This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
There do not seem to be any firm policies for category deletion, so let me suggest some... If you object to anything here, feel free to add comments and/or suggest alternatives, especially if you disagree with the time lengths I've randomly chosen. -- ssd 22:59, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
For empty categories:
For non-empty categories:
---
This page isn't mentioned in the Deletion policy. What do the guidelines for deletion need to be here? Can empty categories be deleted immediately? Angela . 01:37, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
What about delisting? As per speedy deletion, too? Or x days? Any archiving? - UtherSRG 23:00, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Ummm... I think I might have made a mistake. a lot of the categories listed in vfd said that they should be moved to cfd, so I did. But now that I read the heading at the top of cfd, I notice that it's only for categories that are emptied... Is there an official policy on this page? I can't find it. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 16:54, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
As I understand it, CFD operates parallel to VFD, in that candidate categories are voted on and may be either kept or deleted, rather than this being a maintenance page with listed categories being automatically deleted. For that reason, I suggest listed categories not be emptied before being listed, so that if they are voted to be retained, all the emptying work does not need to be undone. -- Gary D 23:11, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
At any rate, what I really think needs to happen is that the CFD and VFD pages be merged. The people likely to be interested and the policy considerations for deletion or retention are not that different as between categories and articles. -- Gary D 23:11, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Since there's now a Category:Pages on votes for deletion, would a similar category for categories-to-be-deleted be useful? At time of writing Category:Jazz muzicians is a subcategory of Category:Pages on votes for deletion, which I guess is another way of doing it, albeit semantically dodgy. -- Avaragado 19:18, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Discussion on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/FHM110sexiest.
The FHM sexy ladies list raises an issue for me due to its inclusion of a particular media opinion as a category in Wikipedia. Besides that, its too damn long IMHO. - Ste vertigo 19:38, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think that, contrary to VfD policies, a category should be kept only if there is a consensus in favor of keeping it. Because of the impact that categories have in classifying articles, only those that have substantial, noncontroversial support should remain. There should be some guiding principles to assess whether a category should be kept:
Categories are important because they function to classify the subjects of articles—they appear with an even greater claim of factuality and objectivity than the content of articles. They should be limited to what is somehow integral to understanding a subject, rather than something that simply happens to be true about it. Trivial information can be buried at the bottom of an article with no problem, but trivial categories bury the article itself. Postdlf 23:29, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There seems to me to be a confusion about what the page is for. The top of the page states that categories should be empty. However, some people are - as with the FHM 100 - effectively taking it to mean "votes for category deletion". The page seems designed to draw admins attention to orphaned categories that are no longer useful. But the community seems to see it as a VfD for categories. I think this needs to be cleared up. -- bodnotbod 22:42, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
I think there is quite a fundamental problem with the purpose of this page, because the current header poses a chicken-and-egg problem: if you've already orphaned a category, there is basically no point listing it here, except to get the attention of a sysop/admin (cf. Wikipedia:Speedy deletions); but if you haven't orphaned it, and just want to have it discussed, there's no guideline of where to do so - should it go to WP:VfD? It would be tremendously unproductive if people start emptying categories, listing them here, and then having to re-fill them because of a consensus to keep.
Essentially, this page should either be the clearing-house for all category-related deletions (with discussion as necessary, à la VfD) or it should be clearly labelled as the equivalent of Speedy deletions, with the same provisos and links to the full VfD that that page carries. Personally, I think the latter function is undeserving of its own page, while the former may serve to take some weight off the over-burdened VfD in a fairly logical way.
In other words: we should either change this into a debating page for [potentially] non-orphaned categories, or kill it. - IMSoP 17:50, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think this should move to a subsection of RfC, as it's really for category disputes, not category deletions. anthony (see warning) 11:38, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I've just realised category:alcoholics has disappeared. I started the category. Added people to it. I now find that someone has presumably orphaned it, then called for it to be deleted, all without me noticing what was going on and having a chance to make the case for the category.
Is there an archive of the CfD page? I can't find a link to one. I have no idea what the arguments for deleting the category were. --[[User:Bodnotbod| bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 21:01, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)
JFW | T@lk 21:26, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think it would make more sense to make the top of this page suggest not depopulating completely, in general, but accept that in certain cases (vandalism, POV problems, overpopulation) that partial or (in rare cases) complete depopulation is reasonable. Martin 17:42, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm suffering from a similar frustration right now. User:Duncharris is busy moving articles from categories like Category:Welsh athletes (and those for other nations of the UK) to Category:British athletes, because "they normally compete under the British flag", even though there are legitimate reasons for keeping the nations separate (they compete separately in the Commonwealth Games, and there are already categories like Category:Welsh people to make the hierarchy useful) and it would have been trivial to make Category:British athletes a supercategory of the individual nations. He ignored my protestations, listed the categories for speedy deletion, and they were summarily deleted without further discussion by User:Chris 73. I've raised this on Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion as it seems to make a mockery of any kind of process. Grrrr.... -- Avaragado 18:21, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I also am extremely uncomformtable with the way category deletion is being handled. I would like to see this page used ONLY for the trivial cases of categories that are clearly redundant (populated or not) or mispelled, where the category is not really being deleted, but merely renamed (or merged), or empty due to lack of legitimate members for an extended period of time. Categories should not be deleted merely because they are empty--they must be empty because nobody is filling them at all. I would like to see all other category deletions ("this is not NPOV" or "this is stupid" or "kind of half-baked notion") to be taken to Vfd. Any category mistakenly placed here if not refuted quickly, I think should be moved there for further discussion. Note that I would support reorganization discussions like with Category:Winter Olympics here, although even that probably should be on category talk:categorization or something.
As to categories such as Category:people with blue eyes, the developers have already said that this type of category is inappropriate, as categories with more than about 10k slow the database down too much. -- ssd 04:51, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
To summarize, I think these types of things should be handled here:
I can't really think of much else that would not be better off discussed on Vfd. On a side note, I am tempted to start a page called Wikipedia:Nearly empty categories that need help (or just Wikipedia:Category cleanup), where small categories would be listed, and collapsed/merged into a parent category if not expanded within a month. -- ssd 05:09, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This is a copy of a note I dropped to User:Netoholic regarding this edit.
Hi, I noticed you have played down - to the point of inefectiveness - the notion that categories should not be depopulated before listing on CfD.
To my mind, this is an error. The reason being that it cannot be right that someone can act alone, depopulating a category and then listing it for community consensus. Surely the default position should be that a community is invited to look at the category first and action follows in the wake of that? Please let me know your thoughts. Regards, --[[User:Bodnotbod| bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 19:44, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)
This page already is largely useless. I agree to changing it to categories under review, and think it should be made a subpage of RfC a la article disputes. Adding a history function to the category itself would greatly improve things, but this would likely be a lot of work. anthony (see warning) 11:43, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I think this problem would be best solved in the long term by taking this information out of the articles and putting it into the categories. Instead of storing the category information in the child pages, you'd store it in the parents. Marking a category in the old style would still work, but this information would be moved to the category page itself. Thus we'd get history, we'd be able to make moves, standardization of sort keys would be easier, renaming of links would be possible, we'd have a good notion of redirects, we'd be able to mass add lots of articles at once, and we'd be able to include articles which haven't yet been created. In the mean time, as I'm not sure how much work this would be, we'd still need to work on these interim solutions. anthony (see warning) 11:57, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Here's an example to ponder, Category:Air forces. It has thirty entries, but not thirty articles—instead, it contains thirty subcategories, one each for the air force of a particular country. Each of these thirty subcategories contains just one article, identically titled with the subcategory, on that country's air force. Each of those subcategories is also assigned to a second parent category on the military of that particular country. I have not checked all those country military categories, but the ones I checked, and I suspect all the rest, contain only one entry, that country's air force subcategory. All in all, a boatload of subcategories for not too many articles. Even if articles are eventually added on other military branches of those countries, it makes far more sense to assign those two parent categories to the article on each country's air force, rather than inserting these myriad doomed intermediate subcategories. By "doomed," I mean that by definition these thirty subcategories will never have more than one article. Sure, taxonomy is fun, and we can busy our days drawing smaller and smaller boxes until there is only one angel dancing on the head of each pin. For the reader, though, it means extra steps drilling up and down to see what could be conveniently collected into larger logical groups for easy perusal. Let us take pity on the poor reader. -- Gary D 09:45, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I got sick of this page being huge. I deleted some stuff that was resolved simply, and archived both interesting resolved issues and unresolved issues more than two weeks old. I believe I left placeholders on the page for unresolved issues. I hope I didn't step on anyone's toes, but the page was just too big. -- ssd 22:13, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If consistency is what we're looking for, I'll just note that WP:VFD does not have the full template. I'm not unhappy with the current layout, even though the Resources box takes up a screen and a half. It does split the paragraph to the left of itself rather weirdly, though. -- Beland 04:37, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Ending in September, 2004, there was a poll about whether or not to merge WP:CFD and WP:VFD. The final result was no merger with the following final tally:
The issues of unresolved votes and getting enough people to pay attention to WP:CFD were also raised.
This debate has been listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comment
Poll opened August 30, 2004 ~ Poll to close 23.59 September 12, 2004
The proposal is that both categories and articles be listed on the same page.
Thanks so much for the much-needed cleanup, Ssd...
I've proposed that when there's a consensus to keep, we put the discussion on the Category's talk page. I did that for "German economy" with the following note:
"This category was nominated for deletion, but no clear consensus to delete was reached. The discussion is recorded below for future reference." -- Beland 05:48, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
OK, I did this for all the other pages that were kept. -- Beland 01:37, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comment. Start: 8 Sep 2004 (UTC) Finish: 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
What should be the procedure for closure in cases where there is no clear consensus after 7 days? (Not including controversies related to Wikipedia:Categorisation of people.)
Listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comment. Start: 8 Sep 2004 (UTC) Finish: 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If there is still no clear consensus to delete or keep after closure has been reached, what should be done about the category?
Keep: 4 + 1 from previous poll = 5 Delete: 0
Listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comment. Start: 8 Sep 2004 (UTC) Finish: 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
What should be done with empty categories that have the potential for being populated?
The other … for deletion pages list newest entries at the bottom, not at the top as is done here. Should not this page be changed so it is more consistent? [[User:Anárion| Ана́рыён]] 12:25, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
An accidental entry could confuse someone looking for Computational Fluid Dynamics, hence the entry at the top of the page. 132.205.15.4 06:48, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be a mirroring policy page here, like VfD has? 132.205.15.4 00:31, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Based on the recent polls, the following tentative policy is hereby adopted. You can read the archived polls in /old.
It was pointed out during the recent polling process that we need a new home for categories that need resorting, subcategorization, etc. I think we should just go ahead and create one. I can see a few possibilities... Wikipedia:Category cleanup, Category:Category cleanup, or adding these tasks to Wikipedia:Cleanup. Category:Orphaned categories and Category:Underpopulated categories already exist. What do you think?
Places to note this new page: Wikipedia:Categorization projects (current), Template:Resources for collaboration, WP:CFD -- Beland 02:55, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In my browser (IE 6.0), using the Classic skin, the Deletiontools table and the Table of contents are overlapping each other. Rick K 06:49, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
We have decided several times to disallow disambiguation categories. Shall we officially codify this? -- Beland 22:58, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Ah! The state of this page says a lot about wiki.en... Just to add a note on what the portuguese wiki decided for disambiguate categories. We created a custom message saying that the category is equivalent to the better one and that the present cat should be kept empty. In this way, the multiplication of categories as fishes and bread was severed. It works quite well. Cheers, [[User:Muriel Gottrop| muriel@pt]] 15:46, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This page is a mess! The policies specify that nothing should be here for longer than seven days, but that clearly is not happening. I've been trying to do some cleaning up.
I don't think it is particularly helpful to dump huge blocks of text at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/unresolved, so I've been trying to somehow figure out how to resolve as many older issues as I can. Because there aren't very many folks voting here, there often is no consensus, not because consensus couldn't be reached fairly easily, but simply because there were only two voters and one of them voted keep and the other delete.
With that in mind, I would appreciate it if those who are keeping an eye on this page would look at discussions for listings from October (or earlier) and comment wherever possible. Any other suggestions? -[[User:Aranel| Aranel (" Sarah")]] 23:22, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
See Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Seecat. Maybe the ones that are being kept as "redirects" should use Template:Categoryredirect. -- User:Docu
Perhaps it is time to use the VfD method of making pages smaller? {{Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/PageName}} seems like a good idea. Especially since the CfD and unresolved pages are quite large now. 132.205.15.43 05:37, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Here are my thoughts on sending listings to VfD:
I tend to put large, controversial discussions on their own sub-pages when I archive them. The resolved page should list only brief summaries of the decision (e.g. "Category:X kept and inclusion policy defined" or "Category:X deleted as inherently POV") or else a brief summary and a link. I may go ahead and start working on condensing that material. I think it's useful to have a full record of recently-discussed decisions, though. (Check out "Category:Eccentrics" under resolved.)
Another suggestion might be that if you know you are listing something that is going to take up a lot of space, you can go ahead and put it on a sub-page. You don't have to be an Administrator to take initiative on these things. A lot of times, I end up just shoving things in resolved or unresolved because I don't have time to do any more than that if I'm the only one taking care of the back-log. -[[User:Aranel| Aranel ("Sarah")]] 21:53, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
For the majority of listings, it would be silly to start a separate page. Over the past couple of days, when going through the items that are one week old, I've deleted all but one or two with no attempt even at archiving, because there simply wasn't any discussion to speak of. The typical listing at CfD still consists of the nomination for deletion, and nothing else. Most category changes are undisputed.
Taking care of the backlog that's more than one week old would make it a lot easier to see where we need to go with the main page. (We've never been caught up as long as I've been here.) I do think that I'll end up putting things on unresolved on their own sub-pages. If they've made it to unresolved, they probably merit it.
I've completed my reorganization (but not all of the summarizing) at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/resolved. If some folks could take a look and tell me if that's acceptable, I'll do the same thing for unresolved (which is a larger project), except with all pages archived instead of summarized. -- Aranel ("Sarah") 14:56, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
OK, maybe I'm blind, daft, or both. What happened to the CfD: Propaganda record? I looked in both \resolved and \unresolved (and this article), but it seems to be completely gone! What gives? -- NightMonkey 02:01, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)
Whoa! I guess I wasn't paying attention but could someone please explain what the new system is supposed to be for comics writer/artist article categorization? The MOVE_ commands above appear to indicate that "artists" are being moved to the "writers" category, which makes no sense to me. And I don't see any explanation or discussion on the talk pages of any of those categories. ← Hob 00:07, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)
Sorry, I mistyped...both Category:Comics artists and Category:Comics writers have been moved to Category:Comic strip creators. The first two are ready for deletion now. -- Beland 04:56, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I will be posting stuff about renaming articles and fixing body text (so that "prefecture" is capitalized when part of a proper noun) on Wikipedia:Cleanup. Pearle is working on the category titles as I type. -- Beland 00:41, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
A policy question: can one withdraw requests of one's own making at will (even if discussion has already taken place), or are there to be left on the list until consensus is reached? (The policy I deem appropriate is that the submitter should be able to withdraw motions when no comments have yet been added, but not afterwards. I was just wondering whether there is an established procedure.) -- Itai 11:02, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
There do not seem to be any firm policies for category deletion, so let me suggest some... If you object to anything here, feel free to add comments and/or suggest alternatives, especially if you disagree with the time lengths I've randomly chosen. -- ssd 22:59, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
For empty categories:
For non-empty categories:
---
This page isn't mentioned in the Deletion policy. What do the guidelines for deletion need to be here? Can empty categories be deleted immediately? Angela . 01:37, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
What about delisting? As per speedy deletion, too? Or x days? Any archiving? - UtherSRG 23:00, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Ummm... I think I might have made a mistake. a lot of the categories listed in vfd said that they should be moved to cfd, so I did. But now that I read the heading at the top of cfd, I notice that it's only for categories that are emptied... Is there an official policy on this page? I can't find it. - DropDeadGorgias (talk) 16:54, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
As I understand it, CFD operates parallel to VFD, in that candidate categories are voted on and may be either kept or deleted, rather than this being a maintenance page with listed categories being automatically deleted. For that reason, I suggest listed categories not be emptied before being listed, so that if they are voted to be retained, all the emptying work does not need to be undone. -- Gary D 23:11, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
At any rate, what I really think needs to happen is that the CFD and VFD pages be merged. The people likely to be interested and the policy considerations for deletion or retention are not that different as between categories and articles. -- Gary D 23:11, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Since there's now a Category:Pages on votes for deletion, would a similar category for categories-to-be-deleted be useful? At time of writing Category:Jazz muzicians is a subcategory of Category:Pages on votes for deletion, which I guess is another way of doing it, albeit semantically dodgy. -- Avaragado 19:18, 26 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Discussion on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/FHM110sexiest.
The FHM sexy ladies list raises an issue for me due to its inclusion of a particular media opinion as a category in Wikipedia. Besides that, its too damn long IMHO. - Ste vertigo 19:38, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think that, contrary to VfD policies, a category should be kept only if there is a consensus in favor of keeping it. Because of the impact that categories have in classifying articles, only those that have substantial, noncontroversial support should remain. There should be some guiding principles to assess whether a category should be kept:
Categories are important because they function to classify the subjects of articles—they appear with an even greater claim of factuality and objectivity than the content of articles. They should be limited to what is somehow integral to understanding a subject, rather than something that simply happens to be true about it. Trivial information can be buried at the bottom of an article with no problem, but trivial categories bury the article itself. Postdlf 23:29, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
There seems to me to be a confusion about what the page is for. The top of the page states that categories should be empty. However, some people are - as with the FHM 100 - effectively taking it to mean "votes for category deletion". The page seems designed to draw admins attention to orphaned categories that are no longer useful. But the community seems to see it as a VfD for categories. I think this needs to be cleared up. -- bodnotbod 22:42, Jul 11, 2004 (UTC)
I think there is quite a fundamental problem with the purpose of this page, because the current header poses a chicken-and-egg problem: if you've already orphaned a category, there is basically no point listing it here, except to get the attention of a sysop/admin (cf. Wikipedia:Speedy deletions); but if you haven't orphaned it, and just want to have it discussed, there's no guideline of where to do so - should it go to WP:VfD? It would be tremendously unproductive if people start emptying categories, listing them here, and then having to re-fill them because of a consensus to keep.
Essentially, this page should either be the clearing-house for all category-related deletions (with discussion as necessary, à la VfD) or it should be clearly labelled as the equivalent of Speedy deletions, with the same provisos and links to the full VfD that that page carries. Personally, I think the latter function is undeserving of its own page, while the former may serve to take some weight off the over-burdened VfD in a fairly logical way.
In other words: we should either change this into a debating page for [potentially] non-orphaned categories, or kill it. - IMSoP 17:50, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think this should move to a subsection of RfC, as it's really for category disputes, not category deletions. anthony (see warning) 11:38, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I've just realised category:alcoholics has disappeared. I started the category. Added people to it. I now find that someone has presumably orphaned it, then called for it to be deleted, all without me noticing what was going on and having a chance to make the case for the category.
Is there an archive of the CfD page? I can't find a link to one. I have no idea what the arguments for deleting the category were. --[[User:Bodnotbod| bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 21:01, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)
JFW | T@lk 21:26, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think it would make more sense to make the top of this page suggest not depopulating completely, in general, but accept that in certain cases (vandalism, POV problems, overpopulation) that partial or (in rare cases) complete depopulation is reasonable. Martin 17:42, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm suffering from a similar frustration right now. User:Duncharris is busy moving articles from categories like Category:Welsh athletes (and those for other nations of the UK) to Category:British athletes, because "they normally compete under the British flag", even though there are legitimate reasons for keeping the nations separate (they compete separately in the Commonwealth Games, and there are already categories like Category:Welsh people to make the hierarchy useful) and it would have been trivial to make Category:British athletes a supercategory of the individual nations. He ignored my protestations, listed the categories for speedy deletion, and they were summarily deleted without further discussion by User:Chris 73. I've raised this on Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion as it seems to make a mockery of any kind of process. Grrrr.... -- Avaragado 18:21, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I also am extremely uncomformtable with the way category deletion is being handled. I would like to see this page used ONLY for the trivial cases of categories that are clearly redundant (populated or not) or mispelled, where the category is not really being deleted, but merely renamed (or merged), or empty due to lack of legitimate members for an extended period of time. Categories should not be deleted merely because they are empty--they must be empty because nobody is filling them at all. I would like to see all other category deletions ("this is not NPOV" or "this is stupid" or "kind of half-baked notion") to be taken to Vfd. Any category mistakenly placed here if not refuted quickly, I think should be moved there for further discussion. Note that I would support reorganization discussions like with Category:Winter Olympics here, although even that probably should be on category talk:categorization or something.
As to categories such as Category:people with blue eyes, the developers have already said that this type of category is inappropriate, as categories with more than about 10k slow the database down too much. -- ssd 04:51, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
To summarize, I think these types of things should be handled here:
I can't really think of much else that would not be better off discussed on Vfd. On a side note, I am tempted to start a page called Wikipedia:Nearly empty categories that need help (or just Wikipedia:Category cleanup), where small categories would be listed, and collapsed/merged into a parent category if not expanded within a month. -- ssd 05:09, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
This is a copy of a note I dropped to User:Netoholic regarding this edit.
Hi, I noticed you have played down - to the point of inefectiveness - the notion that categories should not be depopulated before listing on CfD.
To my mind, this is an error. The reason being that it cannot be right that someone can act alone, depopulating a category and then listing it for community consensus. Surely the default position should be that a community is invited to look at the category first and action follows in the wake of that? Please let me know your thoughts. Regards, --[[User:Bodnotbod| bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 19:44, Aug 30, 2004 (UTC)
This page already is largely useless. I agree to changing it to categories under review, and think it should be made a subpage of RfC a la article disputes. Adding a history function to the category itself would greatly improve things, but this would likely be a lot of work. anthony (see warning) 11:43, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I think this problem would be best solved in the long term by taking this information out of the articles and putting it into the categories. Instead of storing the category information in the child pages, you'd store it in the parents. Marking a category in the old style would still work, but this information would be moved to the category page itself. Thus we'd get history, we'd be able to make moves, standardization of sort keys would be easier, renaming of links would be possible, we'd have a good notion of redirects, we'd be able to mass add lots of articles at once, and we'd be able to include articles which haven't yet been created. In the mean time, as I'm not sure how much work this would be, we'd still need to work on these interim solutions. anthony (see warning) 11:57, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Here's an example to ponder, Category:Air forces. It has thirty entries, but not thirty articles—instead, it contains thirty subcategories, one each for the air force of a particular country. Each of these thirty subcategories contains just one article, identically titled with the subcategory, on that country's air force. Each of those subcategories is also assigned to a second parent category on the military of that particular country. I have not checked all those country military categories, but the ones I checked, and I suspect all the rest, contain only one entry, that country's air force subcategory. All in all, a boatload of subcategories for not too many articles. Even if articles are eventually added on other military branches of those countries, it makes far more sense to assign those two parent categories to the article on each country's air force, rather than inserting these myriad doomed intermediate subcategories. By "doomed," I mean that by definition these thirty subcategories will never have more than one article. Sure, taxonomy is fun, and we can busy our days drawing smaller and smaller boxes until there is only one angel dancing on the head of each pin. For the reader, though, it means extra steps drilling up and down to see what could be conveniently collected into larger logical groups for easy perusal. Let us take pity on the poor reader. -- Gary D 09:45, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I got sick of this page being huge. I deleted some stuff that was resolved simply, and archived both interesting resolved issues and unresolved issues more than two weeks old. I believe I left placeholders on the page for unresolved issues. I hope I didn't step on anyone's toes, but the page was just too big. -- ssd 22:13, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)
If consistency is what we're looking for, I'll just note that WP:VFD does not have the full template. I'm not unhappy with the current layout, even though the Resources box takes up a screen and a half. It does split the paragraph to the left of itself rather weirdly, though. -- Beland 04:37, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Ending in September, 2004, there was a poll about whether or not to merge WP:CFD and WP:VFD. The final result was no merger with the following final tally:
The issues of unresolved votes and getting enough people to pay attention to WP:CFD were also raised.
This debate has been listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comment
Poll opened August 30, 2004 ~ Poll to close 23.59 September 12, 2004
The proposal is that both categories and articles be listed on the same page.
Thanks so much for the much-needed cleanup, Ssd...
I've proposed that when there's a consensus to keep, we put the discussion on the Category's talk page. I did that for "German economy" with the following note:
"This category was nominated for deletion, but no clear consensus to delete was reached. The discussion is recorded below for future reference." -- Beland 05:48, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
OK, I did this for all the other pages that were kept. -- Beland 01:37, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comment. Start: 8 Sep 2004 (UTC) Finish: 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
What should be the procedure for closure in cases where there is no clear consensus after 7 days? (Not including controversies related to Wikipedia:Categorisation of people.)
Listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comment. Start: 8 Sep 2004 (UTC) Finish: 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
If there is still no clear consensus to delete or keep after closure has been reached, what should be done about the category?
Keep: 4 + 1 from previous poll = 5 Delete: 0
Listed on Wikipedia:Requests for comment. Start: 8 Sep 2004 (UTC) Finish: 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
What should be done with empty categories that have the potential for being populated?
The other … for deletion pages list newest entries at the bottom, not at the top as is done here. Should not this page be changed so it is more consistent? [[User:Anárion| Ана́рыён]] 12:25, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
An accidental entry could confuse someone looking for Computational Fluid Dynamics, hence the entry at the top of the page. 132.205.15.4 06:48, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be a mirroring policy page here, like VfD has? 132.205.15.4 00:31, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Based on the recent polls, the following tentative policy is hereby adopted. You can read the archived polls in /old.
It was pointed out during the recent polling process that we need a new home for categories that need resorting, subcategorization, etc. I think we should just go ahead and create one. I can see a few possibilities... Wikipedia:Category cleanup, Category:Category cleanup, or adding these tasks to Wikipedia:Cleanup. Category:Orphaned categories and Category:Underpopulated categories already exist. What do you think?
Places to note this new page: Wikipedia:Categorization projects (current), Template:Resources for collaboration, WP:CFD -- Beland 02:55, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)
In my browser (IE 6.0), using the Classic skin, the Deletiontools table and the Table of contents are overlapping each other. Rick K 06:49, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)
We have decided several times to disallow disambiguation categories. Shall we officially codify this? -- Beland 22:58, 31 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Ah! The state of this page says a lot about wiki.en... Just to add a note on what the portuguese wiki decided for disambiguate categories. We created a custom message saying that the category is equivalent to the better one and that the present cat should be kept empty. In this way, the multiplication of categories as fishes and bread was severed. It works quite well. Cheers, [[User:Muriel Gottrop| muriel@pt]] 15:46, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
This page is a mess! The policies specify that nothing should be here for longer than seven days, but that clearly is not happening. I've been trying to do some cleaning up.
I don't think it is particularly helpful to dump huge blocks of text at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/unresolved, so I've been trying to somehow figure out how to resolve as many older issues as I can. Because there aren't very many folks voting here, there often is no consensus, not because consensus couldn't be reached fairly easily, but simply because there were only two voters and one of them voted keep and the other delete.
With that in mind, I would appreciate it if those who are keeping an eye on this page would look at discussions for listings from October (or earlier) and comment wherever possible. Any other suggestions? -[[User:Aranel| Aranel (" Sarah")]] 23:22, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
See Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Seecat. Maybe the ones that are being kept as "redirects" should use Template:Categoryredirect. -- User:Docu
Perhaps it is time to use the VfD method of making pages smaller? {{Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/PageName}} seems like a good idea. Especially since the CfD and unresolved pages are quite large now. 132.205.15.43 05:37, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Here are my thoughts on sending listings to VfD:
I tend to put large, controversial discussions on their own sub-pages when I archive them. The resolved page should list only brief summaries of the decision (e.g. "Category:X kept and inclusion policy defined" or "Category:X deleted as inherently POV") or else a brief summary and a link. I may go ahead and start working on condensing that material. I think it's useful to have a full record of recently-discussed decisions, though. (Check out "Category:Eccentrics" under resolved.)
Another suggestion might be that if you know you are listing something that is going to take up a lot of space, you can go ahead and put it on a sub-page. You don't have to be an Administrator to take initiative on these things. A lot of times, I end up just shoving things in resolved or unresolved because I don't have time to do any more than that if I'm the only one taking care of the back-log. -[[User:Aranel| Aranel ("Sarah")]] 21:53, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
For the majority of listings, it would be silly to start a separate page. Over the past couple of days, when going through the items that are one week old, I've deleted all but one or two with no attempt even at archiving, because there simply wasn't any discussion to speak of. The typical listing at CfD still consists of the nomination for deletion, and nothing else. Most category changes are undisputed.
Taking care of the backlog that's more than one week old would make it a lot easier to see where we need to go with the main page. (We've never been caught up as long as I've been here.) I do think that I'll end up putting things on unresolved on their own sub-pages. If they've made it to unresolved, they probably merit it.
I've completed my reorganization (but not all of the summarizing) at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/resolved. If some folks could take a look and tell me if that's acceptable, I'll do the same thing for unresolved (which is a larger project), except with all pages archived instead of summarized. -- Aranel ("Sarah") 14:56, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
OK, maybe I'm blind, daft, or both. What happened to the CfD: Propaganda record? I looked in both \resolved and \unresolved (and this article), but it seems to be completely gone! What gives? -- NightMonkey 02:01, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)
Whoa! I guess I wasn't paying attention but could someone please explain what the new system is supposed to be for comics writer/artist article categorization? The MOVE_ commands above appear to indicate that "artists" are being moved to the "writers" category, which makes no sense to me. And I don't see any explanation or discussion on the talk pages of any of those categories. ← Hob 00:07, 2004 Nov 25 (UTC)
Sorry, I mistyped...both Category:Comics artists and Category:Comics writers have been moved to Category:Comic strip creators. The first two are ready for deletion now. -- Beland 04:56, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I will be posting stuff about renaming articles and fixing body text (so that "prefecture" is capitalized when part of a proper noun) on Wikipedia:Cleanup. Pearle is working on the category titles as I type. -- Beland 00:41, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
A policy question: can one withdraw requests of one's own making at will (even if discussion has already taken place), or are there to be left on the list until consensus is reached? (The policy I deem appropriate is that the submitter should be able to withdraw motions when no comments have yet been added, but not afterwards. I was just wondering whether there is an established procedure.) -- Itai 11:02, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)