniac 1 5 05:02, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Disambiguate the page to make it more easily find-able per WP:COMMONNAME. Producer is an ambiguous term. → Lil-℧niquԐ1 - ( Talk) - 23:32, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply

*Oppose. Article is at The Underdogs (record producers). If the nom thinks the main article should be renamed then take your cause there. -- Richhoncho ( talk) 23:38, 22 May 2020 (UTC) Don't edit with alcohol, lesson learnt, I'd still prefer the discussion over at the article, rather than an undiscussed move and a later disucssion regarding cats. -- Richhoncho ( talk) 23:55, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply

The article was just unilaterally renamed to The Underdogs (record producers), thus the request here since it is not eligible for speedy. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars Talk to me 23:41, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose in CFD/Wrong Venue The correct place to confirm the bold rename is with an WP:RM at Talk:The Underdogs (record producers) where editors will likely be more familiar with the subject. If that passes with consensus then, by all means, speedy rename the category per WP:C2D. (I'm a little nervous that sober me agrees with @ Richhoncho: with alcohol, but I do.) RevelationDirect ( talk) 10:21, 24 May 2020 (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:Atif Aslam films

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. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:51, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: WP:PERFCAT Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars Talk to me 23:06, 22 May 2020 (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:Songs featuring Atif Aslam

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. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:51, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: There is an argument that this should be called Category:Atif Aslam songs, alternatively there is an argument that the 'featuring <contributions by> is important enough to have a separate category. Ladies and gentlemen, please discuss, my opinion is not yet fully formed. Richhoncho ( talk) 21:46, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete All the articles in this category are also in Category:Atif Aslam songs, leading to redundancy and overcategorization. A musician's or singer's featured appearances can be listed in their article's discography section or page. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars Talk to me 23:02, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose Not all articles in Category:Atif Aslam songs are in this list. It only contains the songs whom video features Atif Aslam. Empire AS ( talk) 04:23, 23 May 2020
Being featured in the videos for the songs is even less defining that being a featured performer in the song and considered overcategorization per WP:PERFCAT. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars Talk to me 23:25, 22 May 2020 (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:Articles with two WikiMiniAtlas drop downs; with too many coordinates displayed at top

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: Delete Timrollpickering ( talk) 22:02, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: The "Articles with two WikiMiniAtlas drop downs; with too many coordinates displayed at top" category is malformed, and must be added to each page manually (such as like this). Theoretically this can be covered by Category:Pages with malformed coordinate tags, if Module:Coordinates were modified to identify whether there's also a {{ Attached KML}} template displaying in the title as well. The other categories are also malformed and added manually (for areas and outlines, the data is fetched from Wikidata rather than Wikipedia). These manually-added maintenance categories are unlikely to be changed if a coordinate template is added, fixed, or removed; thus, it reduces the utility of these categories.
To clarify, I would be open to merging these too. I think the categories should have been discussed first at Template talk:Coord or Module talk:Coordinates. However, I'm not opposed to keeping these categories - just the fact that they have to be manually added to articles. epicgenius ( talk) 21:58, 22 May 2020 (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.

Subcategories of Wikipedia barnstar 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: keep. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:53, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
21 other subcategories

Rationale for all:

  1. Distinction between an award template and barnstar template is not significant.
  2. Category:Wikipedia award templates has roughly a hundred templates, which would benefit from being categorized.
  3. I've created 16 of these categories while moving templates out of Category:Wikipedia barnstar templates. During that I've noticed that some those templates, which use {{ Barnstar documentation}} actually do not have the stylized barnstar in their imagery. Examples: Template:Greek Barnstar of National Merit, Template:Longislandaward, Template:Haven of the Angels Barnstar.

Not all of these categories require the word "Wikipedia" in the title. I've decided to keep them for consistency, but I'm open for other options.

I think it would be beneficial to

  1. Expand the scope of these categories by renaming as proposed above.
  2. And move them up one level to become subcategories of Category:Wikipedia award templates.
  3. Rename {{ Barnstar documentation}} to {{ Award documentation}}.
  4. Turn Category:Wikipedia barnstar templates into a tracking category by including all pages which transclude {{ Barnstar documentation}} unless parameter |barnstar=no is passed. Such approach is convenient, since there many more barnstar awards than non-barnstar templates.

—⁠ andrybak ( talk) 18:47, 22 May 2020 (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: African-American basketball players

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. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:51, 9 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's Rationale: Propose deleting category per WP:NONDEF. Being of the African-American race is not a defining characteristic. We don't have Category:Asian basketball players or Category: Hispanic basketball players There is no rationale behind keeping this category. ֆօʍɛɮօɖʏǟռʏɮօɖʏ05 ( talk) 17:35, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Previous discussion: WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 December 10#Category:African-American_basketball_players, closed by me as "no consensus". -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:52, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • This is a tricky category to discuss. For most mid-tier players, finding a source that specifically describes them as African-American will be difficult. Too many editors will just use the “eye test”, which isn’t appropriate. On the other hand, there are articles like Earl Lloyd where the player’s race is a topic of great relevance. Zagalejo ^^^ 18:26, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep as mentioned in the previous CFD, African-American basketball players for a long time were segregated and had to play in their own leagues, similar to other sports. In addition there have numerous studies on the importance basketball has in African-American culture, such as "Black Hoops: The History of African-Americans in Basketball" and "Elevating the Game: Black Men and Basketball". In recent times the NBA and basketball's position on race related issues has been strongly influenced by the large percentage of racial minorities that play the game (see here for an aritcle detailing this). In addition deleting this category would be disruptive to the other categories in the African-American category tree. The above !voters are certainly right that there are articles that are misplaced in this category, and that the "eye test" should not be enough for inclusion, but by in large this is not a trivial category. Inter&anthro ( talk) 18:40, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I think I personally own about 10 different historical books about the integration of basketball by African-American players and maybe seen 3-4 documentaries on the subject. Are there ANY such works on Caucasian (or white) basketball history? It’s the difference between a minority group vs a majority one. That said, I have always been ambivalent about this category. Maybe I will vote this time, but regardless there is certainly a difference between this and “Caucasian basketball players” (which of course, has nothing specifically to with American players – Caucasians are world wide). Rikster2 ( talk) 20:49, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Comment, the current text of WP:OCEGRS leaves little room for deletion. Still it feels odd that all biography articles are categorized as such because of the significance of the topic. It would have been different if WP:OCEGRS would have said, e.g., only subcategorize within ethnicity if the additional characteristic is unique to the ethnicity (e.g. Jewish rabbis). Marcocapelle ( talk) 03:48, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Purge (or alt delete according to WP:BLOWITUP per Namiba below - added later). While the topic of African Americans in basketball is notable and an important part of African American culture, and the category unlikely to be deleted, WP:EGRS sets high standards for the inclusion of articles in this category, such as being defining for the subject of the article, and being cited in reliable sources. About the first point, while it was certainly defining for basketball player to be African American before and during the time of integration of the sport (a topic that I think would be better treated in the article realm than by a category listing individual players), one can wonder if it is still defining since then, when African American players have become the norm. About the second point, I would find it a good test to check if each article has a source listed at WP:RS which would use the exact phrase "African American basketball player" (or at the very least the two phrases related to each other in the same sentence) to define the subject of the article. Clearly, most of the 2,639 players currently in this category will be defined, most often, as just "basketball players" or with their league or team, while being African American at the same time. Place Clichy ( talk) 23:04, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    Agree with the principle, although I have no idea how to implement this in practice with this huge amount of articles. Honestly I think it would be better to revisit the conditions of WP:OCEGRS. Marcocapelle ( talk) 16:40, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    @ Marcocapelle: Which conditions would you like to revisit and how? I notice that WP:OCEGRS already states that people should only be categorized by ethnicity or religion if this has significant bearing on their career. If there is something that may be made more precise, it could be the notion that a majority group is rarely or never defining, which we mention e.g. in WP:CATGENDER but not specifically for ethnicity: As another example, a female heads of government category is valid as a topic of special encyclopedic interest, though it does not need to be balanced directly against a "Male heads of government" category, as historically the vast majority of political leaders have been male. Place Clichy ( talk) 08:56, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • @ Place Clichy: the issue is in "where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right." Which is the main reason to keep this category. But I do not have an idea how to address the issue. Marcocapelle ( talk) 06:18, 29 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    @ Marcocapelle: you are correct. The guidelines actually talk about 2 things: 1°) if a category should exist and 2°) if an individual article is eligible to it. In the current case, while the topic is notable indeed (albeit not automatically in the form of a list of biographies), most articles are not eligible to be there. Hence purging is justified, although it is in practical difficult. The venue for discussing a single article inclusion is in principle its talk page, but it is hard to have a discussion on 2,600+ talk pages at the same time. Place Clichy ( talk) 07:16, 29 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Wikipedia:Blow it up and start over There are definitely examples where being African-American is defining for basketball players. However, in the vast majority of cases, it is both non-defining and not able to be sourced. I've tried and failed on many occasions. Therefore, I believe we should delete it and repopulate it with sourced articles.-- User:Namiba 21:50, 26 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    That is actually the better rationale for deletion in this discussion. Marcocapelle ( talk) 05:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    I also subscribe to this rationale (!vote updated). Clearly most or all of the 2,639 articles do not have their place in this category. The rationale that being African American had a significant bearing on a basketball player's career until and during the racial integration of the sport does not apply to most players coming after that, and American basketball was integrated earlier and more massively than other major American sports: History of basketball § African Americans in basketball says that the NBL was integrated in 1942 and the NBA in 1950, just two seasons after its founding, and Race and ethnicity in the NBA § History cites an academic report, compiled since 1990, that consistently shows above 75% of "black" players in every season. If a similar category needs to be restarted, it would need to be more selective. Place Clichy ( talk) 08:56, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep I don't see an IAR rationale to not discuss this in conjunction with related parent categories Category:African-American sportspeople or Category:African-American people by occupation and their subcategories in order to reach a full consensus on whether these should exist to WP:DIFFUSE. No point deleting one just to have to repopulate later if this is only a local consensus.— Bagumba ( talk) 16:59, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    Precisely, these categories are not here to diffuse a parent category! WP:GHETTO explains quite well that ethnicity categories should be non-diffusing. Men's basketball players categories are diffused by league, team or other defining feature. If you look at Category:Men's basketball players by nationality you'll see that nationality is often the last level of diffusion, and that's very fine (see also WP:FINAL RUNG). Also, there is a reason in our guidelines (not IAR) to consider this category alone and not other African American occupation categories, it is that like there is no need for a "Male heads of government" category, as historically the vast majority of political leaders have been male ( WP:EGRS), historically (since the 1960s) the vast majority of American basketball players have been African American. You cannot say the same about other sports or other occupations even largely associated with African Americans (such as musicians). Place Clichy ( talk) 05:25, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    It seems the discussion should begin at Category:People by ethnicity and occupation. Frankly, there's so many of these ethnic–occupation type categories that I wonder if WP:GHETTO really reflects standard practice, as guidelines are expected to.— Bagumba ( talk) 08:28, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    There was a large discussion on the topic last year, and it proved to be a too large piece to reach a clear consensual decision in one direction or the other. It is therefore perfectly correct to discuss specific cases. Deferring the discussion of specific categories to a decision on all intersection categories of ethnicity and occupation is creating an endless loop. If anything, the mere application of long-time guidelines Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality and Overcategorization should result in the removal of many of these categories, and they are routinely deleted. Place Clichy ( talk) 09:08, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    It is therefore perfectly correct to discuss specific cases ...: Sorry, I do not equate "allowed" with "correct". If this was arguing notability, where each category has its own merits, I could see how WP:OTHERSTUFF is a weak argument; individual discussions would be justified. But it seems that WP:GHETTO should equally apply (or not) to all categories, and should be discussed as a whole with the relevant category tree. I still maintain my original !vote that I don't see an IAR rationale to not discuss this in conjunction with related parent categories ...— Bagumba ( talk) 09:45, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    Irrelevant categories about intersection of ethnicity and occupation or something else are brought up for discussion here all the time, see African-American conservatism, Sephardi socialists, Black Women Photographers, American military personnel by descent, American pornographic film actors of Singaporean descent, American short story writers of Arab and Taiwanese descent, American X of X descent, American mayors of Vietnamese descent, Men whistleblowers, American academics of Filipino descent, Members of the United States Congress of Vietnamese descent, American women of Laotian descent in politics, Dutch-language LGBT writers, Coptic-American diplomats, Women in cannabis for April and May alone. There is no preferential treatment here. Place Clichy ( talk) 13:45, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    I don't recall books made about American pornographic actors of Japanese descent or Arab American short story writers being barred from selling to non-Arabs. As mentioned above African-Americans were previously forced to play in their own leagues and were segregated and discriminated against for quite some time. There have also been numerous books and films made on the importance basketball plays in African-American culture. Ironically Place Clichy your argument above seems to be using the same WP:OTHERSTUFF argument that you've been arguing against - just because as similar category was deleted does not mean this category in inherently irrelevant and should be deleted too. Inter&anthro ( talk) 17:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    I was trying to answer the argument according to which one should wait to reach a full consensus for all similar categories first, and then discuss this specific category later. That's not how it works, individual discussions are of course welcome. The rationale for deletion (or mere refocusing the scope) is different. Actually, the larger consensus is expressed at WP:EGRS. Place Clichy ( talk) 02:38, 29 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep though I echo the concerns of others in the thread, but based on what we do now this is a valid category passing the discussion at WP:EGRS. The place for a larger scale is a RfC. SportingFlyer T· C 03:03, 29 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Note to closer The nomination was opened by the creator of Category:Caucasian men's basketball players, since deleted, after they voted !keep at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_May_22#Category:Caucasian_men's_basketball_players (below). Seems like it should be discounted as a WP:POINTY nomination of a related African-American category.— Bagumba ( talk) 05:17, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
    I do not think you should attribute thoughts or motivation to other editors, which BTW have expressed themselves clearly enough. If you still do not see or address at all the obvious problems of this category (which is likely to be kept anyway), you may yourself be directed to WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. Let's find a way to discuss how we could collaboratively find a way to avoid this category being applied to thousands and thousands of Wikipedia articles for which it is really a secondary characteristic (because the vast majority of American basketball players and, since the 1960s, American professional basketball players, are African American), except if we want to racialize anyone and anything anywhere on Wikipedia (hence discussions on Caucasian and other races and ethnicities of basketball players, which were rightfully deleted). Place Clichy ( talk) 06:13, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
    It's a discussion. There will be an independent closer. Relax. If you still do not see or address at all the obvious problems ...: Please read WP:CHOICE. Cheers.— Bagumba ( talk) 06:22, 4 June 2020 (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:Pupils of Olivier Messiaen

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. Seems to be a consensus that this is not defining. Note that the information is already in list form at List of music students by teacher: K to M#Olivier Messiaen. bibliomaniac 1 5 05:05, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Not defining for pupils. Random sample of some articles which have lead and body text: in lead ( Robert Sherlaw Johnson), in body ( Joanna Bruzdowicz) not at all ( Sadao Bekku, Igor Wakhévitch, Serge Garant). List already exists at List of music students by teacher: K to M#Olivier Messiaen. Furthermore, I am starting to wonder if most or all of the daughter cats of Category:All music pupils by teacher are nondefining. b uidh e 15:50, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
"Not defining for pupils." How so? Hyacinth ( talk) 02:48, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
WP:DEFINING says "A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define[1] the subject as having—such as nationality or notable profession". It would be an extremely rare case where a pupil is defined or notable for which teacher they had. b uidh e 09:29, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - a teacher is definitely defining for a pupil, especially in creative fields (which is why we also have a similar category for art). I am concerned, however, that the parent Category:all music pupils by teacher, a template-driven category, is a near duplicate of its parent Category:Music pupils by teacher, and that the template clearly does not allow for sorting by teacher's surname. Either the template needs serious work or categories should be manually added - and in either case the categories need merging. Grutness... wha? 03:21, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • See also Category:Pupils of Nadia Boulanger. b uidh e 09:29, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support, the articles mostly mention Messiaen in passing, without elaboration of if and how this has influenced the respective composers. Marcocapelle ( talk) 15:23, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. From the sample I looked at this appears to be non-defining (e.g. for Jenny McLeod several teachers are mentioned in the Education section). WP:DNWAUC applies. DexDor (talk) 17:10, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete Consistently mentioned but not defining in the articles I looked at. No objection to a list. RevelationDirect ( talk) 00:16, 24 May 2020 (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:Climate change denialists

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. bibliomaniac 1 5 03:20, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: A decision was made last year to delete Category:Climate change deniers [1] I created these categories unaware of that decision, as I used different words. I cant say I'm very impressed with the situation that is left. If it's derogatory to call someone a climate change denier it seems to me just as derogatory to put them in a topic category entitled Climate change denial. But there have been several discussions and they all seem to have reached the same conclusion. So my question is, assuming we dont want to revisit the earlier discussions, should we delete the biographies from the parent category? It didnt appear to me that most of the subjects of the articles I looked at objected to being called denialists. Most of the politicians seemed quite happy with the label. And is it sensible to divide the category by country, as there are now more than 270 articles? Rathfelder ( talk) 11:59, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Category:Antisemitism has a similar situation. There is no Category:Antisemites, but there is Category:Antisemitism by country, which contains country-specific categories, which contain, among other articles, articles about people - most of those are about antisemites, but there are also ones about people who fight antisemitism.
Renaming Category:Climate change denialists to Category:Climate change denial by country may be a good idea. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 12:54, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Speedy delete all per WP:G4 as a re-creation of Category:Climate change deniers, which was deleted at WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 October 16#Category:Climate_Change_deniers, and the deletion was upheld at an RFC in 2019. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:03, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Speedy delete all as BrownHairedGirl is entirely correct. Second choice is merge with "climate change denial", which I must acknowledge was allowed after supporters said denial is way different from deniers, though WP:OPINIONCAT should apply too. Peter Gulutzan ( talk) 14:59, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose - denial of climate change is a serious problem and plays an important part in politics and attitudes about science around the world. Just because some might object to being labeled as a "denier" is not reason enough for deletion, as be WP:CENSORED we don't delete content simply because some individuals or groups will object to it. Inter&anthro ( talk) 15:22, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    • @ Inter&anthro: Well we are certainly not censored we do go by community consensus which has found, multiple times, that these categories are inappropriate. This is not really the place to go over those discussions again either, that would need to be a new RFC. PackMecEng ( talk) 19:13, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • We should not add biographies to topic categories, assuming that climate change denial is merely an opinion and not a defining characteristic. If it is a defining characteristic for some biographies (probably exceptional) the category name should express that explicitly, e.g. "climate change denial activists". Marcocapelle ( talk) 15:57, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    Does this "climate change denial activism" include denialist politicians who are active in parties who are overwhelmingly anti-climate-science and generally anti-science, such as the Alternative for Germany and Republican Party (US)? Plus people who work as denialists for denialist think tanks? Plus people who have denialist blogs? Plus people who write denialist books? Then most biographies in the categories, if not all, will have to stay. This is not about people who just have that opinion because they read in Wall Street Journal that they should have it - those have never been in the category. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 17:53, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Politicians certainly not, since for them it is only a matter of expressing an opinion and they normally have an opinion about a wide range of topics anyway. A category is only meaningful for people who are fully committed to climate denial only. Marcocapelle ( talk) 18:29, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • "Only"? So, they need to be monomaniacs? Even Lamar Smith and Jim Inhofe do not count, because they have other subjects they talk about? -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 07:37, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • The "Only" clause is one of the stupidest things I hear again and again on these deletion discussions. Does someone have to be "only" notable to be born in 1959 for Category:1959 births to be included? That's pure nonsense. Say someone is intrested in famous people who are express a denial in the scientific consensus of climate change. In that case these categories are helpful even if the subjects might hold other views. Inter&anthro ( talk) 21:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • No, the whole point is that we do not categorize based on views. The reverse also applies: we should only categorize climate change activists. Marcocapelle ( talk) 20:29, 26 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • That will not solve the issue that it concerns a mere opinion, which we do not categorize by. Marcocapelle ( talk) 07:30, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Definitely not, as "skeptics" is a euphemism for "deniers", which is the term used by science. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 07:32, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • What I meant is that people who reject the consensus on climate change are denying what the scientific community considers to be a fact. They shouldn't disagree with that statement. This is not about whether or not climate change is real, it is about whether or not people think that climate change is real or not. A similar example would be evolution deniers. I am pretty sure most people who deny the science of evolution would agree with the label "evolution denier" and agree with the fact that they are at odds with the scientific community. Bneu2013 ( talk) 05:08, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • It leaves all the biographies in Category:Climate change denial. My initial question was - do we remove them all? Or we could prune it by taking out the people for whom climate change is peripheral, but if we were to do that it's hard to see why we wouldnt put those that remain into a Category:Climate change denialists. I entirely agree that it is very unsatisfactory to categorise people by their opinions, but I think for some of these people it is what makes them notable. Rathfelder ( talk) 20:28, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • I think it comes back to WP:OPINIONCAT where we should not be putting people into categories like this at all. This RFC dealt with a similar issue. PackMecEng ( talk) 20:42, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • @ Hob Gadling: If you take a look at Category:Antisemitism you will note at the top the criteria for inclusion states It must not include articles about individuals, groups or media that are allegedly antisemitic. So it is not supposed to contain BLP articles. The link to the discussion seems like a pretty broad RFC on the subject. PackMecEng ( talk) 14:53, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Speedy delete per G4 and BHG. Place Clichy ( talk) 22:40, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Comment @ Rathfelder: Thank you for nominating your own categories given the earlier homination and clearly explaining what happened. RevelationDirect ( talk) 00:12, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • NB The earlier discussion Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_February_9#Bias_categories about bias categories decided that biographies should not be included, but a quick inspection shows that some have crept back in. Is there any way of monitoring this sort of thing? I am concerned that we assume that our discussions about categories produce the intended results, but I dont think they always do. Do we need eternal vigilance? I am indebted to Peter Gulutzan who noticed what I had done and alerted me to the problem. If he hadnt I might have dug a much deeper hole and it might have been there a long time. Rathfelder ( talk) 11:02, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete This has the feel of an ATTACK category. If this were about people who made a career as deniers, it might have some merit, but it feels more like an excuse for picking up random comments, made by those best known for other things. Peterkingiron ( talk) 17:06, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Climate change is a scientifically proven fact. Denying that climate change is real is no different than denying the holocaust or any other denial of (to the best of human knowledge) true facts. In many of these cases politician's denial of climate change has influenced their policies on energy consumption and economic growth, so this is neither a irrelevant fact of an attack category as your !vote appears to imply. Inter&anthro ( talk) 02:26, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ Inter&anthro: see WP:OPINIONCAT. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:51, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • It seems clear that the biographical categories should be deleted. I therefore propose to purge them and the superior category of all biographies, unless I find any that are only notable as denialists, in which case I may have to seek further advice. Rathfelder ( talk) 22:05, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per WP:OPINIONCAT and WP:G4. PPEMES ( talk) 21:29, 26 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • I have purged the categories listed above (though not the rest of Category:Climate change denial) of all the entries of people who are notable otherwise than for climate change denial. We are then left with a much smaller number of people whose notability appears to me to be dependent on denialism. How should they be categorised? Rathfelder ( talk) 19:56, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Thanks for this start, though I can't see why you haven't removed the categorisation from Judith Curry and John Christy, both of whom clearly meet WP:PROF. In the longer term, as noted above the "denialist" categories shuld be deleted and almost all BLPs should be removed from the "denial" categories. Jonathan A Jones ( talk) 20:59, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
WP:OPINIONCAT says, "Please note, however, the distinction between holding an opinion and being an activist, the latter of which may be a defining characteristic". If we apply this to Judith Curry and John Christy... does repeatedly writing denialist pieces for denialist outlets such as WUWT or Wall Street Journal not count as "activism"? The "Only" clause is still not convincing. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 05:37, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
For example, Myron Ebell would fit in Category:Climate denial activists. But many climatologists can be purged. Marcocapelle ( talk) 05:43, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep or Rename I don't see what is special about climate change denial that makes it a forbidden category unlike a boatload of similar categeories.
For example there are 685 people in Category:American environmentalists. Glancing at the Bs, I see pop singer Jackson Browne, actor Pierce Brosnan, anti-war and free trade activist Medea Benjamin. At least Benjamin ran for Senate once from the Green Party. What puts these people in this category is they have lent their efforts and names to promoting environmentalist causes. Are they being stigmatized by category?
What about the 86 people in Category:American Scientologists? I see musicians, politicians, an author of romance novels.
Regardless of their primary occupation, the people in the climate denial categories lent their efforts and names to advancing a particular social and political movement. It seems hardly a violation of BLP to honor that. If this is a BLP violation, it seems to me that there will be a boatload of categories with the exact same issue. M.boli ( talk) 22:09, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
See WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. We can use this discussion to identify other cats with this problem though: Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners may be another one of those.
WP:OPINIONCAT says, "Please note, however, the distinction between holding an opinion and being an activist, the latter of which may be a defining characteristic". This just needs to be applied to Pierce Brosnan and Jackson Browne. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 05:37, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Re: your edit summary, what you think are people who have lent their names and their efforts to the climate denial cause currently include the likes of Brian Wilshire, an Australian radio host who, one day, expressed sceptical views on mainstream climate change science according to a poorly-sourced single line in his bio article, or Ryan Zinke, an American politician who for a long time supported measures against climate change before seemingly shifting opinions without ever making very clear statements in one way or the other. Actually, these categories have been filled with journalists and politicians having expressed a very wide range of comments or opinions on the issue, not scientists having developed a consistent alternative view which is what you would expect from the name. Place Clichy ( talk) 09:57, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Agree with most of this: Wilshire and Zinke are typical for people who do not belong. But why would you expect the category to contain only scientists, or even mostly scientists? Ignorance is a valuable asset for denialists. Being a scientist is detrimental to that, though it does not prevent it, especially if the expertise of the scientist is something else than climatology. Many notable denialists are not scientists but writers, economists, lawyers, politicians, journalists and others. Jim Inhofe, Lamar Smith, James Delingpole, Ken Cuccinelli belong in the cat; they do have the ignorance needed, in spades, and they have invested great amounts of time in the subject. Frederick Seitz, Fred Singer or Fritz Vahrenholt are examples for non-climatologist scientists who belong there.
I think the category should have explicit criteria for inclusion, like Category:Critics of Judaism does: "This category is for...". I suggest that, for people, it should be something like "activism, such as organizing campaigns or repeated publication of articles promoting denial". -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 11:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
I'm inclined to think Hob Gadling's suggestion is a way forward. We clearly cannot just delete the categories and imagine we have solved the problem. Already people are reinstating the categories on biographies of prominent politicians like Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage when I have just removed them. And of course the question of whether people are sufficiently notable in other ways to make these categories unnecessary is completely subjective. I also noticed that quite a few were categorised as conspiracy theorists. That seems just as ill defined and even more derogatory. Are we going to delete that? Rathfelder ( talk) 13:03, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Blanket deletion is not the solution. The category needs to be sourced within the article - see WP:CATDEF "A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having". So, we do not need to define it ourselves ("ill defined"); instead we refer to RS consistently calling them that. Actually, the same holds for climate change deniers. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 13:18, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Hoping and praying that the category will keep itself tidy is not the solution either. As Rathfelder told, there will always be people who will add back ineligible articles to the category, even if you place a strict wording about its scope. One of the reasons for that is that people usually don't see such wording when adding a category to an article, e.g. with tools such as HotCats. Another reason is that the scope of a category of people having an opinion against something is so imprecise that the category is fundamentally flawed. Place Clichy ( talk) 14:46, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Agreed, and I would also include lending names or efforts to the climate denial cause. Cuccinelli and Inhofe are two examples of people whose activism was from positions of power, they were using governmental mechanisms to advance their cause. M.boli ( talk) 13:15, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
I should maybe not have used the word "scientists". What I mean is that if these categories were to live up to their promise they should at least be restricted to people making a coherent effort to build a consistent approach about the issue, rather than columnists who made a random statement about how they dislike anything liberal. But the key issue here is that a category against something is always a gathering of too different things. What we see here is people who deny there is a climate change at all, next to people who acknowledge it but deny its impacts, next to people who acknowledge the impacts but deny the causes, next to people who acknowledge impacts and causes but are against the measures to be taken to fight it. An example is Richard Tol, an academic (albeit an economist, not a physicist), specialized in the "economics of global warming", who according to his article is mostly focused on the economic costs of climate policy, while not denying any of the hard scientific and physical facts about climate change. Is he serious in what he is publishing? Probably more than Wilshire (the Australian radio columnist). Is he a climate change denier/denialist? I don't know, because I don't think these terms are defining, for anybody. Place Clichy ( talk) 14:46, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
What climate deniers have in common is opposing policies addressing climate change. From a practical, policy point of view: they all stand together in opposition to taking action. As I see it, there may be a public relations issue in that the climate deniers haven't come up with a nifty branding. For example the pro-life brand ties together people who oppose abortion for a variety of different reasons, but are united in promoting policies which restrict abortion. Similarly an economist whose academic efforts are in opposition to enacting climate change policies will be called to testify by a senator who shows snowballs to the TV cameras. They are playing for the same team, moving the government and society ball towards the same goal. M.boli ( talk) 15:23, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
The problem is that Richard Tol "was a coordinating lead author for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Working Group II: Impacts". His inclusion shows that such categories inevitably end up degrading into a "list of people who some other people think are bad people". That's why we deleted this category last time, and why we should just delete it again. Jonathan A Jones ( talk) 15:43, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Toll's work on the IPCC report isn't a problem for this category. Like many other academic climate change deniers, he contributes in meaningful and influential ways to the public debate. Yet Toll is clear about his stance opposing most action to reduce climate change. You make it sound like climate change denier serves merely as derisive insult, like flat Earther. But Category:Flat Earth proponents is a useful Wikipedia category for people who actively propound that view. M.boli ( talk) 16:41, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Would categories along the lines of "Climate change denial in the United States" get round the problem. Topic categories, which could include biographies of significant players, without labelling them as to which side of the debate they are on? Rathfelder ( talk) 12:58, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    I don't think it would solve the issue of biographies being added to the category. If a biographical article was so linked with climate change denial that it would be defining both for the article and the category, it would be added to a global category, not a national one. Climate change (and it's denial) is a worldwide problem par excellence, national subcategories don't bring much imho. And they certainly wouldn't be a way to have less (or more) biographical articles. Place Clichy ( talk) 13:54, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    • The science is global but All politics is local. I cant see any way of getting rid of the biographical articles. We just have to manage an unsatisfactory situation. Rathfelder ( talk) 12:46, 31 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete all. It should have been "speedy delete" but the nomination was declined. There have been no new arguments presented as to why the categories should be kept, and they are contrary to a long-standing consensus. St Anselm ( talk) 21:55, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
No - people should not be in that category. St Anselm ( talk) 14:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply
  • The climate deniers themselves understand they are on the same team, working together for a common cause. They oppose policies addressing climate change. The speakers at the premier denier conference, for example, are all over the map on climate change beliefs. But they are united in their opposition to taking action. Climate-change-is-real economist Richard Tol is invited by full-throated scientists-are-evil Congressional Reps to Congressional hearings, because the economist supports their policy conclusions.
    • The term denier sounds pejorative to some people. I think we can reword it.
    • So how about {{ category:People opposing policies to address climate change}}? I agree it is wordy. But the climate-denial movement has not come up with their own snappy brand name. A category name like this would also have the advantage of being descriptive. As with Category:Environmentalists and Category:Flat Earth proponents, it would be restricted to people who lend their :efforts or names to the cause. Loosely defined: activists. Not needed to include people who merely express opposition, but aren't involved.
    • I already voted keep or rename above. M.boli ( talk) 19:28, 1 June 2020 (UTC) reply
      • This alternative rename proposal does not clearly enough exclude people who merely express their opinion because it is part of their job to have an opinion on this topic (such as politicians and climatologists). Marcocapelle ( talk) 21:19, 1 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Climate denial is a political and social movement. The category would be for movement activists. Just having an opinion doesn't make somebody an activist in that movement. M.boli ( talk) 15:05, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply

Comment for closer to note Category:Australian climate change denialists and Category:New Zealand climate change denialists which were deleted last week but not emptied. Whatever is decided here can the closer follow suit on those two categories to stop them showing up on the Special:WantedCategories backlog please? TIA. As far as the discussion goes, it's one of those grey areas where I don't feel close enough to have a strong view. It feels like one of those categories that will be genuinely WP:DEFINING for a small number of people but will attract a lot of categorisation of people who make a passing comment about not wanting to give up their car. So part of the decision making is what kind of effort the community is prepared to make to purge the cruft on a long-term basis. "Activists" is a useful word to discourage cruft categorisation - perhaps Category:Activists against action on climate change ?? Le Deluge ( talk) 13:37, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply

I could live with Category:Activists against action on climate change. Better than my proposal. Climate denial is a movement, denying that action is needed to address climate change, and the people we label "deniers" are its activists. M.boli ( talk) 15:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Any activist category would be a BLP nightmare. You would need reliable sources explicitly using the word "activist", not just statements questioning particular actions. St Anselm ( talk) 16:22, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply
We already have Category:Climate activists. Rathfelder ( talk) 18:03, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Looking at some of the pages in Category:Climate activists, I can come to understand that StAnselm ( talk · contribs) has a point. These would have to be people who were labeled activist in an reliable source. Further, the word often carries an implication of somebody working from outside normal channels to influence policy. We usually wouldn't apply it to an official who executes policy or an academic in the field or an elected representative. I still think it is appropriate to categorize the chief opponents of addressing climate change. But I can see how the ``activist`` name might not work. M.boli ( talk) 18:57, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply
  • All these activist type categories are very problematic. But I dont think deleting them solves the problems, and I dont think we should exhibit political bias by being harder on categories we dont like. Rathfelder ( talk) 13:41, 3 June 2020 (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:Caucasian men's basketball players

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: Delete Timrollpickering ( talk) 22:03, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Propose deleting category per WP:NONDEF. The category's creator states that it was created, because Category:African-American basketball players exists, which "justifies" the creation of the nominated category. – Sabbatino ( talk) 10:48, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. WP:NOTDEFINING. If kept, there are other issues that make it not an exact parallel to “African-American basketball players.” Rikster2 ( talk) 10:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom as WP:NOTDEFINING. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:04, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep So one why doesn't it parallel Category:African American basketball players? It is WP:DEFINING as it can verifiable and it is appropriate to be mentioned in the lead part of the article. that's not fair to have said category but not this one. In the WP:NONDEFINING page it specifically says "if the characteristic would not be appropriate to mention in the lead portion of an article, it is probably not defining." Which completely contradicts this category. And they are notable for being basketball players. User:Sabbatino has a tendency to target me and the categories I've have previously created.There are multiple characteristics that can be linked with this category. I don't understand the point of discussion over categories if almost a majority of the time it is one-sided. SomeBodyAnyBody05 ( talk) 15:25, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • If you are serious in your opposition you should provide evidence. For example, where can we find that "Caucasian" is a defining characteristic of e.g. Matt Carroll (basketball)? Marcocapelle ( talk) 16:06, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Then We could renamed the category to something else. But it's just not fair to keep that category but not this one. Maybe renaming it to Category:European-American basketball players. But I just want it politically appropriate ֆօʍɛɮօɖʏǟռʏɮօɖʏ05 ( talk) 18:10, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • @ SomeBodyAnyBody05, if you want something political appropriate, then you are in the wrong place. Wikipedia has a core policy pf WP:NPOV, not "political appropriate".
    It's also unhelpful that you reply without paying any attention to the fact I drew your attention to: that there is no Category:Caucasian people, because we don't categorise categorise people by race. You offer no resaon why men's basketball players should be an exception to the principle. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:20, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Speedy delete per WP:SNOW. WP:ETHNICRACECAT leaves no doubt that while ethnicity categories are debatable, and sometimes eligible, categorizing people by race, perceived or not, is a big no no. Place Clichy ( talk) 22:35, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete another useless race/ethnicity category. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 17:23, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete Just voted keep on the African-American men's basketball players category - that is not a race, but this is, which violates our guideline at WP:EGRS. SportingFlyer T· C 03:05, 29 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nominator. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 12:32, 29 May 2020 (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:Baltic sea SE basins

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 all. to the alt targets proposed by BHG bibliomaniac 1 5 04:57, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: uncontroversial move to: Baltic Sea SE basins Estopedist1 ( talk) 09:02, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Query should this be a merge proposal? Are users expected to know what SE means? Laurel Lodged ( talk) 10:32, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Huh? This is a proposal to move a category to itself, i.e. to do nothing. @ Estopedist1, what are you actually trying to do here? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:14, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ BrownHairedGirl and Laurel Lodged: I was suprised that I (as autopatrolled user) cannot do this category moving itself. "SE" means here geographical position, see parent Category:Drainage basins of the Baltic Sea-- Estopedist1 ( talk) 13:05, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ Estopedist1, that doesn't answer my question. The proposal would make no change. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:20, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
The nominator Estopedist1 has just edited the nomination to make this a change of case from "Baltic sea" to "Baltic Sea".
That means that the nomination actually proposes a change, which is an improvement. But "Baltic Sea SE" fits no naming convention that I can see. Checking further, I see that Category:Drainage basins of the Baltic Sea has been split into 4 such categories, none of which has any parent other than Category:Drainage basins of the Baltic Sea. They should all be upmerged, ... or if kept, renamed to spell out the compass points, e.g. Category:Baltic sea SE basins to Category:Drainage basisns of the south-east Baltic Sea. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Agreed. Laurel Lodged ( talk) 14:39, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Upmerge per BrownHairedGirl, this split in four subcategories is subjective. Marcocapelle ( talk) 16:10, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Full alternative proposal
I will tag the three sibling categories as well. @ Estopedist1, Laurel Lodged, and BrownHairedGirl: could you please comment on the full alternative proposal? Marcocapelle ( talk) 12:16, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support alternative proposal. Many thanks. @ Marcocapelle. This is exactly what I had in mind, but which I was too lazy to set out fully.
    This division of the Baltic Sea into 4 quadrants of the compass appears to be WP:Original research. It doesn't reflect the divisions described at Baltic Sea#Subdivisions or the map included in that section, which I included here. The encyclopedia should not use original research as a basis for subcategorisation. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:35, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Support for upmerging. Attention also the original creator of these categories: user:Urjanhai-- Estopedist1 ( talk) 12:31, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Thaks for notification. I am not the actual original creator because the categories Category:Baltic sea SE basins and Category:Baltic Sea SW basins were already there and had been created by someone else before I went on and created the two other categorties Category:Baltic Sea NE basins an d Category:Baltic Sea NW basins accordindin to the same model. These may quite well be merged. But you may still want to notify the actual original creator.-- Urjanhai ( talk) 12:47, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
The original creators of this categorization model in this case seem to be User:P-A. (2006) and User:Bermicourt (2010).-- Urjanhai ( talk) 18:16, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Actually I only created one overall Baltic Sea drainage basin but it seems to have since been moved to create one of the 4 quadrants. So I'm entirely happy with just the one basin category with river drainage basins as sub-cats where merited. Bermicourt ( talk) 18:52, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support Alt Proposal Dividing the Baltic Sea (capital "S") by compass directions is subjective where the cutoff is. (Certainly fix capitalization if kept.) RevelationDirect ( talk) 00:18, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Upmerge I checked to see if anything directional could be found in the literature but couldn't find anything which showed this wasn't subjective. SportingFlyer T· C 01:35, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Merge per Alt proposal. The content is river basins (or catchments). One side of the Baltic is wholly Sweden, but the south and east has multiple countries. I would suggest that all the Swedish ones should be in one or two categories - one for the east sea (Baltic proper) and the other for their west sea, the strait joining the North Sea to the Baltic (this translates their Swedish names). There might possibly be merit in having a sub-cat for Germany and Poland (plus the Russian enclave, formerly part of Prussia); and another for the east side (Lithuania to Finland). I find the present scheme is obscure. Peterkingiron ( talk) 17:21, 24 May 2020 (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:Pupils of Nadia Boulanger

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: Delete Timrollpickering ( talk) 22:04, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Is this really defining for the students? I've checked a handful of the students. In only one ( Douglas Allanbrook) is there a mention in the lead. Robert Levin (musicologist), Andrée Desautels, Thomas Pasatieri, Julie Reisserová, Robert Sherlaw Johnson, Stanisław Skrowaczewski, and Wojciech Kilar mention the teacher in the body (in some of these articles without a source). Donald Erb's article does not her at all, failing WP:V. We already have a list so listification is unnecessary. b uidh e 05:11, 22 May 2020 (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:Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in the 2010s

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; I confirm that all current members are in "Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in YYYY". – Fayenatic London 22:13, 23 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Propose deleting:
Nominator's rationale: Wholly redundant to Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in the 2010s and Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in the 2020s, respectively. (Disclosure: those GB categories are newer. They were created by me few days ago, as part of a wider series: see Category:Railway stations in Great Britain by decade of opening and by year).
No railways stations in Northern Ireland have been opened in 2010s (see Petscan search), and none have been opened in the 2020s (see Petscan search). So these categories are GB-only in content, whatever their labels ... and they are also incomplete. They are not part of a series, unlike the GB categories.
In any case, categorising rail in Northern Ireland alongside Great Britain is always a mismatch, because rail transport in Northern Ireland has always been separate to that of the rest of the UK:
  1. The two systems are physically incompatible: Northern Ireland uses the same 5 ft 3 in gauge as the rest of Ireland, while Great Britain uses the narrower standard gauge. This distinction was actually set out in statute law back in the 1840s, when all of Ireland was part of the UK: see the Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act 1846 (see the first para of the PDF of the Act)
  2. There has never been any physical connection between Irish railways and railways in Great Britain
  3. There is no managerial connection between the two systems. In 1948, rail in Great Britain was nationalised in what became British Rail; while in the same year, rail in Northern Ireland was nationalised into a separate company which became Northern Ireland Railways.
Regardless of anyone's politics, the nature of these rail systems means that they are better categorised separately. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:41, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • PS: Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in the 2020s is empty, and has been tagged by speedy deletion. A few days ago it contained one article, which I see now that I removed [2] from the category, mistakenly thinking it was a WP:SUBCAT issue. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:46, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support for consistency with the other non-existant UK categories. However more generally I wonder if categorisation by island should really have priority over categorisation by country. It creates inconsistency across countries. Marcocapelle ( talk) 07:34, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support per nomination. Rail transport in Northern Ireland has much more in common with rail transport on the rest of the island of Ireland than it does with rail transport in Great Britain. While there are exceptions to this (e.g. accidents are investigated by the British RAIB not the Irish RAIU) for most things a geographical split in categorisation makes more sense. Thryduulf ( talk) 09:47, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support per nomination. How bizarre to have different gauges. Oculi ( talk) 10:55, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    • @ Oculi, the lack of physical connection meant that there was no need for interoperability, and the wider Irish gauge has advantages. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:12, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support . We have to deal with these border issues pragmatically. I dont think anyone conceives of the railway system on a UK basis. The National Rail website does, rather surprisingly include the whole of Ireland as far as timetabling goes, but gives up when it comes to fares. Rathfelder ( talk) 12:14, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose We should not be breaking these out by island or geographic feature, but rather by country, in order to main consistency with literally everything else in the encyclopaedia. I think the right thing to do here would be to properly subcategorise these based on the actual sub-geography they're in, so "England" instead of "Great Britain" (so I would support these as container categories.) SportingFlyer T· C 23:37, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • It sounds reasonable to split the UK categories in four subcategories, that is being done almost throughout the entire UK category tree. Marcocapelle ( talk) 06:04, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • @ Marcocapelle and SportingFlyer: I have spenta lot of time in the last ten days studying the by-year distributions of these sets of articles, and I need to ask you to take a few minutes to look at the data.
The problem I see with the logic you too are espousing is that:
  1. a set of by-year categories for the whole of the UK would cut across the structure of the rest of the categories for rail, which separate the countries of GB from the separate system in Northern Ireland.
  2. A set of by-year categories for each of the 4 countries of the UK would create a lot of smallcats.
I have taken the approach that is viable only if there are enough articles in each set to avoid creating a forest of smallcats. That is why as I have created set of by-nationality subcats of Category:Railway stations by year of opening, I have created them only for sets where there are enough articles in total. From my analysis, I don't think that creating a set of by-year categories for each of the 4 countries of the UK is viable.
I used Petscan to check the sixes of the sets, but it's down at the moment, so I can't link the searches, but I can reproduce the figures using WP:AWB's list comparison tool.
The first set I created was Category:Railway stations in Great Britain by year of opening, which has a total of 9,426 articles. That is big enough to avoid too many smallcats.
Now look at comparison of that with other sets, in which I have counted the number of smallcats as categories with less than 4 pages:
Existing sets of categories for Railway stations in FooCountry by year of opening
Country Σ articles Σ Categories Σ Smallcats % Smallcats Notes
Great Britain by year 9426 195 24 12.3%
Japan by year 8656 146 7 4.8% the most even spread of years
United States by year 5144 187 17 9.1%
China by year 2266 102 48 47% Figures a litle more complex due to Hong Kong subcats
Australia by year 1401 155 68 43.9%
France by year 1059 144 74 69.4%
Canada by year 517 107 70 65.4% Series not started by BHG
Russia by year 517 118 78 63.6% Series not started by BHG
Now look at the numbers for each of the constituent countries of the UK, counting only those articles for which we have a by-year category. Note that the set of articles is distributed over a period of approximately 180 years:
Number of articles in each of the 4 constituent countries of the UK which are categorised by year of opening
Country Σ articles
England 6400
Scotland 1277
Wales 773
Northern Ireland 276
So if we create a set opened-by-year categories for each of the 4 countries, we would have a well-populated set for England, a sparsely-populated set for Scotland & Wales ... and a set of almost entirely smallcats for Northern Ireland.
I have developed a methodology using AWB which would make it relatively easy to implement this, if that is what editors want. But do we really want to create forests of smllcats? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:59, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Your figures assume an even distribution of station openings per year, which is not the case - e.g. there are 60 articles in Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1900 but only 12 in Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1960, in the latter category 7 are in England 5 are in Scotland. Of the 7 opened in 1996, 6 are in England and 1 in Wales. To my mind, that makes the smallcat issue even more significant so I oppose splitting Great Britain. Thryduulf ( talk) 11:32, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ Thryduulf your post clashed with my preparation of this extra data. Note that in data above, I didn't assume anything about the distribution: the smallcat figures were done by counting the cats with less than 5 articles.
To get some idea of the distribution of the Northern Ireland articles, I did a breakdown by decade of the Northern Ireland articles. Note that the total of openings is slightly higher than the number of stations, because stations which have been reopened have more than category for year-of-opening:
Railway stations in Northern Ireland by decade of opening
Decade Σ Stations opened
1830s 3
1840s 30
1850s 72
1860s 36
1870s 22
1880s 43
1890s 13
1900s 22
1910s 5
1920s 11
1930s 8
1940s 1
1950s 1
1960s 5
1970s 4
1980s 5
1990s 2
2000s 1
2010s 0
There will be some clustering of years in the 19th century, when stations were opened in batches when their railway line was opened. But by the 20th century, station openings were mostly individual additions to existing lines, so see e.g. the 1930s:
Railway stations in Northern Ireland by opened in the 1930s, by year
Year Σ Stations
opened		 List
1930 1 Creevyargon
1931 1 Shepherd's Bridge
1932 2 Drumadonald, Poland's Bridge
1935 2 Fraser Street, Damhead
1936 1 Retreat Halt
1938 1 Annakeera Crossing
As above, if the consensus is to create lots of smallcats, I will implement it. I have set up all these stations-by-year categories to use {{ Navseasoncats with decades below year}}, which makes it very easy for a reader to navigate quickly around sets of categories. I don't think that such massively-interlinked smallcats disrupt navigation much, if at all; and I think that in many ways they actually help. But previously @ Marcocapelle put huge effort into merging sets of by-year smallcats, with thousands of such categories upmerged. Marcocapelle, have your views on that shifted? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:00, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • You convinced me that splitting in four is not a good idea. Marcocapelle ( talk) 16:55, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • I'm also now convinced the four-split isn't a good idea. I'm not sure I see the problem with having England be a subcat of the United Kingdom and everything else be in the parent directory, though. My biggest issue with this isn't really the splitting in four, it's: 1) Great Britain isn't an obvious category title choice when traditionally we break things out by country; 2) looking at the statistics, splitting off Northern Ireland specifically looks like it will create a number of smallcats as well; 3) we don't typically split up a country by railway gauge, for instance Kaliningrad has a separate gauge from the rest of the Russian rail network. SportingFlyer T· C 17:31, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • That's fair, but that only responds to one of my concerns, and it's not my primary concern, which is that we maintain a consistent country-level or subnational-level naming convention. I think there's probably a way to accomplish both through subcatting. SportingFlyer T· C 04:13, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • @ SportingFlyer: for rail transport the consistent split is GB/Ireland because that is how it has been split in the real world for the best part of 200 years - the split didn't start with the 1846 Act, the two systems had been developing essentially independently of each other for over a decade by that point (the first line in Ireland opened in 1834, the political split was almost a century later in 1922). Rail transport in the United Kingdom is a short, very high level overview explaining the geographical rather than political split. The geographical division is also how reliable sources are organised. The only source used on both Rail Transport in Ireland and Rail Transport in Great Britain is the BBC, the former uses sources like Irish Newspapers, IE, RTE, Translink; the latter the UK government, ORR, ATOC/RDG, Network Rail, Books and magazines with a British scope, TOCs and ROSCOs. Even the UN report into freight from ports (Woodburn 2008), although titled "UK" includes no instances of the words "Ireland", "Belfast", "Dublin", "Dun Laoghaire" or any other Irish port. Thryduulf ( talk) 10:02, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • (ec) @ SportingFlyer, the way that Northern Ireland is usually categorised is per WP:IRE-CATS: a subcat of both Ireland and the UK. You can see that at e.g. Category:Railway stations in Northern Ireland, which is a subcat of Category:Railway stations in Ireland and Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom.
Category:Railway stations in Ireland also contains Category:Railway stations in the Republic of Ireland, so we have all-Ireland categorisation
Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom also contains Category:Railway stations in England, Category:Railway stations in Scotland and Category:Railway stations in Wales.
We could do that with the by-year categories, so that:
The problem is that, as shown by the data above, it would create several sets of mostly smallcats: for Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and to a lesser extent for Wales and Scotland.
Do you see a way around that?
As @ Thryduulf correctly notes, the underlying issue here is that rail transport in GB is separate from rail transport in NI, and has been for nearly 200 years, regardless of the changing political arrangements. That is why the head articles are slit, and Category:Rail transport in Great Britain has existed since 2004 [3]. So the principle of categorising rail by GB is well-established. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:27, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
I completely understand the logic behind it, I'm just continuing to note it creates an inconsistency in our naming conventions that's not necessarily obvious to those who a) might cat and b) don't understand the nuances. I guess the wrinkle here would be the fact that they are categorised both as Ireland and the UK, which both makes sense and is a little bit odd. Could we do stations in NI by decade instead of individual year, does that avoid a SMALLCAT issue? Basically, the hierarchy would be (top-level, 1.) UK: (children) Rail transport in NI, Rail transport in GB: (Rail transport in NI child): NI opened/closed by decade; (Rail transport in GB child): GB opened/closed by decade, then year. Is that functionally the proposal? SportingFlyer T· C 19:36, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ SportingFlyer, I am sensitive to the issue some people may have with the UK/GB distinction, which is why all the GB cats have {{ Railway stations in Great Britain does not include Norniron}}. That's not perfect, because many editors don't read a category page before adding an article to the category, but it may help.
Yes, we could create by-decade categories for Norniron as a subset of UK-by-decade categories. The problem then is that those station articles would then have two sets of categories for year of opening: e.g. Category:Railway stations in Northern Ireland opened in the 1930s and Category:Railway stations opened in 1931. That s a category clutter issue ... and my previous experience of that sort of disjoint is that it confuses both readers and editors, and the fact that it's not obvious makes it hard to maintain; editors can easily misunderstand the nuances and remove one or the other. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:58, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ BrownHairedGirl: Given the older of these categories dates to only 2018, I'm not sure it's a major issue. I think UK might do a better job of including the NI stations which might otherwise not find their way to a category, at the risk of being less granular. Maybe these categories need not be granular in the first place? It's possible that if you have a station in Railway stations opened in 1931 and Railway stations in Great Britain, that the opened in year is just a cross-categorisation that's too specific (I've been doing a lot of historic building cat tagging and year and geography are always separate categories.) In any case, if this gets closed now I'm not fussed with the change - hopefully it's clear that I'm just trying to work towards a decent solution? SportingFlyer T· C 00:43, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ SportingFlyer: I do understand that you are trying to find a solution, but with respect I think that's partly because you seem to have some extent misunderstood the situation ... and are therefore trying to find a solution to a non-problem.
Railway stations globally are categorised under Category:Railway stations by year of opening, e.g. Category:Railway stations opened in 1837.
Some countries now have their own set of by-year sub-categories (e.g. Category:Railway stations in France by year of opening/ Category:Railway stations opened in 1837), but most countries are just categorised in the global year categories.
I don't see why the lack of a country-specific year category impedes placing an article in the global by-year category: e.g. Dún Laoghaire railway station is in Category:Railway stations opened in 1837. This Petscan search shows that the only station in Northern Ireland not to be categorised by year is Trafalgar railway station (Northern Ireland), for which the debates are unknown.
Your point about excessive granularity is precisely the point that I have made in detail above; that for most countries, the intersection of year and country is too narrow. But for a few countries, there are enough articles for the intersection to work without creating a forest of smallcats: that is why I created Category:Railway stations in Great Britain by year of opening, which has only 12.3% smallcats; and it's why I objected to creating by-year categories for Northern Ireland, because it would be mostly smallcats.
Note that before creating the by-country-by-year categories, I did extensive searches with WP:Petscan (literally hundreds of searches of different permutations). That's why I have been able to provide such detail above on the numbers. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:16, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Yes, I was mostly worried about what happens to NI in this instance, but now I'm fine with it. May still be too granular though. SportingFlyer T· C 15:15, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • (EDIT CONFLICT) Support a GB outcome -- The GB rail system has been integrated since nationalisation in 1948. It would be difficult to oppose a Scottish category, but separating England and Wales would not be a good idea, as the rail system is Wales is highly fragmented, with no lines joining those of the north Wales coast, the mid-Wales lines, west from Shrewsbury, and those of South Wales. I see no objection in principle to an all-Ireland category, as trains run between Dublin and Belfast, through two jurisdictions. I have altered the categorisation of Worcestershire Parkway railway station, to match the 2010s category. This makes the annual category Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 2020 redundant: it is always likely to be a small category. Peterkingiron ( talk) 17:47, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support I think that @ BrownHairedGirl has done a great job of recatagorising these. When I created the category in 2018 it was a half hearted attempt to manually categorise the stations in an afternoon before I probably moved on to something else. In hindsight, I should have left this for someone with more experience to do, which has now been done. Mindi Crayon ( talk) 21:32, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support with a GB category by year only; some small subcats in particular years are acceptable. But without by-year subcats for England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland. And perhaps a "Railway stations in Ireland opened in 19XX" (by year) series; but without subcats for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Most "Railway stations in Foo opened in XXXX" categories do not have subcategories (except for China/Hong Kong). Re "existing sets by country" counts etc I would be interested in the counts for the Republic of Ireland, Germany and India also (India has a significant number of railway stations opening in the later 19th century; some in the "19XX establishments in India" by year category but not also in the "Railway stations opened in 19XX" category by year). Hugo999 ( talk) 23:59, 1 June 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Comment This discussion might be moot as Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in the 2020s has been emptied. Liz Read! Talk! 02:14, 6 June 2020 (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/2020_May_22&oldid=1196285660"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< May 21 May 23 >

May 22

Category:Albums produced by The Underdogs (production team)

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. It seems like there's some discomfort at the moment regarding the move, but assuming it sticks through discussion (or if no one objects enough to contest the move), this can be speedily renamed in the future. bibliomaniac 1 5 05:02, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Disambiguate the page to make it more easily find-able per WP:COMMONNAME. Producer is an ambiguous term. → Lil-℧niquԐ1 - ( Talk) - 23:32, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply

*Oppose. Article is at The Underdogs (record producers). If the nom thinks the main article should be renamed then take your cause there. -- Richhoncho ( talk) 23:38, 22 May 2020 (UTC) Don't edit with alcohol, lesson learnt, I'd still prefer the discussion over at the article, rather than an undiscussed move and a later disucssion regarding cats. -- Richhoncho ( talk) 23:55, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply

The article was just unilaterally renamed to The Underdogs (record producers), thus the request here since it is not eligible for speedy. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars Talk to me 23:41, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose in CFD/Wrong Venue The correct place to confirm the bold rename is with an WP:RM at Talk:The Underdogs (record producers) where editors will likely be more familiar with the subject. If that passes with consensus then, by all means, speedy rename the category per WP:C2D. (I'm a little nervous that sober me agrees with @ Richhoncho: with alcohol, but I do.) RevelationDirect ( talk) 10:21, 24 May 2020 (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:Atif Aslam films

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. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:51, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: WP:PERFCAT Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars Talk to me 23:06, 22 May 2020 (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:Songs featuring Atif Aslam

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. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:51, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: There is an argument that this should be called Category:Atif Aslam songs, alternatively there is an argument that the 'featuring <contributions by> is important enough to have a separate category. Ladies and gentlemen, please discuss, my opinion is not yet fully formed. Richhoncho ( talk) 21:46, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete All the articles in this category are also in Category:Atif Aslam songs, leading to redundancy and overcategorization. A musician's or singer's featured appearances can be listed in their article's discography section or page. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars Talk to me 23:02, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose Not all articles in Category:Atif Aslam songs are in this list. It only contains the songs whom video features Atif Aslam. Empire AS ( talk) 04:23, 23 May 2020
Being featured in the videos for the songs is even less defining that being a featured performer in the song and considered overcategorization per WP:PERFCAT. Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars Talk to me 23:25, 22 May 2020 (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:Articles with two WikiMiniAtlas drop downs; with too many coordinates displayed at top

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: Delete Timrollpickering ( talk) 22:02, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: The "Articles with two WikiMiniAtlas drop downs; with too many coordinates displayed at top" category is malformed, and must be added to each page manually (such as like this). Theoretically this can be covered by Category:Pages with malformed coordinate tags, if Module:Coordinates were modified to identify whether there's also a {{ Attached KML}} template displaying in the title as well. The other categories are also malformed and added manually (for areas and outlines, the data is fetched from Wikidata rather than Wikipedia). These manually-added maintenance categories are unlikely to be changed if a coordinate template is added, fixed, or removed; thus, it reduces the utility of these categories.
To clarify, I would be open to merging these too. I think the categories should have been discussed first at Template talk:Coord or Module talk:Coordinates. However, I'm not opposed to keeping these categories - just the fact that they have to be manually added to articles. epicgenius ( talk) 21:58, 22 May 2020 (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.

Subcategories of Wikipedia barnstar 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: keep. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:53, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
21 other subcategories

Rationale for all:

  1. Distinction between an award template and barnstar template is not significant.
  2. Category:Wikipedia award templates has roughly a hundred templates, which would benefit from being categorized.
  3. I've created 16 of these categories while moving templates out of Category:Wikipedia barnstar templates. During that I've noticed that some those templates, which use {{ Barnstar documentation}} actually do not have the stylized barnstar in their imagery. Examples: Template:Greek Barnstar of National Merit, Template:Longislandaward, Template:Haven of the Angels Barnstar.

Not all of these categories require the word "Wikipedia" in the title. I've decided to keep them for consistency, but I'm open for other options.

I think it would be beneficial to

  1. Expand the scope of these categories by renaming as proposed above.
  2. And move them up one level to become subcategories of Category:Wikipedia award templates.
  3. Rename {{ Barnstar documentation}} to {{ Award documentation}}.
  4. Turn Category:Wikipedia barnstar templates into a tracking category by including all pages which transclude {{ Barnstar documentation}} unless parameter |barnstar=no is passed. Such approach is convenient, since there many more barnstar awards than non-barnstar templates.

—⁠ andrybak ( talk) 18:47, 22 May 2020 (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: African-American basketball players

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. bibliomaniac 1 5 04:51, 9 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's Rationale: Propose deleting category per WP:NONDEF. Being of the African-American race is not a defining characteristic. We don't have Category:Asian basketball players or Category: Hispanic basketball players There is no rationale behind keeping this category. ֆօʍɛɮօɖʏǟռʏɮօɖʏ05 ( talk) 17:35, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Previous discussion: WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 December 10#Category:African-American_basketball_players, closed by me as "no consensus". -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 17:52, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • This is a tricky category to discuss. For most mid-tier players, finding a source that specifically describes them as African-American will be difficult. Too many editors will just use the “eye test”, which isn’t appropriate. On the other hand, there are articles like Earl Lloyd where the player’s race is a topic of great relevance. Zagalejo ^^^ 18:26, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep as mentioned in the previous CFD, African-American basketball players for a long time were segregated and had to play in their own leagues, similar to other sports. In addition there have numerous studies on the importance basketball has in African-American culture, such as "Black Hoops: The History of African-Americans in Basketball" and "Elevating the Game: Black Men and Basketball". In recent times the NBA and basketball's position on race related issues has been strongly influenced by the large percentage of racial minorities that play the game (see here for an aritcle detailing this). In addition deleting this category would be disruptive to the other categories in the African-American category tree. The above !voters are certainly right that there are articles that are misplaced in this category, and that the "eye test" should not be enough for inclusion, but by in large this is not a trivial category. Inter&anthro ( talk) 18:40, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Comment - I think I personally own about 10 different historical books about the integration of basketball by African-American players and maybe seen 3-4 documentaries on the subject. Are there ANY such works on Caucasian (or white) basketball history? It’s the difference between a minority group vs a majority one. That said, I have always been ambivalent about this category. Maybe I will vote this time, but regardless there is certainly a difference between this and “Caucasian basketball players” (which of course, has nothing specifically to with American players – Caucasians are world wide). Rikster2 ( talk) 20:49, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Comment, the current text of WP:OCEGRS leaves little room for deletion. Still it feels odd that all biography articles are categorized as such because of the significance of the topic. It would have been different if WP:OCEGRS would have said, e.g., only subcategorize within ethnicity if the additional characteristic is unique to the ethnicity (e.g. Jewish rabbis). Marcocapelle ( talk) 03:48, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Purge (or alt delete according to WP:BLOWITUP per Namiba below - added later). While the topic of African Americans in basketball is notable and an important part of African American culture, and the category unlikely to be deleted, WP:EGRS sets high standards for the inclusion of articles in this category, such as being defining for the subject of the article, and being cited in reliable sources. About the first point, while it was certainly defining for basketball player to be African American before and during the time of integration of the sport (a topic that I think would be better treated in the article realm than by a category listing individual players), one can wonder if it is still defining since then, when African American players have become the norm. About the second point, I would find it a good test to check if each article has a source listed at WP:RS which would use the exact phrase "African American basketball player" (or at the very least the two phrases related to each other in the same sentence) to define the subject of the article. Clearly, most of the 2,639 players currently in this category will be defined, most often, as just "basketball players" or with their league or team, while being African American at the same time. Place Clichy ( talk) 23:04, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    Agree with the principle, although I have no idea how to implement this in practice with this huge amount of articles. Honestly I think it would be better to revisit the conditions of WP:OCEGRS. Marcocapelle ( talk) 16:40, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    @ Marcocapelle: Which conditions would you like to revisit and how? I notice that WP:OCEGRS already states that people should only be categorized by ethnicity or religion if this has significant bearing on their career. If there is something that may be made more precise, it could be the notion that a majority group is rarely or never defining, which we mention e.g. in WP:CATGENDER but not specifically for ethnicity: As another example, a female heads of government category is valid as a topic of special encyclopedic interest, though it does not need to be balanced directly against a "Male heads of government" category, as historically the vast majority of political leaders have been male. Place Clichy ( talk) 08:56, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • @ Place Clichy: the issue is in "where that combination is itself recognized as a distinct and unique cultural topic in its own right." Which is the main reason to keep this category. But I do not have an idea how to address the issue. Marcocapelle ( talk) 06:18, 29 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    @ Marcocapelle: you are correct. The guidelines actually talk about 2 things: 1°) if a category should exist and 2°) if an individual article is eligible to it. In the current case, while the topic is notable indeed (albeit not automatically in the form of a list of biographies), most articles are not eligible to be there. Hence purging is justified, although it is in practical difficult. The venue for discussing a single article inclusion is in principle its talk page, but it is hard to have a discussion on 2,600+ talk pages at the same time. Place Clichy ( talk) 07:16, 29 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Wikipedia:Blow it up and start over There are definitely examples where being African-American is defining for basketball players. However, in the vast majority of cases, it is both non-defining and not able to be sourced. I've tried and failed on many occasions. Therefore, I believe we should delete it and repopulate it with sourced articles.-- User:Namiba 21:50, 26 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    That is actually the better rationale for deletion in this discussion. Marcocapelle ( talk) 05:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    I also subscribe to this rationale (!vote updated). Clearly most or all of the 2,639 articles do not have their place in this category. The rationale that being African American had a significant bearing on a basketball player's career until and during the racial integration of the sport does not apply to most players coming after that, and American basketball was integrated earlier and more massively than other major American sports: History of basketball § African Americans in basketball says that the NBL was integrated in 1942 and the NBA in 1950, just two seasons after its founding, and Race and ethnicity in the NBA § History cites an academic report, compiled since 1990, that consistently shows above 75% of "black" players in every season. If a similar category needs to be restarted, it would need to be more selective. Place Clichy ( talk) 08:56, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep I don't see an IAR rationale to not discuss this in conjunction with related parent categories Category:African-American sportspeople or Category:African-American people by occupation and their subcategories in order to reach a full consensus on whether these should exist to WP:DIFFUSE. No point deleting one just to have to repopulate later if this is only a local consensus.— Bagumba ( talk) 16:59, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    Precisely, these categories are not here to diffuse a parent category! WP:GHETTO explains quite well that ethnicity categories should be non-diffusing. Men's basketball players categories are diffused by league, team or other defining feature. If you look at Category:Men's basketball players by nationality you'll see that nationality is often the last level of diffusion, and that's very fine (see also WP:FINAL RUNG). Also, there is a reason in our guidelines (not IAR) to consider this category alone and not other African American occupation categories, it is that like there is no need for a "Male heads of government" category, as historically the vast majority of political leaders have been male ( WP:EGRS), historically (since the 1960s) the vast majority of American basketball players have been African American. You cannot say the same about other sports or other occupations even largely associated with African Americans (such as musicians). Place Clichy ( talk) 05:25, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    It seems the discussion should begin at Category:People by ethnicity and occupation. Frankly, there's so many of these ethnic–occupation type categories that I wonder if WP:GHETTO really reflects standard practice, as guidelines are expected to.— Bagumba ( talk) 08:28, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    There was a large discussion on the topic last year, and it proved to be a too large piece to reach a clear consensual decision in one direction or the other. It is therefore perfectly correct to discuss specific cases. Deferring the discussion of specific categories to a decision on all intersection categories of ethnicity and occupation is creating an endless loop. If anything, the mere application of long-time guidelines Categorization/Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexuality and Overcategorization should result in the removal of many of these categories, and they are routinely deleted. Place Clichy ( talk) 09:08, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    It is therefore perfectly correct to discuss specific cases ...: Sorry, I do not equate "allowed" with "correct". If this was arguing notability, where each category has its own merits, I could see how WP:OTHERSTUFF is a weak argument; individual discussions would be justified. But it seems that WP:GHETTO should equally apply (or not) to all categories, and should be discussed as a whole with the relevant category tree. I still maintain my original !vote that I don't see an IAR rationale to not discuss this in conjunction with related parent categories ...— Bagumba ( talk) 09:45, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    Irrelevant categories about intersection of ethnicity and occupation or something else are brought up for discussion here all the time, see African-American conservatism, Sephardi socialists, Black Women Photographers, American military personnel by descent, American pornographic film actors of Singaporean descent, American short story writers of Arab and Taiwanese descent, American X of X descent, American mayors of Vietnamese descent, Men whistleblowers, American academics of Filipino descent, Members of the United States Congress of Vietnamese descent, American women of Laotian descent in politics, Dutch-language LGBT writers, Coptic-American diplomats, Women in cannabis for April and May alone. There is no preferential treatment here. Place Clichy ( talk) 13:45, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    I don't recall books made about American pornographic actors of Japanese descent or Arab American short story writers being barred from selling to non-Arabs. As mentioned above African-Americans were previously forced to play in their own leagues and were segregated and discriminated against for quite some time. There have also been numerous books and films made on the importance basketball plays in African-American culture. Ironically Place Clichy your argument above seems to be using the same WP:OTHERSTUFF argument that you've been arguing against - just because as similar category was deleted does not mean this category in inherently irrelevant and should be deleted too. Inter&anthro ( talk) 17:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    I was trying to answer the argument according to which one should wait to reach a full consensus for all similar categories first, and then discuss this specific category later. That's not how it works, individual discussions are of course welcome. The rationale for deletion (or mere refocusing the scope) is different. Actually, the larger consensus is expressed at WP:EGRS. Place Clichy ( talk) 02:38, 29 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep though I echo the concerns of others in the thread, but based on what we do now this is a valid category passing the discussion at WP:EGRS. The place for a larger scale is a RfC. SportingFlyer T· C 03:03, 29 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Note to closer The nomination was opened by the creator of Category:Caucasian men's basketball players, since deleted, after they voted !keep at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2020_May_22#Category:Caucasian_men's_basketball_players (below). Seems like it should be discounted as a WP:POINTY nomination of a related African-American category.— Bagumba ( talk) 05:17, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
    I do not think you should attribute thoughts or motivation to other editors, which BTW have expressed themselves clearly enough. If you still do not see or address at all the obvious problems of this category (which is likely to be kept anyway), you may yourself be directed to WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT. Let's find a way to discuss how we could collaboratively find a way to avoid this category being applied to thousands and thousands of Wikipedia articles for which it is really a secondary characteristic (because the vast majority of American basketball players and, since the 1960s, American professional basketball players, are African American), except if we want to racialize anyone and anything anywhere on Wikipedia (hence discussions on Caucasian and other races and ethnicities of basketball players, which were rightfully deleted). Place Clichy ( talk) 06:13, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
    It's a discussion. There will be an independent closer. Relax. If you still do not see or address at all the obvious problems ...: Please read WP:CHOICE. Cheers.— Bagumba ( talk) 06:22, 4 June 2020 (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:Pupils of Olivier Messiaen

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. Seems to be a consensus that this is not defining. Note that the information is already in list form at List of music students by teacher: K to M#Olivier Messiaen. bibliomaniac 1 5 05:05, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Not defining for pupils. Random sample of some articles which have lead and body text: in lead ( Robert Sherlaw Johnson), in body ( Joanna Bruzdowicz) not at all ( Sadao Bekku, Igor Wakhévitch, Serge Garant). List already exists at List of music students by teacher: K to M#Olivier Messiaen. Furthermore, I am starting to wonder if most or all of the daughter cats of Category:All music pupils by teacher are nondefining. b uidh e 15:50, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
"Not defining for pupils." How so? Hyacinth ( talk) 02:48, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
WP:DEFINING says "A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define[1] the subject as having—such as nationality or notable profession". It would be an extremely rare case where a pupil is defined or notable for which teacher they had. b uidh e 09:29, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep - a teacher is definitely defining for a pupil, especially in creative fields (which is why we also have a similar category for art). I am concerned, however, that the parent Category:all music pupils by teacher, a template-driven category, is a near duplicate of its parent Category:Music pupils by teacher, and that the template clearly does not allow for sorting by teacher's surname. Either the template needs serious work or categories should be manually added - and in either case the categories need merging. Grutness... wha? 03:21, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • See also Category:Pupils of Nadia Boulanger. b uidh e 09:29, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support, the articles mostly mention Messiaen in passing, without elaboration of if and how this has influenced the respective composers. Marcocapelle ( talk) 15:23, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete. From the sample I looked at this appears to be non-defining (e.g. for Jenny McLeod several teachers are mentioned in the Education section). WP:DNWAUC applies. DexDor (talk) 17:10, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete Consistently mentioned but not defining in the articles I looked at. No objection to a list. RevelationDirect ( talk) 00:16, 24 May 2020 (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:Climate change denialists

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. bibliomaniac 1 5 03:20, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: A decision was made last year to delete Category:Climate change deniers [1] I created these categories unaware of that decision, as I used different words. I cant say I'm very impressed with the situation that is left. If it's derogatory to call someone a climate change denier it seems to me just as derogatory to put them in a topic category entitled Climate change denial. But there have been several discussions and they all seem to have reached the same conclusion. So my question is, assuming we dont want to revisit the earlier discussions, should we delete the biographies from the parent category? It didnt appear to me that most of the subjects of the articles I looked at objected to being called denialists. Most of the politicians seemed quite happy with the label. And is it sensible to divide the category by country, as there are now more than 270 articles? Rathfelder ( talk) 11:59, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Category:Antisemitism has a similar situation. There is no Category:Antisemites, but there is Category:Antisemitism by country, which contains country-specific categories, which contain, among other articles, articles about people - most of those are about antisemites, but there are also ones about people who fight antisemitism.
Renaming Category:Climate change denialists to Category:Climate change denial by country may be a good idea. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 12:54, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Speedy delete all per WP:G4 as a re-creation of Category:Climate change deniers, which was deleted at WP:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 October 16#Category:Climate_Change_deniers, and the deletion was upheld at an RFC in 2019. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:03, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Speedy delete all as BrownHairedGirl is entirely correct. Second choice is merge with "climate change denial", which I must acknowledge was allowed after supporters said denial is way different from deniers, though WP:OPINIONCAT should apply too. Peter Gulutzan ( talk) 14:59, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose - denial of climate change is a serious problem and plays an important part in politics and attitudes about science around the world. Just because some might object to being labeled as a "denier" is not reason enough for deletion, as be WP:CENSORED we don't delete content simply because some individuals or groups will object to it. Inter&anthro ( talk) 15:22, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    • @ Inter&anthro: Well we are certainly not censored we do go by community consensus which has found, multiple times, that these categories are inappropriate. This is not really the place to go over those discussions again either, that would need to be a new RFC. PackMecEng ( talk) 19:13, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • We should not add biographies to topic categories, assuming that climate change denial is merely an opinion and not a defining characteristic. If it is a defining characteristic for some biographies (probably exceptional) the category name should express that explicitly, e.g. "climate change denial activists". Marcocapelle ( talk) 15:57, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    Does this "climate change denial activism" include denialist politicians who are active in parties who are overwhelmingly anti-climate-science and generally anti-science, such as the Alternative for Germany and Republican Party (US)? Plus people who work as denialists for denialist think tanks? Plus people who have denialist blogs? Plus people who write denialist books? Then most biographies in the categories, if not all, will have to stay. This is not about people who just have that opinion because they read in Wall Street Journal that they should have it - those have never been in the category. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 17:53, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Politicians certainly not, since for them it is only a matter of expressing an opinion and they normally have an opinion about a wide range of topics anyway. A category is only meaningful for people who are fully committed to climate denial only. Marcocapelle ( talk) 18:29, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • "Only"? So, they need to be monomaniacs? Even Lamar Smith and Jim Inhofe do not count, because they have other subjects they talk about? -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 07:37, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • The "Only" clause is one of the stupidest things I hear again and again on these deletion discussions. Does someone have to be "only" notable to be born in 1959 for Category:1959 births to be included? That's pure nonsense. Say someone is intrested in famous people who are express a denial in the scientific consensus of climate change. In that case these categories are helpful even if the subjects might hold other views. Inter&anthro ( talk) 21:49, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • No, the whole point is that we do not categorize based on views. The reverse also applies: we should only categorize climate change activists. Marcocapelle ( talk) 20:29, 26 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • That will not solve the issue that it concerns a mere opinion, which we do not categorize by. Marcocapelle ( talk) 07:30, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Definitely not, as "skeptics" is a euphemism for "deniers", which is the term used by science. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 07:32, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • What I meant is that people who reject the consensus on climate change are denying what the scientific community considers to be a fact. They shouldn't disagree with that statement. This is not about whether or not climate change is real, it is about whether or not people think that climate change is real or not. A similar example would be evolution deniers. I am pretty sure most people who deny the science of evolution would agree with the label "evolution denier" and agree with the fact that they are at odds with the scientific community. Bneu2013 ( talk) 05:08, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • It leaves all the biographies in Category:Climate change denial. My initial question was - do we remove them all? Or we could prune it by taking out the people for whom climate change is peripheral, but if we were to do that it's hard to see why we wouldnt put those that remain into a Category:Climate change denialists. I entirely agree that it is very unsatisfactory to categorise people by their opinions, but I think for some of these people it is what makes them notable. Rathfelder ( talk) 20:28, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • I think it comes back to WP:OPINIONCAT where we should not be putting people into categories like this at all. This RFC dealt with a similar issue. PackMecEng ( talk) 20:42, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • @ Hob Gadling: If you take a look at Category:Antisemitism you will note at the top the criteria for inclusion states It must not include articles about individuals, groups or media that are allegedly antisemitic. So it is not supposed to contain BLP articles. The link to the discussion seems like a pretty broad RFC on the subject. PackMecEng ( talk) 14:53, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Speedy delete per G4 and BHG. Place Clichy ( talk) 22:40, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Comment @ Rathfelder: Thank you for nominating your own categories given the earlier homination and clearly explaining what happened. RevelationDirect ( talk) 00:12, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • NB The earlier discussion Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_February_9#Bias_categories about bias categories decided that biographies should not be included, but a quick inspection shows that some have crept back in. Is there any way of monitoring this sort of thing? I am concerned that we assume that our discussions about categories produce the intended results, but I dont think they always do. Do we need eternal vigilance? I am indebted to Peter Gulutzan who noticed what I had done and alerted me to the problem. If he hadnt I might have dug a much deeper hole and it might have been there a long time. Rathfelder ( talk) 11:02, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete This has the feel of an ATTACK category. If this were about people who made a career as deniers, it might have some merit, but it feels more like an excuse for picking up random comments, made by those best known for other things. Peterkingiron ( talk) 17:06, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Climate change is a scientifically proven fact. Denying that climate change is real is no different than denying the holocaust or any other denial of (to the best of human knowledge) true facts. In many of these cases politician's denial of climate change has influenced their policies on energy consumption and economic growth, so this is neither a irrelevant fact of an attack category as your !vote appears to imply. Inter&anthro ( talk) 02:26, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ Inter&anthro: see WP:OPINIONCAT. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:51, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • It seems clear that the biographical categories should be deleted. I therefore propose to purge them and the superior category of all biographies, unless I find any that are only notable as denialists, in which case I may have to seek further advice. Rathfelder ( talk) 22:05, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per WP:OPINIONCAT and WP:G4. PPEMES ( talk) 21:29, 26 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • I have purged the categories listed above (though not the rest of Category:Climate change denial) of all the entries of people who are notable otherwise than for climate change denial. We are then left with a much smaller number of people whose notability appears to me to be dependent on denialism. How should they be categorised? Rathfelder ( talk) 19:56, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Thanks for this start, though I can't see why you haven't removed the categorisation from Judith Curry and John Christy, both of whom clearly meet WP:PROF. In the longer term, as noted above the "denialist" categories shuld be deleted and almost all BLPs should be removed from the "denial" categories. Jonathan A Jones ( talk) 20:59, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
WP:OPINIONCAT says, "Please note, however, the distinction between holding an opinion and being an activist, the latter of which may be a defining characteristic". If we apply this to Judith Curry and John Christy... does repeatedly writing denialist pieces for denialist outlets such as WUWT or Wall Street Journal not count as "activism"? The "Only" clause is still not convincing. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 05:37, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
For example, Myron Ebell would fit in Category:Climate denial activists. But many climatologists can be purged. Marcocapelle ( talk) 05:43, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep or Rename I don't see what is special about climate change denial that makes it a forbidden category unlike a boatload of similar categeories.
For example there are 685 people in Category:American environmentalists. Glancing at the Bs, I see pop singer Jackson Browne, actor Pierce Brosnan, anti-war and free trade activist Medea Benjamin. At least Benjamin ran for Senate once from the Green Party. What puts these people in this category is they have lent their efforts and names to promoting environmentalist causes. Are they being stigmatized by category?
What about the 86 people in Category:American Scientologists? I see musicians, politicians, an author of romance novels.
Regardless of their primary occupation, the people in the climate denial categories lent their efforts and names to advancing a particular social and political movement. It seems hardly a violation of BLP to honor that. If this is a BLP violation, it seems to me that there will be a boatload of categories with the exact same issue. M.boli ( talk) 22:09, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
See WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. We can use this discussion to identify other cats with this problem though: Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners may be another one of those.
WP:OPINIONCAT says, "Please note, however, the distinction between holding an opinion and being an activist, the latter of which may be a defining characteristic". This just needs to be applied to Pierce Brosnan and Jackson Browne. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 05:37, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Re: your edit summary, what you think are people who have lent their names and their efforts to the climate denial cause currently include the likes of Brian Wilshire, an Australian radio host who, one day, expressed sceptical views on mainstream climate change science according to a poorly-sourced single line in his bio article, or Ryan Zinke, an American politician who for a long time supported measures against climate change before seemingly shifting opinions without ever making very clear statements in one way or the other. Actually, these categories have been filled with journalists and politicians having expressed a very wide range of comments or opinions on the issue, not scientists having developed a consistent alternative view which is what you would expect from the name. Place Clichy ( talk) 09:57, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Agree with most of this: Wilshire and Zinke are typical for people who do not belong. But why would you expect the category to contain only scientists, or even mostly scientists? Ignorance is a valuable asset for denialists. Being a scientist is detrimental to that, though it does not prevent it, especially if the expertise of the scientist is something else than climatology. Many notable denialists are not scientists but writers, economists, lawyers, politicians, journalists and others. Jim Inhofe, Lamar Smith, James Delingpole, Ken Cuccinelli belong in the cat; they do have the ignorance needed, in spades, and they have invested great amounts of time in the subject. Frederick Seitz, Fred Singer or Fritz Vahrenholt are examples for non-climatologist scientists who belong there.
I think the category should have explicit criteria for inclusion, like Category:Critics of Judaism does: "This category is for...". I suggest that, for people, it should be something like "activism, such as organizing campaigns or repeated publication of articles promoting denial". -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 11:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
I'm inclined to think Hob Gadling's suggestion is a way forward. We clearly cannot just delete the categories and imagine we have solved the problem. Already people are reinstating the categories on biographies of prominent politicians like Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage when I have just removed them. And of course the question of whether people are sufficiently notable in other ways to make these categories unnecessary is completely subjective. I also noticed that quite a few were categorised as conspiracy theorists. That seems just as ill defined and even more derogatory. Are we going to delete that? Rathfelder ( talk) 13:03, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Blanket deletion is not the solution. The category needs to be sourced within the article - see WP:CATDEF "A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having". So, we do not need to define it ourselves ("ill defined"); instead we refer to RS consistently calling them that. Actually, the same holds for climate change deniers. -- Hob Gadling ( talk) 13:18, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Hoping and praying that the category will keep itself tidy is not the solution either. As Rathfelder told, there will always be people who will add back ineligible articles to the category, even if you place a strict wording about its scope. One of the reasons for that is that people usually don't see such wording when adding a category to an article, e.g. with tools such as HotCats. Another reason is that the scope of a category of people having an opinion against something is so imprecise that the category is fundamentally flawed. Place Clichy ( talk) 14:46, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Agreed, and I would also include lending names or efforts to the climate denial cause. Cuccinelli and Inhofe are two examples of people whose activism was from positions of power, they were using governmental mechanisms to advance their cause. M.boli ( talk) 13:15, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
I should maybe not have used the word "scientists". What I mean is that if these categories were to live up to their promise they should at least be restricted to people making a coherent effort to build a consistent approach about the issue, rather than columnists who made a random statement about how they dislike anything liberal. But the key issue here is that a category against something is always a gathering of too different things. What we see here is people who deny there is a climate change at all, next to people who acknowledge it but deny its impacts, next to people who acknowledge the impacts but deny the causes, next to people who acknowledge impacts and causes but are against the measures to be taken to fight it. An example is Richard Tol, an academic (albeit an economist, not a physicist), specialized in the "economics of global warming", who according to his article is mostly focused on the economic costs of climate policy, while not denying any of the hard scientific and physical facts about climate change. Is he serious in what he is publishing? Probably more than Wilshire (the Australian radio columnist). Is he a climate change denier/denialist? I don't know, because I don't think these terms are defining, for anybody. Place Clichy ( talk) 14:46, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
What climate deniers have in common is opposing policies addressing climate change. From a practical, policy point of view: they all stand together in opposition to taking action. As I see it, there may be a public relations issue in that the climate deniers haven't come up with a nifty branding. For example the pro-life brand ties together people who oppose abortion for a variety of different reasons, but are united in promoting policies which restrict abortion. Similarly an economist whose academic efforts are in opposition to enacting climate change policies will be called to testify by a senator who shows snowballs to the TV cameras. They are playing for the same team, moving the government and society ball towards the same goal. M.boli ( talk) 15:23, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
The problem is that Richard Tol "was a coordinating lead author for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Working Group II: Impacts". His inclusion shows that such categories inevitably end up degrading into a "list of people who some other people think are bad people". That's why we deleted this category last time, and why we should just delete it again. Jonathan A Jones ( talk) 15:43, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Toll's work on the IPCC report isn't a problem for this category. Like many other academic climate change deniers, he contributes in meaningful and influential ways to the public debate. Yet Toll is clear about his stance opposing most action to reduce climate change. You make it sound like climate change denier serves merely as derisive insult, like flat Earther. But Category:Flat Earth proponents is a useful Wikipedia category for people who actively propound that view. M.boli ( talk) 16:41, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Would categories along the lines of "Climate change denial in the United States" get round the problem. Topic categories, which could include biographies of significant players, without labelling them as to which side of the debate they are on? Rathfelder ( talk) 12:58, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    I don't think it would solve the issue of biographies being added to the category. If a biographical article was so linked with climate change denial that it would be defining both for the article and the category, it would be added to a global category, not a national one. Climate change (and it's denial) is a worldwide problem par excellence, national subcategories don't bring much imho. And they certainly wouldn't be a way to have less (or more) biographical articles. Place Clichy ( talk) 13:54, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    • The science is global but All politics is local. I cant see any way of getting rid of the biographical articles. We just have to manage an unsatisfactory situation. Rathfelder ( talk) 12:46, 31 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete all. It should have been "speedy delete" but the nomination was declined. There have been no new arguments presented as to why the categories should be kept, and they are contrary to a long-standing consensus. St Anselm ( talk) 21:55, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
No - people should not be in that category. St Anselm ( talk) 14:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply
  • The climate deniers themselves understand they are on the same team, working together for a common cause. They oppose policies addressing climate change. The speakers at the premier denier conference, for example, are all over the map on climate change beliefs. But they are united in their opposition to taking action. Climate-change-is-real economist Richard Tol is invited by full-throated scientists-are-evil Congressional Reps to Congressional hearings, because the economist supports their policy conclusions.
    • The term denier sounds pejorative to some people. I think we can reword it.
    • So how about {{ category:People opposing policies to address climate change}}? I agree it is wordy. But the climate-denial movement has not come up with their own snappy brand name. A category name like this would also have the advantage of being descriptive. As with Category:Environmentalists and Category:Flat Earth proponents, it would be restricted to people who lend their :efforts or names to the cause. Loosely defined: activists. Not needed to include people who merely express opposition, but aren't involved.
    • I already voted keep or rename above. M.boli ( talk) 19:28, 1 June 2020 (UTC) reply
      • This alternative rename proposal does not clearly enough exclude people who merely express their opinion because it is part of their job to have an opinion on this topic (such as politicians and climatologists). Marcocapelle ( talk) 21:19, 1 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Climate denial is a political and social movement. The category would be for movement activists. Just having an opinion doesn't make somebody an activist in that movement. M.boli ( talk) 15:05, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply

Comment for closer to note Category:Australian climate change denialists and Category:New Zealand climate change denialists which were deleted last week but not emptied. Whatever is decided here can the closer follow suit on those two categories to stop them showing up on the Special:WantedCategories backlog please? TIA. As far as the discussion goes, it's one of those grey areas where I don't feel close enough to have a strong view. It feels like one of those categories that will be genuinely WP:DEFINING for a small number of people but will attract a lot of categorisation of people who make a passing comment about not wanting to give up their car. So part of the decision making is what kind of effort the community is prepared to make to purge the cruft on a long-term basis. "Activists" is a useful word to discourage cruft categorisation - perhaps Category:Activists against action on climate change ?? Le Deluge ( talk) 13:37, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply

I could live with Category:Activists against action on climate change. Better than my proposal. Climate denial is a movement, denying that action is needed to address climate change, and the people we label "deniers" are its activists. M.boli ( talk) 15:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Any activist category would be a BLP nightmare. You would need reliable sources explicitly using the word "activist", not just statements questioning particular actions. St Anselm ( talk) 16:22, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply
We already have Category:Climate activists. Rathfelder ( talk) 18:03, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Looking at some of the pages in Category:Climate activists, I can come to understand that StAnselm ( talk · contribs) has a point. These would have to be people who were labeled activist in an reliable source. Further, the word often carries an implication of somebody working from outside normal channels to influence policy. We usually wouldn't apply it to an official who executes policy or an academic in the field or an elected representative. I still think it is appropriate to categorize the chief opponents of addressing climate change. But I can see how the ``activist`` name might not work. M.boli ( talk) 18:57, 2 June 2020 (UTC) reply
  • All these activist type categories are very problematic. But I dont think deleting them solves the problems, and I dont think we should exhibit political bias by being harder on categories we dont like. Rathfelder ( talk) 13:41, 3 June 2020 (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:Caucasian men's basketball players

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: Delete Timrollpickering ( talk) 22:03, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Propose deleting category per WP:NONDEF. The category's creator states that it was created, because Category:African-American basketball players exists, which "justifies" the creation of the nominated category. – Sabbatino ( talk) 10:48, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom. WP:NOTDEFINING. If kept, there are other issues that make it not an exact parallel to “African-American basketball players.” Rikster2 ( talk) 10:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nom as WP:NOTDEFINING. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:04, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Keep So one why doesn't it parallel Category:African American basketball players? It is WP:DEFINING as it can verifiable and it is appropriate to be mentioned in the lead part of the article. that's not fair to have said category but not this one. In the WP:NONDEFINING page it specifically says "if the characteristic would not be appropriate to mention in the lead portion of an article, it is probably not defining." Which completely contradicts this category. And they are notable for being basketball players. User:Sabbatino has a tendency to target me and the categories I've have previously created.There are multiple characteristics that can be linked with this category. I don't understand the point of discussion over categories if almost a majority of the time it is one-sided. SomeBodyAnyBody05 ( talk) 15:25, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • If you are serious in your opposition you should provide evidence. For example, where can we find that "Caucasian" is a defining characteristic of e.g. Matt Carroll (basketball)? Marcocapelle ( talk) 16:06, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Then We could renamed the category to something else. But it's just not fair to keep that category but not this one. Maybe renaming it to Category:European-American basketball players. But I just want it politically appropriate ֆօʍɛɮօɖʏǟռʏɮօɖʏ05 ( talk) 18:10, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • @ SomeBodyAnyBody05, if you want something political appropriate, then you are in the wrong place. Wikipedia has a core policy pf WP:NPOV, not "political appropriate".
    It's also unhelpful that you reply without paying any attention to the fact I drew your attention to: that there is no Category:Caucasian people, because we don't categorise categorise people by race. You offer no resaon why men's basketball players should be an exception to the principle. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:20, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Speedy delete per WP:SNOW. WP:ETHNICRACECAT leaves no doubt that while ethnicity categories are debatable, and sometimes eligible, categorizing people by race, perceived or not, is a big no no. Place Clichy ( talk) 22:35, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete another useless race/ethnicity category. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 17:23, 28 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete Just voted keep on the African-American men's basketball players category - that is not a race, but this is, which violates our guideline at WP:EGRS. SportingFlyer T· C 03:05, 29 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Delete per nominator. ...William, is the complaint department really on the roof? 12:32, 29 May 2020 (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:Baltic sea SE basins

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 all. to the alt targets proposed by BHG bibliomaniac 1 5 04:57, 4 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: uncontroversial move to: Baltic Sea SE basins Estopedist1 ( talk) 09:02, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Query should this be a merge proposal? Are users expected to know what SE means? Laurel Lodged ( talk) 10:32, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Huh? This is a proposal to move a category to itself, i.e. to do nothing. @ Estopedist1, what are you actually trying to do here? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:14, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ BrownHairedGirl and Laurel Lodged: I was suprised that I (as autopatrolled user) cannot do this category moving itself. "SE" means here geographical position, see parent Category:Drainage basins of the Baltic Sea-- Estopedist1 ( talk) 13:05, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ Estopedist1, that doesn't answer my question. The proposal would make no change. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:20, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
The nominator Estopedist1 has just edited the nomination to make this a change of case from "Baltic sea" to "Baltic Sea".
That means that the nomination actually proposes a change, which is an improvement. But "Baltic Sea SE" fits no naming convention that I can see. Checking further, I see that Category:Drainage basins of the Baltic Sea has been split into 4 such categories, none of which has any parent other than Category:Drainage basins of the Baltic Sea. They should all be upmerged, ... or if kept, renamed to spell out the compass points, e.g. Category:Baltic sea SE basins to Category:Drainage basisns of the south-east Baltic Sea. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:58, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Agreed. Laurel Lodged ( talk) 14:39, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Upmerge per BrownHairedGirl, this split in four subcategories is subjective. Marcocapelle ( talk) 16:10, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Full alternative proposal
I will tag the three sibling categories as well. @ Estopedist1, Laurel Lodged, and BrownHairedGirl: could you please comment on the full alternative proposal? Marcocapelle ( talk) 12:16, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support alternative proposal. Many thanks. @ Marcocapelle. This is exactly what I had in mind, but which I was too lazy to set out fully.
    This division of the Baltic Sea into 4 quadrants of the compass appears to be WP:Original research. It doesn't reflect the divisions described at Baltic Sea#Subdivisions or the map included in that section, which I included here. The encyclopedia should not use original research as a basis for subcategorisation. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:35, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Support for upmerging. Attention also the original creator of these categories: user:Urjanhai-- Estopedist1 ( talk) 12:31, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Thaks for notification. I am not the actual original creator because the categories Category:Baltic sea SE basins and Category:Baltic Sea SW basins were already there and had been created by someone else before I went on and created the two other categorties Category:Baltic Sea NE basins an d Category:Baltic Sea NW basins accordindin to the same model. These may quite well be merged. But you may still want to notify the actual original creator.-- Urjanhai ( talk) 12:47, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
The original creators of this categorization model in this case seem to be User:P-A. (2006) and User:Bermicourt (2010).-- Urjanhai ( talk) 18:16, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Actually I only created one overall Baltic Sea drainage basin but it seems to have since been moved to create one of the 4 quadrants. So I'm entirely happy with just the one basin category with river drainage basins as sub-cats where merited. Bermicourt ( talk) 18:52, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support Alt Proposal Dividing the Baltic Sea (capital "S") by compass directions is subjective where the cutoff is. (Certainly fix capitalization if kept.) RevelationDirect ( talk) 00:18, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Upmerge I checked to see if anything directional could be found in the literature but couldn't find anything which showed this wasn't subjective. SportingFlyer T· C 01:35, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Merge per Alt proposal. The content is river basins (or catchments). One side of the Baltic is wholly Sweden, but the south and east has multiple countries. I would suggest that all the Swedish ones should be in one or two categories - one for the east sea (Baltic proper) and the other for their west sea, the strait joining the North Sea to the Baltic (this translates their Swedish names). There might possibly be merit in having a sub-cat for Germany and Poland (plus the Russian enclave, formerly part of Prussia); and another for the east side (Lithuania to Finland). I find the present scheme is obscure. Peterkingiron ( talk) 17:21, 24 May 2020 (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:Pupils of Nadia Boulanger

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: Delete Timrollpickering ( talk) 22:04, 30 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Nominator's rationale: Is this really defining for the students? I've checked a handful of the students. In only one ( Douglas Allanbrook) is there a mention in the lead. Robert Levin (musicologist), Andrée Desautels, Thomas Pasatieri, Julie Reisserová, Robert Sherlaw Johnson, Stanisław Skrowaczewski, and Wojciech Kilar mention the teacher in the body (in some of these articles without a source). Donald Erb's article does not her at all, failing WP:V. We already have a list so listification is unnecessary. b uidh e 05:11, 22 May 2020 (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:Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in the 2010s

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; I confirm that all current members are in "Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in YYYY". – Fayenatic London 22:13, 23 June 2020 (UTC) reply
Propose deleting:
Nominator's rationale: Wholly redundant to Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in the 2010s and Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in the 2020s, respectively. (Disclosure: those GB categories are newer. They were created by me few days ago, as part of a wider series: see Category:Railway stations in Great Britain by decade of opening and by year).
No railways stations in Northern Ireland have been opened in 2010s (see Petscan search), and none have been opened in the 2020s (see Petscan search). So these categories are GB-only in content, whatever their labels ... and they are also incomplete. They are not part of a series, unlike the GB categories.
In any case, categorising rail in Northern Ireland alongside Great Britain is always a mismatch, because rail transport in Northern Ireland has always been separate to that of the rest of the UK:
  1. The two systems are physically incompatible: Northern Ireland uses the same 5 ft 3 in gauge as the rest of Ireland, while Great Britain uses the narrower standard gauge. This distinction was actually set out in statute law back in the 1840s, when all of Ireland was part of the UK: see the Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act 1846 (see the first para of the PDF of the Act)
  2. There has never been any physical connection between Irish railways and railways in Great Britain
  3. There is no managerial connection between the two systems. In 1948, rail in Great Britain was nationalised in what became British Rail; while in the same year, rail in Northern Ireland was nationalised into a separate company which became Northern Ireland Railways.
Regardless of anyone's politics, the nature of these rail systems means that they are better categorised separately. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:41, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • PS: Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in the 2020s is empty, and has been tagged by speedy deletion. A few days ago it contained one article, which I see now that I removed [2] from the category, mistakenly thinking it was a WP:SUBCAT issue. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 00:46, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support for consistency with the other non-existant UK categories. However more generally I wonder if categorisation by island should really have priority over categorisation by country. It creates inconsistency across countries. Marcocapelle ( talk) 07:34, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support per nomination. Rail transport in Northern Ireland has much more in common with rail transport on the rest of the island of Ireland than it does with rail transport in Great Britain. While there are exceptions to this (e.g. accidents are investigated by the British RAIB not the Irish RAIU) for most things a geographical split in categorisation makes more sense. Thryduulf ( talk) 09:47, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support per nomination. How bizarre to have different gauges. Oculi ( talk) 10:55, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
    • @ Oculi, the lack of physical connection meant that there was no need for interoperability, and the wider Irish gauge has advantages. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:12, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support . We have to deal with these border issues pragmatically. I dont think anyone conceives of the railway system on a UK basis. The National Rail website does, rather surprisingly include the whole of Ireland as far as timetabling goes, but gives up when it comes to fares. Rathfelder ( talk) 12:14, 22 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Oppose We should not be breaking these out by island or geographic feature, but rather by country, in order to main consistency with literally everything else in the encyclopaedia. I think the right thing to do here would be to properly subcategorise these based on the actual sub-geography they're in, so "England" instead of "Great Britain" (so I would support these as container categories.) SportingFlyer T· C 23:37, 23 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • It sounds reasonable to split the UK categories in four subcategories, that is being done almost throughout the entire UK category tree. Marcocapelle ( talk) 06:04, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • @ Marcocapelle and SportingFlyer: I have spenta lot of time in the last ten days studying the by-year distributions of these sets of articles, and I need to ask you to take a few minutes to look at the data.
The problem I see with the logic you too are espousing is that:
  1. a set of by-year categories for the whole of the UK would cut across the structure of the rest of the categories for rail, which separate the countries of GB from the separate system in Northern Ireland.
  2. A set of by-year categories for each of the 4 countries of the UK would create a lot of smallcats.
I have taken the approach that is viable only if there are enough articles in each set to avoid creating a forest of smallcats. That is why as I have created set of by-nationality subcats of Category:Railway stations by year of opening, I have created them only for sets where there are enough articles in total. From my analysis, I don't think that creating a set of by-year categories for each of the 4 countries of the UK is viable.
I used Petscan to check the sixes of the sets, but it's down at the moment, so I can't link the searches, but I can reproduce the figures using WP:AWB's list comparison tool.
The first set I created was Category:Railway stations in Great Britain by year of opening, which has a total of 9,426 articles. That is big enough to avoid too many smallcats.
Now look at comparison of that with other sets, in which I have counted the number of smallcats as categories with less than 4 pages:
Existing sets of categories for Railway stations in FooCountry by year of opening
Country Σ articles Σ Categories Σ Smallcats % Smallcats Notes
Great Britain by year 9426 195 24 12.3%
Japan by year 8656 146 7 4.8% the most even spread of years
United States by year 5144 187 17 9.1%
China by year 2266 102 48 47% Figures a litle more complex due to Hong Kong subcats
Australia by year 1401 155 68 43.9%
France by year 1059 144 74 69.4%
Canada by year 517 107 70 65.4% Series not started by BHG
Russia by year 517 118 78 63.6% Series not started by BHG
Now look at the numbers for each of the constituent countries of the UK, counting only those articles for which we have a by-year category. Note that the set of articles is distributed over a period of approximately 180 years:
Number of articles in each of the 4 constituent countries of the UK which are categorised by year of opening
Country Σ articles
England 6400
Scotland 1277
Wales 773
Northern Ireland 276
So if we create a set opened-by-year categories for each of the 4 countries, we would have a well-populated set for England, a sparsely-populated set for Scotland & Wales ... and a set of almost entirely smallcats for Northern Ireland.
I have developed a methodology using AWB which would make it relatively easy to implement this, if that is what editors want. But do we really want to create forests of smllcats? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:59, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Your figures assume an even distribution of station openings per year, which is not the case - e.g. there are 60 articles in Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1900 but only 12 in Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 1960, in the latter category 7 are in England 5 are in Scotland. Of the 7 opened in 1996, 6 are in England and 1 in Wales. To my mind, that makes the smallcat issue even more significant so I oppose splitting Great Britain. Thryduulf ( talk) 11:32, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ Thryduulf your post clashed with my preparation of this extra data. Note that in data above, I didn't assume anything about the distribution: the smallcat figures were done by counting the cats with less than 5 articles.
To get some idea of the distribution of the Northern Ireland articles, I did a breakdown by decade of the Northern Ireland articles. Note that the total of openings is slightly higher than the number of stations, because stations which have been reopened have more than category for year-of-opening:
Railway stations in Northern Ireland by decade of opening
Decade Σ Stations opened
1830s 3
1840s 30
1850s 72
1860s 36
1870s 22
1880s 43
1890s 13
1900s 22
1910s 5
1920s 11
1930s 8
1940s 1
1950s 1
1960s 5
1970s 4
1980s 5
1990s 2
2000s 1
2010s 0
There will be some clustering of years in the 19th century, when stations were opened in batches when their railway line was opened. But by the 20th century, station openings were mostly individual additions to existing lines, so see e.g. the 1930s:
Railway stations in Northern Ireland by opened in the 1930s, by year
Year Σ Stations
opened		 List
1930 1 Creevyargon
1931 1 Shepherd's Bridge
1932 2 Drumadonald, Poland's Bridge
1935 2 Fraser Street, Damhead
1936 1 Retreat Halt
1938 1 Annakeera Crossing
As above, if the consensus is to create lots of smallcats, I will implement it. I have set up all these stations-by-year categories to use {{ Navseasoncats with decades below year}}, which makes it very easy for a reader to navigate quickly around sets of categories. I don't think that such massively-interlinked smallcats disrupt navigation much, if at all; and I think that in many ways they actually help. But previously @ Marcocapelle put huge effort into merging sets of by-year smallcats, with thousands of such categories upmerged. Marcocapelle, have your views on that shifted? -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 12:00, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • You convinced me that splitting in four is not a good idea. Marcocapelle ( talk) 16:55, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • I'm also now convinced the four-split isn't a good idea. I'm not sure I see the problem with having England be a subcat of the United Kingdom and everything else be in the parent directory, though. My biggest issue with this isn't really the splitting in four, it's: 1) Great Britain isn't an obvious category title choice when traditionally we break things out by country; 2) looking at the statistics, splitting off Northern Ireland specifically looks like it will create a number of smallcats as well; 3) we don't typically split up a country by railway gauge, for instance Kaliningrad has a separate gauge from the rest of the Russian rail network. SportingFlyer T· C 17:31, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • That's fair, but that only responds to one of my concerns, and it's not my primary concern, which is that we maintain a consistent country-level or subnational-level naming convention. I think there's probably a way to accomplish both through subcatting. SportingFlyer T· C 04:13, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • @ SportingFlyer: for rail transport the consistent split is GB/Ireland because that is how it has been split in the real world for the best part of 200 years - the split didn't start with the 1846 Act, the two systems had been developing essentially independently of each other for over a decade by that point (the first line in Ireland opened in 1834, the political split was almost a century later in 1922). Rail transport in the United Kingdom is a short, very high level overview explaining the geographical rather than political split. The geographical division is also how reliable sources are organised. The only source used on both Rail Transport in Ireland and Rail Transport in Great Britain is the BBC, the former uses sources like Irish Newspapers, IE, RTE, Translink; the latter the UK government, ORR, ATOC/RDG, Network Rail, Books and magazines with a British scope, TOCs and ROSCOs. Even the UN report into freight from ports (Woodburn 2008), although titled "UK" includes no instances of the words "Ireland", "Belfast", "Dublin", "Dun Laoghaire" or any other Irish port. Thryduulf ( talk) 10:02, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • (ec) @ SportingFlyer, the way that Northern Ireland is usually categorised is per WP:IRE-CATS: a subcat of both Ireland and the UK. You can see that at e.g. Category:Railway stations in Northern Ireland, which is a subcat of Category:Railway stations in Ireland and Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom.
Category:Railway stations in Ireland also contains Category:Railway stations in the Republic of Ireland, so we have all-Ireland categorisation
Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom also contains Category:Railway stations in England, Category:Railway stations in Scotland and Category:Railway stations in Wales.
We could do that with the by-year categories, so that:
The problem is that, as shown by the data above, it would create several sets of mostly smallcats: for Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, and to a lesser extent for Wales and Scotland.
Do you see a way around that?
As @ Thryduulf correctly notes, the underlying issue here is that rail transport in GB is separate from rail transport in NI, and has been for nearly 200 years, regardless of the changing political arrangements. That is why the head articles are slit, and Category:Rail transport in Great Britain has existed since 2004 [3]. So the principle of categorising rail by GB is well-established. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 10:27, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
I completely understand the logic behind it, I'm just continuing to note it creates an inconsistency in our naming conventions that's not necessarily obvious to those who a) might cat and b) don't understand the nuances. I guess the wrinkle here would be the fact that they are categorised both as Ireland and the UK, which both makes sense and is a little bit odd. Could we do stations in NI by decade instead of individual year, does that avoid a SMALLCAT issue? Basically, the hierarchy would be (top-level, 1.) UK: (children) Rail transport in NI, Rail transport in GB: (Rail transport in NI child): NI opened/closed by decade; (Rail transport in GB child): GB opened/closed by decade, then year. Is that functionally the proposal? SportingFlyer T· C 19:36, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ SportingFlyer, I am sensitive to the issue some people may have with the UK/GB distinction, which is why all the GB cats have {{ Railway stations in Great Britain does not include Norniron}}. That's not perfect, because many editors don't read a category page before adding an article to the category, but it may help.
Yes, we could create by-decade categories for Norniron as a subset of UK-by-decade categories. The problem then is that those station articles would then have two sets of categories for year of opening: e.g. Category:Railway stations in Northern Ireland opened in the 1930s and Category:Railway stations opened in 1931. That s a category clutter issue ... and my previous experience of that sort of disjoint is that it confuses both readers and editors, and the fact that it's not obvious makes it hard to maintain; editors can easily misunderstand the nuances and remove one or the other. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 21:58, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ BrownHairedGirl: Given the older of these categories dates to only 2018, I'm not sure it's a major issue. I think UK might do a better job of including the NI stations which might otherwise not find their way to a category, at the risk of being less granular. Maybe these categories need not be granular in the first place? It's possible that if you have a station in Railway stations opened in 1931 and Railway stations in Great Britain, that the opened in year is just a cross-categorisation that's too specific (I've been doing a lot of historic building cat tagging and year and geography are always separate categories.) In any case, if this gets closed now I'm not fussed with the change - hopefully it's clear that I'm just trying to work towards a decent solution? SportingFlyer T· C 00:43, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
@ SportingFlyer: I do understand that you are trying to find a solution, but with respect I think that's partly because you seem to have some extent misunderstood the situation ... and are therefore trying to find a solution to a non-problem.
Railway stations globally are categorised under Category:Railway stations by year of opening, e.g. Category:Railway stations opened in 1837.
Some countries now have their own set of by-year sub-categories (e.g. Category:Railway stations in France by year of opening/ Category:Railway stations opened in 1837), but most countries are just categorised in the global year categories.
I don't see why the lack of a country-specific year category impedes placing an article in the global by-year category: e.g. Dún Laoghaire railway station is in Category:Railway stations opened in 1837. This Petscan search shows that the only station in Northern Ireland not to be categorised by year is Trafalgar railway station (Northern Ireland), for which the debates are unknown.
Your point about excessive granularity is precisely the point that I have made in detail above; that for most countries, the intersection of year and country is too narrow. But for a few countries, there are enough articles for the intersection to work without creating a forest of smallcats: that is why I created Category:Railway stations in Great Britain by year of opening, which has only 12.3% smallcats; and it's why I objected to creating by-year categories for Northern Ireland, because it would be mostly smallcats.
Note that before creating the by-country-by-year categories, I did extensive searches with WP:Petscan (literally hundreds of searches of different permutations). That's why I have been able to provide such detail above on the numbers. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 13:16, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
Yes, I was mostly worried about what happens to NI in this instance, but now I'm fine with it. May still be too granular though. SportingFlyer T· C 15:15, 27 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • (EDIT CONFLICT) Support a GB outcome -- The GB rail system has been integrated since nationalisation in 1948. It would be difficult to oppose a Scottish category, but separating England and Wales would not be a good idea, as the rail system is Wales is highly fragmented, with no lines joining those of the north Wales coast, the mid-Wales lines, west from Shrewsbury, and those of South Wales. I see no objection in principle to an all-Ireland category, as trains run between Dublin and Belfast, through two jurisdictions. I have altered the categorisation of Worcestershire Parkway railway station, to match the 2010s category. This makes the annual category Category:Railway stations in Great Britain opened in 2020 redundant: it is always likely to be a small category. Peterkingiron ( talk) 17:47, 24 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support I think that @ BrownHairedGirl has done a great job of recatagorising these. When I created the category in 2018 it was a half hearted attempt to manually categorise the stations in an afternoon before I probably moved on to something else. In hindsight, I should have left this for someone with more experience to do, which has now been done. Mindi Crayon ( talk) 21:32, 25 May 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Support with a GB category by year only; some small subcats in particular years are acceptable. But without by-year subcats for England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland. And perhaps a "Railway stations in Ireland opened in 19XX" (by year) series; but without subcats for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Most "Railway stations in Foo opened in XXXX" categories do not have subcategories (except for China/Hong Kong). Re "existing sets by country" counts etc I would be interested in the counts for the Republic of Ireland, Germany and India also (India has a significant number of railway stations opening in the later 19th century; some in the "19XX establishments in India" by year category but not also in the "Railway stations opened in 19XX" category by year). Hugo999 ( talk) 23:59, 1 June 2020 (UTC) reply
  • Comment This discussion might be moot as Category:Railway stations in the United Kingdom opened in the 2020s has been emptied. Liz Read! Talk! 02:14, 6 June 2020 (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/2020_May_22&oldid=1196285660"

Videos

Youtube | Vimeo | Bing

Websites

Google | Yahoo | Bing

Encyclopedia

Google | Yahoo | Bing

Facebook




Top Of Page

Home • Search • Translate

© CSE