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User:Taemyr/bridges by period, the argument is essentially that most of these categories are far to small. I am a bit unsure of how to proceed though, since I am not confident of how precedences run for this kind of thing. And tagging 100+ articles for merging can be seen as disruptive. Taemyr ( talk) 01:29, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
There's a disagreement here whether the category applies to released prisoners. Can I get some category experts to chime in. Thanks, -- brew crewer (yada, yada) 05:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Based on a series of full CfD discussions, I propose adding the follow to criteria #1:
This covers an issue raised in some recent speed rename nominations. Vegaswikian ( talk) 20:01, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
What does one do if a (sub)category is under the wrong parent category? I see instructions and templates for deleting, merging and renaming but none of those really apply. Is there a way to "move" a subcategory? Specifically, Category:People from Chinatown, Manhattan really should be under Category:People from Manhattan, not Category:People from New York City, where it is now. In other words, it needs to be moved 'down' one level. Station1 ( talk) 21:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Can someone look at the last two discussions and see if there are in fact objections that are holding up these nominations. Vegaswikian ( talk) 07:04, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi all - sorry to impose, but I'm going to need help with this one (possibly a bot), as I have dial-up and am also recuperating after surgerym, so I'm not at full strength or concentration level! I've just noticed Category:Olympic medalists and all its subcategories, especially the Category:Olympic medalists by nation tree with all its 100+ subcats. As was recently pointed out inr enames for the equivalent Commonwealth games categories, most English-speaking countries use the British spelling of medallist (with two Ls), and it seems to be normal practice to also use this spelling for continental Europe, Commonwealth countries, and countries using continental European languages as their main tongues (e.g., Latin America and former French colonies). What';s more, the IOC's English-language website uses the double-L spelling exclusively. That's likely going to require at the very least the majority of the by-nation categories to be renamed, which is a lot of work for a recuperating, dial-up, no-bot editor. Any help would be gratefully appreciated! Grutness... wha? 01:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm interested in Category:Sporting knights. I'm not proposing to delete or necessarily rename the category, but to better define who qualifies for inclusion and who doesn't. At the moment, there are some people in it who were sportsmen who were knighted, but whose knighthoods were for reasons other than their sporting achievements. In one sense they're "sporting" "knights", but in another sense they're not "sporting knights". Some would say they should be included regardless; others would surely disagree. And there needs to be a discussion about it so that we're agreed what the rules for the category are. The talk page for the category directed me to the Help desk, which suggested I either raise the issue on individual talk pages for the knights in question, or use the CfD process somehow. The first suggestion seems inefficient - there's no guarantee I'll capture the attention of all users interested in this general category, unless I post the same question on dozens of talk pages, which I just ain't gonna do. The CfD idea seems to be all about deleting or renaming, which is also not what I'm wanting to do. I'm a little stuck as to how to proceed. Any ideas? -- JackofOz ( talk) 23:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
In going through the century renames, an interesting error shows up in that at least 2% of the entries in most century categories are incorrect. Remember that the 20th-century runs from 1901 to 2000. The 1st-decade of the 20th-century runs from 1901-1910. So when you place a category of the 1900s in the 20th-century, you are adding 1900 which is not correct and at the other end of the century we are dropping the last year of the century 2000 which is included in the 21st-century. I think that a 2% error is worth discussing to see if there is a simple fix. Vegaswikian ( talk) 16:48, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
This is a tricky problem. From looking at the Opera cats I just re-worked, it looks like the century categories are correct. Category:21st-century operas goes from 2001 on. The decade cats are incorrect. Category:2000s operas starts at 2000. However, if you look at 2000s as "starting with "200-", and not the "200th decade" it is correct. I guess if we wanted to fix it, at least for opera, we'd just need to fix Template:Operadecade. I say "if" because it's not just opera that has the problem, and that adds up to a lot of work. While technically incorrect, I don't know if we're going to get a lot of people that are flummoxed by the year 2000 being in the wrong decade. -- Kbdank71 17:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
An editor unilaterally deleted the entire list of the century/millennium hyphenation changes that were listed on the speedy page, arguing in the edit summary that they are not speediable.
How should we approach this? Three very recent CfDs ( [1], [2], [3]) have approved and re-approved such changes, and the general sense I have taken from the general discussions about these was that these should now be speedied. But now that opposition has been expressed here, should we have full CfDs for all of them? At least for those who participate at CfD, that would get really old really fast since there are so many of these categories. If they are just going to be approved renames as the others have been, what's the point of having a full CfD vs. a speedy change? For now I've restored the list at WP:CFDS but of course won't process any more until we have some sort of consensus on how to proceed. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
"unilaterally deleted"? In my book, speedy equals uncontroversial. Since this is about a controversial mass move of literally thousands of long-standing categories, I dare say they aren't "speedies". So there were one or two votes for implementing "adjectival hyphenation" in century cats. I happen to think this is a terrible idea, but I am of course prepared to accept a true consensus for this mass move. By "true consensus" I mean an above-board advertisement of these plans of mass renames, with an input of at least several dozen community members, and at least 80% support votes. Once you can point to such a true consensus, I will accept your renames as speedies. -- dab (𒁳) 09:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Good Olfactory, if you want to implement a giant renaming spree, it is your burden to establish consensus before declaring it "speedy". Can you please appreciate the point that this isn't some remote category in the backwaters of Wikipedia that may well be renamed based a two or three votes consensus? This affects thousands and thousands of long-standing categories. Did it occur to you that Wikipedia has been going for eight years, with its share of grammar nazis, and until late 2008 nobody ever objected to "20th century philosopher"? I will tell you why: when "$Nth century" is used as an adjective it should be hyphenated is simply not a rule that is alive in the real world. I readily admit it sees some use. But by no means is it more common, or " more correct" than the unhyphenated spelling. Check the google books results for
at first glance well below 1:10. This is nowhere near anything that would make this giant move at all arguable. What irks me is that this huge transition went underway with all of two CfD votes, no community review, and nobody even bothered to check who is prescribing this, which major publications use it and which don't, the very basic minimal standard for any significant rename. Now I have made my point. It is now up to you to seek wider input for this, and if you manage to gain an 80% consensus for this thing, I will graciously step down and embrace our brave-new-hyphenation order. Otoh, if you do not, I fully expect you to send in the bots with equal zeal to "speedily" undo this disaster. -- dab (𒁳) 09:33, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
I recently came across a recreation of a deleted category. I mentioned to the new editors that it was a recreation but he didn't seem to care. I know that there is WP:DRV for articles, and that recreated articles can be speedily deleted. How are recreations of deleted categories handled? The page in question is Category:Jewish American actors. Will Beback talk 07:51, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
I've just entered it at DRV. Nietzsche 2 ( talk) 14:01, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Please move this if it is better elsewhere
I have put forward a proposal to the Wikipedia bot community (see WP:BON) that, if it gains a consensus, will hopefully bring order into chaos. First off, it would be nice to have some that it conversant in the naming criteria for categories to check over the names I have proposed. Secondly, is this something I should be bringing in front of a wider audience? Essentially it can be all handled within the community, and the categorisation of no mainspace pages if affect. All help appreciated. - Jarry1250 ( t, c) 16:59, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
See discussion here. -- Kbdank71 18:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
I recently proposed a category for renaming, and it's been approved, but the renaming hasn't happened yet. Is this the way the process is supposed to work? I thought the approval would result in an actual rename happening. 70.251.149.197 ( talk) 15:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
In my work resolving DEFAULTSORT conflicts and adding the listas parameter those pages that lack it I have noticed that sum Vital information missing categories have moved from the article page to the Talk page. I have learned that the decisions to do this was made here almost two years ago. I would ask that those decisions be reversed and the tags that have been moved be moved back to the main pages as soon as possible and not in 2011.
I apologize. I did not notice that there was a response even though this page is on my watchlist.
There are two bits of information that I believe are absolutely vital for a biography article, the date of birth and the place of birth. Without those pieces of information the articla is not a biography, it is a minor bit of fluff about a person who is not suficiently notable to have an article on WP but managed to get a fan to write it anyway. The date of birth of a person and the place of birth of a person only appear on the Main Page. The only reason for either to be on the Talk Page is when there is a dispute about the accuracy of the information. A tag of any sort really should be on the page that contains the reason for the tag.
The other two pieces of information apply to persons who are no longer living, the date of death and the place of death. The same rationale applies to death information as to birth information.
Again I stress that if a category's listing is intrusive, even if it is necessary to some one or some group to be able to track the pages in the category, the the listing should be hidden. It is not difficult to view hidden categories if one wants to do so. It is not necessary to view such categories unless one has a need to do so.
Is that better? My request, very tersely put, is to put the tags for missing date of birth, place of birth, date of death and place of death at the end of the Article rather than at the top of the Talk Page of the Article.
On 26 April 2007 it was decided here that the Date of birth missing tag should be put on the Talk Page rather than the Article Page and on 22 April 2007 it was decided here that the Place of birth missing tag should be put on the Talk Page rather than the Article Page. That is why this section is named "Request for reconsideration". I would like for some one who is more experienced than I in the ins and outs of WP politics to look at those discussions and figure out how to reverse the decision that was announced.
Does that make sense?
I do not have any personal stake in this. It is hard to imagine how anyone could have a personal stake in this. I guess the reasons that I am harping on it so much are that
I guess I have to figure out how to propose a discussion on a category. I really did not want to add that to my cv.
The organization of this page is horrid. Most users coming to this page will do so with the intent of nominating articles for some kind of discussion. We should make it easy for them by having appropriate subsections, so that it's obvious where to look for delete, rename, etc. As it currently stands, a user coming to this page has an easier time finding the nomination process for "speedy renaming" than just straightforward "renaming". The way the article currently reads, it's like a mess of red tape. Proper organization will significantly reduce this problem. 70.251.251.175 ( talk) 02:28, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Is there a place to discuss proposed categorization schemes before there implementation? For example, there have been recent discussions at WT:PHARM:CAT on how to categorize pharmacology articles, a discussion involving a lot of the WP:MED and WP:PHARM people. However, is there general a place where this discussion can be posted to get feedback from the general wikipedia community (as occurs with formal CfD threads) before anything is actually implemented? Thanks in advance for your response. kilbad ( talk) 18:12, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to discuss the choice to use "women" and "woman" as adjectives. I know this usage has been going on for a several decades now, and this may be a contentious (to those who care about these types of things, anyway), as well as major proposal (in terms of altering the names of so many Wikipedia Categories) but my very strong feeling is that the time has come to let the rules of English back into play in terms of this usage as a means of (1) celebrating the gains of the women's rights movement and (2) in order to move on from a time of (understandable but now unnecessary) reactiveness and insecurity on the part of some feminists.
This irregular (and grammatically speaking, marked; and in my opinion, ugly looking and sounding) usage (we don't say "man nurse" or "men nurses") comes from a time when some feminists felt the need to assert the sacredness & importance of the concept of femaleness (oops!) womanhood by forbidding the use of 'female' when applied to humans, and breaking the rules of English grammar (which was seen as one of the agents of patriarchy & oppression) was felt to be one way of accomplishing this.
However, unfortunately the usage actually achieves an unintended - and very unfeminist - effect in that it makes a woman's gender seem like an obsession, and moreover a thing of more importance than her profession is (which implication I personally, as a woman, resent). (Why else impose an awkward noun before another noun when a perfectly good adjective exists for the purpose?)
The usage is now an anachronistic gesture, based on an insecurity and reactiveness which we no longer need to engage in (however understandable it might've been in its time).
Another strong reason for reverting to the correct grammar on this is: how in the HECK are we to explain this bizarre irregularity to learners of English? And is it worth having to?
(I know, it's a long, pedantic rant. But I'm really curious to see if anyone out there agrees. Or cares.)
--
Tyranny Sue (
talk)
04:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is where I should raise this but I have noticed that there is a Category called Culture by city and that it has a Subcategory called Culture by nationality and city. This seems a bit odd to me. Any ideas? Sterry2607 ( talk) 11:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
What is the rationale behind this please? It seems very silly to go through a five day CFD just because an editor fumble-fingered twice instead of once in creating a category. Otto4711 ( talk) 19:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
I've started implementing the changes to the image categories that was discussed here. I did the first two, but my internet connection is getting flaky and slow, and I could use some help with the rest.
Care needs to be taken, as these categories (and their dated subcats) are populated by a template, as is the link that creates the new subcat each day, and the images themselves need null edits to show up in the correct subcat, etc, etc. It's just a lot of work, and it's easy to miss something.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. -- Kbdank71 19:22, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
Per the discussion above, I've copied several CFD pages into my user space in an attempt to simplify CFD.
They are
Many of the preliminary changes I made were simply removing duplicate information and instructions. I also consolidated some stuff and added an "optional notification" section.
If you want to make edits of your own, feel free, but please be careful; I didn't move everything into my userspace. Some parts of User:Kbdank71/CFD, such as the "Discussions awaiting closure" and "Speedy criteria" sections are still transcluded from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working and Wikipedia:Category deletion policy/Speedy criteria, respectively. If you want to edit either of those sections, let me know and I'll copy them to my user space as well.
Opinions?
-- Kbdank71 20:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
When a category is renamed based on a CfD, perhaps we could document a link to the CfD on the category's talk page for easy reference if needed in the future? kilbad ( talk) 15:44, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Per the suggestion a couple of sections up, this is to formally propose the elimination of criterion #2 of when a speedy rename can't be done: When proposing that two or more changes should be made, each of which qualifies under the speedy criteria. If both of the changes qualify for speedy renaming, meaning they are both uncontroversial changes, it strikes me as an exercise in pointless bureaucracy to go through a full five-day CFD to fix the mistakes. The idea was expressed that allowing multiple speedy changes would somehow open the speedy rename process to abuse, but given the diligence exercised by a number of editors here the potential for abuse seems low; honestly I'm having difficulty envisioning how one could commit abuse through this process anyway. Otto4711 ( talk) 23:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
OK, project page was updated per the discussion. Vegaswikian ( talk) 00:41, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Please see User_talk:KenWalker#Category:Clayoquot_Sound_region_or_.3F.3F. I'd like to avoid having to pursue a CD by naming the suggested categories wrongly....advice pls. Skookum1 ( talk) 02:18, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
While cleaning up Erlang programming language article I spotted Category:Programming languages created in 1986. I have seen quite a few silly categories related to programming languages ("families", use of brackets, semicolon as separator), trivial but at least somehow valid and of entertaining value.
Not so for "creation date" - such concept is absurd, programming language is not a child or a product with fixed release day. Most of the languages are gradually developed over years or even decades and the year when the ideal was first announced or initial version made public is practically irrelevant for anyone. It doesn't make splash like new model of car and nobody chooses between languages by such date.
Should this be just a single category I would propose it for deletion but the guy who added it created a whole tree of categories starting with
Category:Programming languages by creation date. I do not have stamina to create specific CfD for every member of this tree and have no clue about a simpler mechanism. If someone knows a better way or has enough of time to deal with this beast, please do. The
WP:CfD page could give hint what one could do in such case.
Pavel Vozenilek (
talk)
20:07, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Before starting a mass-CFD, are these past precedents on "Wikipedians who like <insert tv show here>" i.e. Category:Wikipedians who like Star Trek ? – xeno ( talk) 17:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
Is there some sort of holy war in progress to delete as many categories as possible? I ask because several categories related to spaceflight, which have existed and been well-used for years, have recently been nominated for deletion. What's up with that? Is this truly an effort based on some idea that it helps our project to delete well-used categories? If so, please provide a pointer to the rationale for that! ( sdsds - talk) 01:58, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
Would someone please speedy close the CFD on Category:Suspended deck bridges as a mistaken nomination, here? Same as was done for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Suspended deck bridge. Thanks. -- Una Smith ( talk) 15:10, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
So, after the original decision to split UCFD out from CFD, it seems to have outlived its usefulness. There were only five UCFD noms for all of March. Looking back through the various talk archives, I can find the re-merger being discussed first here, then there, with nobody objecting to the re-merge, but it was never actually done. If no one objects in the next few days, I'll merge them. (And no, this is not an April Fool's joke; it's already April 2nd in my time zone.)-- Aervanath ( talk) 17:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Ok, so the two concerns raised so far appear to be that the working page and archives should stay separate. The working page is not something that'll be hard to deal with, as jc37 said: just add notes to the working page and to the closing instructions to make clear that user cats are handled differently. Anyone closing CFDs should be competent enough to figure out that minor increase in complexity. As far as separate archiving goes, should we just keep the current archival system going? That way, UCFDs, once closed, would be cut from the CFD log page and pasted to the UCFD archive page for that month. Since that's the way UCFDs are archived now, it shouldn't be a tall order. Any other caveats I should be aware of? I have reviewed the old discussions, but I may have missed stuff.-- Aervanath ( talk) 08:13, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
How about making UCFD a subpage of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion (i.e. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/User), much like WP:CFD/S is right now? I know that this is not quite the same as merging the two processes into, but it's a step above having two entirely separate processes. By the way, I don't think that this would set a precedent for creating CFD subpages for every namespace, since only the user namespace has two guidelines devoted just to its categorization: Wikipedia:User categories and Wikipedia:Overcategorization/User categories. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 00:46, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm missing something, but if UCFD were to merge back into CFD, but retain its separate "working page" (I read as "nomination page") and archive list, then... what would actually change? To me, those are the only two things in the process, other than the nomination template. Please explain. — Goodtimber ( walk/ talk) 04:39, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
I have added a {{ historical}} tag to UCFD, and removed all references to it from WP:CFD. I have also edited Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Administrator_instructions so that user cats will be treated differently than others. I have also created {{ ucfd top}} (as noted in the admin instructions) for use with user cats. It is the same syntax as {{ cfd top}}. If I missed anything, please let me know, or do it yourself.-- Aervanath ( talk) 05:28, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
If I want to discuss a set of categories, and not immediately propose to delete, merge, or rename one or more of them, with more than those who read the categories' talk page, where can that take place? patsw ( talk) 22:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
User:John Carter thinks that "as an admin", he is entitled, both before and after a debate, to empty a category and then speedily delete it (this a category related to a dispute he has been involved in, indeed a major protagonist in). Can someone explain to him why this is not acceptable behaviour? Thanks. His comments are here. Johnbod ( talk) 19:02, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm going to offer the hypotheses that most users interested in editing and categorizing articles do not care what happens to categories for wikipedians interested in pokémon, etc. From what I can see of the merge discussion the only real argument was "low traffic" but that seems to have (cough cough VegaDark) risen with a vengeance following the merge. Does anyone have a good reason not to just revert back to the way it was? — CharlotteWebb 20:01, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if I caught anyone off guard-I try to do nominations in groups as to minimize the number of edits necessary. It certainly isn't going to be an everyday occurance. That being said, I hadn't done any nominations for a while so there had been a lot of recently created categories that had gone unchecked, and I still have a few weeks of category creations to look over to be caught up. I'd have to mildly oppose having them permanantly default as collapsed whenever nominated (although I can understand the one made in this instance), as one of the main reasons people had been discussing a merge is the lack of participants at UCFD, and having it collapsed like that is likely to turn people off from participating. VegaDark ( talk) 21:28, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
Could we hold off a month or two and see how it goes with the merged CFD working as normal, without any special variations for user cats? I.e., no "hide" boxes, no extra sections, etc. Yes, VegaDark nominated a whole bunch right away, but sometimes you're going to have mass noms of categories, whether user or not. I think that we will find that it won't be as much of a nuisance as it initially appears. If I'm wrong, and it does turn out to be a nuisance over the long run, I will be happy to un-merge the processes, as I'm the one who merged them in the first place (although I didn't make the decision on my own). However, I would request that CFD editors give the re-merge a trial run of at least a month before declaring it a failure. Thanks,-- Aervanath ( talk) 16:09, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, VegaDark nominated a whole bunch right away, but sometimes you're going to have mass noms of categories, whether user or not. ← Yes, this is a small price to pay in the process of building an encyclopedia, but most user category discussions have scupper-all to do with that. On a more practical note, when multiple categories are nominated for CFD at the same time they tend to be hierarchically related in some way, so it usually makes sense to put them under the same heading (and inside a show/hide box whenever the complete list of categories is likely to take up more screen-space than the total salient discussion related to them, that is, the larger-scale renamings tend to be less controversial—most of us exercise good judgment in that area). — CharlotteWebb 00:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
So, uh...how many user cats am I allowed to nominate at one time now before people start panicking again? I currently have 6 written up with another 4 I still need to write up. If I nominate all 6 I have done, are people going to start demanding we unmerge user cats from here? Do I need to disguise the amount by only doing a couple a day? Is having 1 a day for a month really that different than having 10 nominated 3 days out of the month? VegaDark ( talk) 03:54, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Simply put: There is absolutely zero limit on the number of nominations that are allowed here on any particular day.
And further, it doesn't disrupt these pages any more than any other nomination might.
If you don't want to comment in a particular discussion, it's easy: don't comment.
To help soften the merging, we've even allowed for moving them to the bottom of a page, and even placing a separate header at the top of the section.
But suggesting that there should be a limit to the number nominations, especially ones that someone has already written up?
No. Absotively posilutely not. - jc37 09:12, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Is there any reason why we shouldn't just use the CFD top and bottom templates when closing UCFD discussions? It would appear that the only difference between CFD and UCFD is a) color, and b) the word "user" in front of "category", neither of which I believe are necessary. I ask because I use User:The wub/CloseCFD.js to close CFD discussions, and it doesn't differentiate between CFD and UCFD. Since we've merged the two, why not make it easier for administration? -- Kbdank71 14:42, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
I thought the consensus from before was to copy closed UCFD's to the monthly log pages, i.e. Wikipedia:User categories for discussion/Archive/April 2009. I've just done that for April 5th, but I'd like to either a) remind closers to do the copying when they perform the close or, if that's not acceptable to other closers, to b) come to a consensus about how to properly archive these if no one else is willing to do it manually.-- Aervanath ( talk) 15:38, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
In case anyone wants to give their opinion on how to figure out how long a category has been empty in regards to CSD C1. -- Kbdank71 16:41, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
I noticed a category that seems to be for use by a single user. Surprisingly, I can't see any precise policy or instructions on handling this type of category, so I'm posting here so someone with a clue can work out if any action is required. The category is Category:Where Zheliel2 signed. Johnuniq ( talk) 03:46, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
Hi,
Textline 1 of the page says: On this page, deletion, merging, and renaming of categories (pages in the Category namespace) is discussed.. No, it is described. And why use 'Namespace' here? Suggest replace: "On this page, deletion, merging, and renaming of Wikipedia categories is described." Thank you, Lord ;-) -
DePiep (
talk)
23:48, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Given that Afd has been extended to seven days (see Wikipedia_talk:AFD#Proposal_to_change_the_length_of_deletion_discussions_to_7_days) does anyone object to lengthening the term here to seven days, due to the same reasons?-- Aervanath ( talk) 07:11, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
As there is no opposition, I'll go ahead and make the change. If anyone has a good reason why this shouldn't happen, feel free to revert me. -- Kbdank71 13:14, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
FYI, there is a discussion about eponymous categories here. -- Kbdank71 16:18, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Archiving this "discussion". Nothing positive happening here now, "debate" or otherwise. Time, I think, for everyone to move along before the accusations of bad faith and the like end up becoming more disruptive, and thus possibly getting someone blocked. - jc37 20:28, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I find it interesting that debate of a category for which deletion has been suggested has been terminated by archival activities. This is both a pity, and a dirty trick. Can't stand the heat? William R. Buckley ( talk) 04:55, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Wow, elitists are all over the place on Wikipedia. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
If a parent article is moved with clear consensus, it should only be understood that the categories be renamed to match. For instance, John Whatever's article goes through requested moves and is moved with a clear consensus to John Q. Whatever, then "Category:John Whatever albums/songs" would need to be moved as well. The category rename is clearly non-controversial, so why drag it through CFD if it's clearly not going to be contested? Therefore, I propose a new criterion for speedy renaming that is phrased something like this:
Of course, there might be a couple bugs to work out in this criterion, but that's basically what I'm going for — only speedy rename to match parent article if the parent article was moved after an RM consensus. This might help trim the huge CFD backlog, at least a tiny bit. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ( Many otters • One hammer • HELP) 18:51, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I proposed some pretty sweeping changes within Category:Musical instruments, but did so at the end of the GMT day and got no input at all. For something that big that got no agree/disagree, will the admins automatically re-list it on a new day, or should I delete it from the 5 May CFD and move it to a new day, or do I request a re-list, or what? Here are the proposals in question:
MatthewVanitas ( talk) 04:28, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
I noticed that quite often living persons has categories as such "Christian communists " "Communist Party of the Soviet Union members" etc, while in fact such people there were in the past associated with communists, like article Algirdas Brazauskas. Perhaps those categories at least should have word former ? Any suggestions? M.K. ( talk) 15:24, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
WikiProject Orphans and foundlings has been renamed Wikipedia: WikiProject: Orphaned, abandoned and removed children. I started an orphans and foundlings category page here and need some help to change this to Category: Orphaned, abandoned and removed children. Thanks. Fainites barley scribs 15:01, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
I've thought of a category that seems worthy of being created, but there are very good reasons against having it, not the least of which is previous deletion of similar categories. Should I make the category and list it here? That seems a little...strange. But waiting for someone else to find it and (probably) list it here seems almost dishonest.
The category I've thought of is Athletes with diabetes. This doesn't seem to have existed before, but Category:People with diabetes and Category:Diabetics were both deleted previously. I think in the case of athletes, the disease becomes a defining characteristic ( Adam Morrison, Brandon Morrow, and Jay Cutler (American football), just off the top of my head, are very well-known as diabetics and there have been stories in print and TV media about their stringent diabetes management regiments), but I can absolutely see why others wouldn't think so. Nosleep break my slumber 00:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
There are a number of cats currently at Category:Empty pages for speedy deletion that start with the word "non-article". We're having a discussion about whether these qualify for speedy deletion here. If they otherwise qualify, then how do I check to see if they were empty 4 days ago? - Dank ( push to talk) 20:05, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
I just noticed Category:Max Schreck disappear with a delete log summary of " per 2009 MAY 7 CfD". At that CfD link I see it was nominated on 7 May 2009. I did not see any message on my talk page about this. Shouldn't the editors involved be notified first so that more input could be obtained? I am not sure I agree with the deletion in this case, but I would be concerned even if I agreed. Editors may have other suggestions, rename, cleanup, mergeup, clarify inclusion criteria and so forth, but if they are not notified ... 84user ( talk) 03:13, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
FYI, I have now recreated the deleted category and reverted the Cydebot moves. 84user ( talk) 03:29, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
Maybe someone should just tell me not to bother? Ok, the category just got deleted again. The reason is "(G4: Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion)". My point is there was no sufficient discussion. It looked like a rogue bot, in all seriousness, or a process gone wrong. However, if this is now the accepted policy (to nominate stuff for discussion without telling people) please tell me and I will not bring this up again. 84user ( talk) 03:43, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I've just returned here after posting a request for suggestions on possible renaming on the talk pages of the users in the discussion. As to caring, it was on my watchlist, only that is now so large I only see about 5% of what notice everything. I have just learnt to select Namespace:Category so I should be happier in future. I realise there's a balance between efficiency and avoiding spamming user talk pages. I just got caught by surprise.
But please note that I really did not see the discussion. It could have remained open for 100 days and I still wouldn't have seen it. Finally thanks for the link to WP:DRV, that is what I was looking for, but I would rather just discuss it on your talk page for now. Believe it or not, it is not straightforward to find and follow these things. 84user ( talk) 04:53, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
Rich Farmbrough ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is still at it, changing categories out-of-process without consensus. He not only should know better, he's already participated in the earlier complaints. Perhaps I'm more irritated by these as I'm the one that started some of these particular maintenance categories, so they showed up on my watch list. What can be done?
Probably missing some, where he fails to provide an edit summary:
Is this still going on?
It's more straighforward than this. WP:BRD. Someone made a bold change. was reverted, now it's time for a consensual discussion. And oh look, WP:CFD is right around the corner. Imagine, a process set up just for such discussions...
So please just make a nomination and please stop with the disruption.
I really have no opinion on the changes, but this controversy really is looking like several tempests in a teapot... - jc37 05:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
Following discussion at WT:CAT#Eponymous cats, I've begun drafting an RfC to determine what to do about articles with eponymous categories (e.g. should France be only in Category:France or in its natural categories as well). Input very welcome at Wikipedia:Categorization/Eponymous RFC.-- Kotniski ( talk) 06:10, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
Did I miss a discussion or have most of the CfD categories been renamed out of process? Vegaswikian ( talk) 06:27, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
I don't know anything about the correct procedures here. I proposed this at the Village Pump (link above) and all agreed, including some experienced editors. So there was discussion, and consensus, before anybody started doing anything.
Apart from that, as you see, this is just working on the "housestyle" of Wikipedia, while absolutely no changes are made to the workings of these categories and templates. And for sure no heavily altering, as all can see. So I really can't see what the heat is about. Anyway, let's see what Rich will have to say. Debresser ( talk) 20:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
May I ask one small question, please. Is there something that is not working? I mean, apart from people having to spend a minute looking for a renamed category? I think all is working just fine. Debresser ( talk) 21:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
I would suggest moving to "Categories for discussion from... " in place of the current name(s). This will be easy enough and should provide both clarity and consistency. Rich Farmbrough, 17:47 21 May 2009 (UTC).
I now see that my mistake was mainly using the word "deletion" in stead of "discussion". Which was indeed a mistake, rooted in inexperience. I will nominate the one category left for speedy. While reading this section again, I feel that the spelling out of "CfD" as "Categories for deletion" and changing the dateformat from "YYYY-MM" to "Monthname Year", were not what made the resistance here so strong. I will await User:Rich Farmbrough or someone else nominate the rename. Debresser ( talk) 02:01, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
The recent category renaming (and bot renaming in existing subst'd templates) reminds me that wouldn't be a problem had we retained the two step process that I'd setup (see Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion/Archive 7#cfd1, cfm1, cfr1). Changing the Cf(D,M,R) templates would have put the categories back in place automatically.
That is, the first subst would create a template, rather than a huge splash of wikitext, just as {{ subst:afd}} creates {{ AfDM}}. When I was doing {{ cfd1}} et alia, we wanted the regular {{ cfd}} to continue to work as usual with the old directory structure, so the compromise was our CfDM was merely CfD (not subst'd in those days).
As I was trying to find out what had changed in 3 years, I see that there was a recent discussion (in the wrong place) at Template talk:Cfd#Remove need for subst. That also proposed (and created) a {{ CfDM}}. Broken, but the same idea.
Anyway, I don't understand what was bad about the process? I'd proposed that we could change underlying directory names at 2007 January (using one of the #if functions comparison against 2006).
Instead, some folks decided to subst everything, including {{ cfdend}} and {{ cfdresult}}, formerly prohibited from subst'ing. Unfortunately, the person subst'ing forgot to add <includeonly>subst:</includeonly> to the parser functions, so the output is a mess!
Anyway, I'm agreeing with December's discussion that we reinstate the two template process. If folks prefer names like {{
cfd}} and {{
CfDX}} (we shouldn't use "M", as that would make the confusing {{
CfMM}} for merging), that's fine.
--
William Allen Simpson (
talk)
04:08, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
I have nominated Category:Number-one singles in Australia for deletion due to the results of a CFD over number-one albums (once in 2006 and one just recently). I have no qualms over the decision/consensus but am seeking consistency between how songs and albums are categorized/listed, which is why I attempted to recreate the number-one albums category to renew the discussion. For this reason as well, I would like to nominate each "Number-one singles by country" category, and most of their sub-categories (except "Lists of" cats.), and add to the umbrella nomination. Due to the number of these categories, I am requesting help to put them under the same umbrella. Thank you. -- Wolfer68 ( talk) 06:14, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
I've done a few umbrella nominations lately, and found that {{ cfd2}} seems to work properly on the initial nomination, but {{ cfr2}} ignores the supplied section heading. Anybody remember how/why that changed?
Found it.
Same problem with {{ cfm2}}.
Happily, {{ cfd2}} currently works because:
I'd fix them, but they're protected. (heavy sigh)
Found complaints in the archives as far back as 2007 March 7, but no responses (or fixes).
The RfC mentioned above, on eponymous categories and what to do about them, is now live. Please read Wikipedia:Categorization/Eponymous RFC and comment at that talk page. Thanks. Kotniski ( talk) 13:10, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_May_21#Writers_by_language
Three CFD's were combined, but the links in the tagged categories were not corrected to point to the umbrella nomination. CharlotteWebb used the span tag to catch the incoming links and make sure people got to the right discussion. I'm not sure if this is something we can use, but I think it's a great idea. -- Kbdank71 15:10, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
There is a note on the project page stating in relation with speedy renaming and merging "If the nominator decides to change a nomination based on comments, simply delete the old nomination and create a new one as long as it still meets the speedy criteria". As of late I have noticed one nominator who has repeatedly changed his nominations and/or added other related categories to his nominations. Often this makes it impossible to know whether the opinions of commenting editors relate to the current proposal.
I propose to make the above note a little stronger "If the nominator decides to change a nomination, simply delete the old nomination and create a new one (as long as it still meets the speedy criteria)", and add a note with the same content to the project page in relation with non-speedy nominations as well. Apart from that I think changes in the nomination (apart form typos) should be sufficient reason for immediate administrative closure of the nomination. What are your opinions? Debresser ( talk) 07:39, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
There is now a nomination for rename at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_June_9#Category:CfD_2009-06. Debresser ( talk) 17:53, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 16#American people and topics required that the moves take place in sequence:
Looking at the history of John Baker (musher) ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (in time sequence order):
WRONG ORDER!
Now, Kbdank71 deleted
Category:Alaska Natives as empty. How do we put back the material?
--
William Allen Simpson (
talk)
02:05, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I hate to throw a human under the bus when it's just easier to blame the bot, but Cydebot did nothing wrong on this. The problem was caused by Vegaswikian with this edit. Vegas correctly added a NOBOTS tag to the Category:Alaska Native people to Category:Alaska Natives line, but then added the same line below without the NOBOTS tag. So the first run through, Cydebot properly moves articles from Category:Alaska Natives to Category:Alaska Native, but then immediately moves Category:Alaska Native people to Category:Alaska Natives. In that run, John Baker (musher) gets moved from Alaska Native people to Alaska Natives. The next hour when Cydebot runs again, it goes to again rename Category:Alaska Natives to Category:Alaska Native, and finding John Baker (musher) there, moves it to Alaska Native. Cydebot did exactly what it was supposed to. -- Kbdank71 15:27, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
And I double checked that to make sure that I had it right! Sorry for the mess, but at least it is cleared up now. At least I don't have to spend time in deletion review! Vegaswikian ( talk) 17:58, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
If a category and a "List of..." page effectively duplicate each other, should the category be listed here? - eg Category:Ghost ships & List of ghost ships. Thanks. 58.8.7.135 ( talk) 18:43, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I have started 2 new discussions in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories), and there are three more active discussions there (one is only a redirect to the actual discussion). Since that page is not frequented by a high number of editors, which tends to make for limited discussion hence limited consensus, I decided to post a notification here. Debresser ( talk) 02:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Since we had a conflict over there, the page has been protected. So please give your input. Debresser ( talk) 17:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Steam5 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has been on a roll over the last 36 hours or so, tagging categories for speedy deletion and changing category links without paying any heed to the guidelines. Most recently, he/she tagged Category:Bell Canada Enterprises with {{ db-c2}}, even though it seems clear to me that renaming "Bell Canada Enterprises" to "Bell Canada" does not fall within the speedy renaming guidelines; and, as far as I can tell, this proposed renaming was never listed on WP:CFD at all. The user simply went ahead and manually changed category links in all articles that used to be in Category:Bell Canada Enterprises. I left two messages on this user's talk page yesterday; he/she deleted each of them without responding, and continued on his/her campaign. Before I raise this on WP:ANI and complain more officially about this user's conduct, I wanted to raise it here and make sure that I am not the one who is out of line. If I am mistaken in my understanding of the process, please let me know and I will back off. -- R'n'B ( call me Russ) 15:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Category:Fast Folk artists was previously deleted, but was then relisted at CFD after a deletion review. The CFD resulted in keeping the category (see the CFD); however, the category is still empty. I'm not sure how to go about re-populating it automatically, since I'm not too familiar with the technical aspects. Is CydeBot the only bot that does this? If there are other bots, how do you figure out which one it was? And then, can the bot be easily programmed to undo it's edits removing the articles from the category, or is that something that interested editors have to do manually? I'm asking on behalf of an editor who posted to my talk page, thinking that I would know because I closed the latest CFD. (Gosh, thinking that an admin actually knows something; boy, does he have a lot to learn!) Thanks in advance for educating me, -- Aervanath ( talk) 17:23, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Do you folks think there's a need for a {{ oldcfdmulti}} template? The page exists, but just as a redirect to {{ oldafdmulti}}, which doesn't allow for links to CFD archives. I just combined the four old discussion templates in use at Category talk:Fast Folk artists, but I used {{ multidel}}, because I'm unaware of another template that would work. It functions, but it lacks the sophistication of {{ oldafdmulti}}. Is there a better way to list multiple deletion discussions on category talk pages? - Eureka Lott 04:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
There is a deletion backlog at Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion. Vegaswikian ( talk) 21:47, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Background: I created {{ catdesc}} to help solve the problem of category documentation/description. It was nominated for deletion; no-one but me saw any use for it (not that there were significant numbers wanting it deleted either), so it's now officially being deleted (although there's a deletion review for it). It is nonetheless already transcluded on a lot of pages, and if it is to be deleted, then these transclusions will be converted with a script.
The Question therefore arises: if such conversion takes place, what of the information that this template generates should be kept, and what should be discarded? Obviously the parent categories defined in the template need to be retained, and personally I would have thought the useful information provided for readers would stay too. What about the information on the categorization scheme intended for editors (the bit in the collapsible box) - should it stay or go?
(Please have a look at some of the transclusions from the list linked to above to understand what this is about. See here for some technical discussion. Of course, if you think the template might still be useful - even if not exactly in its present form - then please say so at DRV. A possibility might be to userfy it while further development takes place. Or someone might have a totally new idea on how to solve this problem. But the above Question is the one that needs answering most immediately.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 13:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
After the recent renaming of Category:Pages for deletion to Category:Pages for discussion we now have a major break in the category tree. Please see that category talkpage Category_talk:Pages_for_discussion for my proposal in relation with this issue. Debresser ( talk) 01:01, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the right place or not, but the Subclasses of Flower class corvettes discussion closed on 16 June as "rename all". Usually, the changes are made quickly after a close, but I notice that is not the case here. Is there a backlog of changes that need to be made or did this one maybe slip through the cracks? Thanks in advance. — Bellhalla ( talk) 14:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I only found out about this after the decision was made, but basically despite notable CfD opposition, every single Surname by X Nationality category was deleted, dumping over 14,000 articles into the basic Category:Surnames. I agree that confining surnames by nation-state is a clumsy way to go about it, but dumping over ten thousand articles into a base cat was ludicrous. If you feel that Category:Iranian surnames cultivates a false sense of unity, go ahead and divide it into Category:Baloch surnames, Category:Persian surnames, etc. Now anyone wanting to categorise by culture as opposed to "nation" has to comb thgrough 14,000 articles. In short, I feel this was a ludicrously drastic move pushed by a fringe element of "nationality is a fiction" biased persons, which undid thousands of hours of labour. Yes, "nationality" is a somewhat artificial way to categorise cultural aspects, being that cultures transcend borders, but but hundreds of surnames could be generally agreed to be "Japenese" instead of "Welsh", and compeltely wiping cats rather than sorting was a terribly hasty move. MatthewVanitas ( talk) 01:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Can a few admins look at Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion? Looks like someone ran a bot to dump a bunch of entries into here. Looks like some were upmerged as underpopulated. Not sure why others are here, but I don't have the time to dig right now. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
In my opinion, may of the discussions that are still open and awaiting closing have consensus. However many of the regular closers have participated in the discussions so they should not really be involved in the close. So if any other admins see this, could you please review the these open discussions and close those with a consensus? Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
I've just come across Category:Political corruption and Category:Corruption, and this seems like a big problem of overlap here. The Corruption disambiguation page essentially points at Political corruption - the other senses are more synonyms of other meanings. Certainly looking at the category contents, it's hard to see why not to merge. But how to do this? I've never done this. Help, anyone? Disembrangler ( talk) 08:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Just a heads up. In doing a speedy close on some of the latest Jewish categories, I noticed that I had actually closed Category:Jewish inventors as a listify a while ago and it is sitting in the manual work queue. However one user took it on themselves to remove the notice from the category which then resulted in the category being renominated for deletion. It might be good if some other editors watched this category for further vandalism which is what I consider an editor revert of a close decision. My restore of the close decision was reverted and the user was warned. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:57, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
While we often hear arguments that a category must be deleted because it is not defining, we have no objective definition of what the term means. For articles, the General notability guideline provides a strong definition of which subjects are deemed to have a presumption of notability. When nominated for deletion, arguments for retention for articles that meet these criteria through the inclusion of reliable and verifiable sources about the subject will generally win the day over arguments that insist otherwise. We have no corresponding objective standard for categories. Even worse, we have the insistence that reliable and verifiable sources -- even ones that demonstrate that the category is used in books, magazines and newspapers as a means of grouping the subject -- have no place whatsoever in the CfD world. Taking the first steps on this first issue, providing an objective definition that can be met to demonstrate that category is defining, will play a major role in eliminating much of the arbitrary nature of the CfD process. Alansohn ( talk) 05:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
The problem with "It's essentially a judgment call" is that it turns the whole process into a game, exactly what CfD has turned into, rather than a formal, standards-based process as at AfD. With an article, editors can point to Wikipedia:Notability an its statement that "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article", and each significant clause there is defined. There is nothing that corresponds for categories. The "lede sentence" criteria is entirely specious, as there are plenty of things in the lead that we don't categorize by (e.g., year of death), and plenty of things that hardly ever appear in a lead (e.e., college, places of residence, cause of death, LGBT-related television episode status), which we do; The standard neither brings anything in nor does it exclude anything. The straw man that not every fact should be categorized is one few would disagree with, but again leaves the choice as arbitrary. WP:OCAT, merely provides a rationalization for deleting categories -- and its use and abuse to mean anything is another story -- but provides no basis to demonstrate that a category is defining. The closest we've heard here is Postdlf's statement that a category is defining if "the category is actually used as a means of grouping the subject in academia or popular media", but even that is qualified into near complete uncertainty. In a popularity contest, no one needs to have a meaningful reason for why category A is kept and B is deleted, as it's just an arbitrary preference. Is that all we have here? If we don't have (and can't craft) a statement that begins "a category is presumed to be defining if..." and ends with a clear and concise statement of what bears that presumption, then all we are left with is a popularity contest, and even then the vote counting often appears fixed. Alansohn ( talk) 22:34, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Setting out what is "not defining" accomplishes absolutely nothing in showing what "is defining". The same usual suspects can decide that anything is not defining, without providing any guidance as to what is. By ensuring that no definition exists, all we have is a fifth-grade level popularity contest. The CfD game continues. Alansohn ( talk) 20:10, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
I just had a short interesting discussion that relates to defining. I had removed Category:English Americans which is a type of category that many consider problematic. Basically a editor added this since the individual is a 12th generation decedent! Clearly in my mind that is simply not defining. But it does show that editors don't consider that categories need to be defining and that these mixed categories are being included down decedent trees. Both of these are issues. Maybe we need to define how many generations something like this is defining for. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:18, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Anyone know what Category:Selected anniversaries is used for? Vegaswikian ( talk) 08:02, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
I think that there is a problem at CfD.
I have some ideas on what that problem is.
I don’t actually have much of an idea of what can usefully be done about it (but maybe some ideas can be developed).
The reasons to believe that there exists a problem include:
I think the problem is that a few administrators running WP:CfD understand wikipedia's categorisation system, and most other editors do not.
I offer a test of the above theory. Have the CfD-experts take a break from CfD closings and see what happens. Will the results change significantly, or stay the same. Perhaps the system will evolve to something better. Perhaps chaos will result. Note that this “test” is not suggested as solution. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 12:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
One idea is that we should relax on the standard for userspace categories, so that more editors can get involved in the mechanics of categorization, and perhaps learn a few things that are obvious to the experts. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 12:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
At
Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_review#resolve_the_issue_on_the_XfD_discussion_talk_page, I've made a suggestion, mostly with CfD in mind, for a subtle reform, involving reformatting CfD to "one page per discussion" (like AfD & MfD), and asking editors with problems or queries to raise their questions on the discussion talk page before going to WP:DRV. --
SmokeyJoe (
talk)
14:21, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Kbdank71, thanks for responding. I think it is true that by percentages, few CfD discussions are problematic, but this doesn't mean there is no problem. I also see Johnbod's point that the problematic CfD often involve contentious categories, rather than the system itself. However, I recall a recent case involving Category:Surnames by nationality (or similar), where the category wasn't so much contentious, and the deletion dealt a harsh blow to some editors involved, in terms of loss of information. I also note that the respected editor User:DGG, who is not prone to ranting, has occasionally made a strongly dissenting view at DRV that was ignored. And where Alansohn might be said to be ranting, I read valid points being made and repeated in frustration, and dismissed as ranting, leading to further frustration.
I don't see the three respondents disagreeing that there is a degree of complexity or non-intuitiveness that makes at less a small barrier for new partipants, and that if there is any problem, it might be simply due to lack of widespread participation. On this point, I note that the regular expert closers are not deliberately rude to newcomers, but that their statements can be read as dismissive.
Perhaps we need a page or section "Categories for beginners", if it doesn't exist already. I just discovered Help:Category, which is almost it. I know I've asked and been told some answers before, but here is a good place to repeat it. What are all the pages that should be read in order to understand how we do and don't categorise? -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 02:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
As it stands now, CfD is a pathetic game. A few steps to deal with these problems might include:
As it stands now, a disturbing number of CfDs are based almost entirely on WP:IHATEIT votes, which are accepted as gospel truth while any contrary votes are repeatedly ignored or disregarded as somehow "unconvincing" by biased admins who too often appear to have prejudged the close before they looked at any arguments. The greater openness, transparency and broader participation these changes can bring might not solve all the problems at CfD immediately, but would be an excellent start in ensuring that CfD closes start to reflect actual consensus of the community as a whole, not just the arbitrary preferences of the usual suspects. Alansohn ( talk) 05:21, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
" 4) Add a notification that is displayed in each article where a category appears that the category is up for deletion. As it stands now, even regular editors who have used the category will only see the CfD notice if they happen to look at the category. Every other type of deletion discussion in Wikipedia -- article, image, template, redirect, etc. -- is marked by notification on the articles themselves where they are used."
Sorry I didn't see this sooner. I haven't been spending much time around here recently, but years back I was heavily involved with CfD and the writing of the categorization guidelines.
There is a perennial problem with categorization and since the problem has not been addressed, it creates a perennial problem with CfD. When categories were created there was no consensus on what they should be used for, and over time competing philosophies of categorization have arisen that are incompatible with each other. Categorization is seen as:
An indexing system implies bigger categories, classification leads to smaller ones, tagging systems conflict with hierarchies and classification. The system we have created does all four of these things together, some better than others, but none perfectly. It is a strange compromise, one that is very hard to explain, hard to understand and difficult to defend.
On top of the philosophical problems, there are technical ones. The lack of an automated dynamic system to create category intersections leads to disagreement on how many intersection categories should be manually populated. The inability to quickly revert categorization changes makes it very difficult to prevent the creation of smaller and smaller subcategories and the depopulation of larger ones. The lack of a pure-wiki revert process makes it much more difficult to exert pressure against the desire to diffuse. I cannot understand why we allow categories that have existed for years without controversy, to be depopulated as they are diffused into smaller ones. If a category is valid and useful, it is still valid and useful after a smaller sub-unit has been created.
So as I see it, we have no choice, given the technology that we have, to be anything other than quirky. If we are going to make any improvements, we would first have to have some consensus about our underlying philosophic goals and our technological limitations and an understanding about how to deal with both. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 09:16, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to request assistance in tagging these categories appropriately. — C M B J 19:51, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Card games belong to three distinct families: Trump, Rummy and Solitaire. Unfortunately, none of these are listed as "Categories" in Wikipedia. All the articles about card games are listed in categories which actually are sub-groups of card games, like Matching games, Trick-taking card games, etc, of the three families mentioned above. Some categories, like Anglo-American playing card games, list games like Ecarte (which is historically of French origin) and many others which could never be classified as Anglo=American. Is there anything that could be done ? Krenakarore ( talk) 14:35, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I want to recreate a category that was previously deleted via discussion. The category was deleted over a year and a half ago. At the time Wikiproject:Poker was not notified so we couldn't defend the the category, but that is not the grounds upon which I want to recreate the category. Over the past few years the prestige and prominence of belonging to the Poker Hall of Fame has grown. This year in particular, the World Series of Poker which now administers it, has done a terrific job of marketting the POH. Heck, the article on the Poker Hall of Fame in 2007 was a genuine POS, it is now a featured list. I have zero doubt that if the category were placed for CfD today, it would survive because the prestige of the award has blossomed. As a category, there really isn't much to add to the category... so how do I go about recreating it? Do I just recreate it knowing that it was once deleted and leave rationale on the talk page explaining why it shouldn't be speedied? (Also, personally, I think the problem really stems from adding the category to the two players who were awarded the award post humously, I don't think it should be added to them, as there the criticism of overcat might be applicable, but today, it is a designation sought out by poker's top players.)--- Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 22:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
This is a follow on to this discussion. In deleting these, it appears that there are several things going on. One is that there is a lot of activity within projects to rename the projects. When this happens they apparently change the templates which moves everything to a new series of categories and leaves the old ones as empty. While emptied out of process, I have not found a reason to reject any of these. It would be nice if some admin that runs a bot or script could delete these. That would make it much easier to find the other stuff which clearly does have issues, like one today which was a no consensus at CfD in June and someone emptied out of process after the discussion. Right now, it is difficult to find the problems since the project stuff overwhelms everything else. So if a few admins can stop by Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Categories possibly emptied out of process to help out it would be appreciated. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:29, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi.
I noticed that a lot of persons are listed in the Congressional scandals category. I don't think they belong there, so I added a comment to the talk page. But maybe this is a better place to discuss the matter. But this is neither a delete, nor a rename, a conversion or a merger. So what do I do?
Cheers LarRan ( talk) 19:42, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
I'd like tagging assistance with the many subcategories of Category:Dance redirects. I already have an umbrella of 3 nominations here Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_August_24#Category:Arts_redirects, but I did not realize how many were under dance. Clubmarx ( talk) 02:45, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Category deletion policy had its policy status removed and were moved to Wikipedia:Category deletion, now all the content from that page is included in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion, so it's proposed there to simply redirect it here. Cenarium ( talk) 01:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
I have a proposal for a new category but need some input on what to name the category.
Roughly it is a category for people with the word "the" in their name. We have a list for people named "the great" but their are other words besides great. Examples are Charles the Fat, Frederick the Wise,-- T1980 ( talk) 21:10, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
Discussion seems to have taken place in mid-2005 at Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Speedy category renaming and Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion/Archive 4#New speedy criteria, and it was added in this edit. However, nobody seems to have noticed the elephant in the room: Category:Georgia (U.S. state). This was created in June 2004 and has remained there to this day, matching the article Georgia (U.S. state).
I would like to propose a change to this criterion to exclude any categories that have the abbreviation in the parenthetical disambiguation, or that otherwise match the article name (example: Category:U.S. Route 50, clearly much more common than "United States Route 50"). -- NE2 04:43, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
G'day, I would like to bring up for discussing the bringing back the Disney Legends category, three of the four people who voted delete gave reasons that were really quite bogus 1) Disney is NOT a private owned company, stocks can be bought for $1000 US 2) per nom, I've read other delete votes and when I read per norm for a reason to delete I get incredibly annoyed, that's no better then the nominator voting twice 3) It is not a bloody employee of the month award, it's more then just that, the Disney Legends award states that you are apart of the Walt Disney legacy, that you made a large contribution to such a great legacy. One vote stated they already have a list and another vote stated it doesn't have an encyclopedic purpose, well there are dozens of other hall/walk of fame categories, so what makes the Disney hall of Fame any different.-- The King of Australia ( talk) 17:45, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
What is the procedure for addressing a category that has been emptied out of process (i.e., without having followed any of the processes outlined on WP:CFD)? I have in mind, for example, Category:Administrative and municipal divisions of Adygea, all the articles in which were moved into Category:Administrative divisions of Adygea by User:Ezhiki, who, being an admin, then deleted the "empty" original category. I'm not quite sure what if anything to do now; the renaming itself seems to make sense, even though it did not follow the "approved" process. And I certainly wouldn't propose to un-do the renaming and go back to a less desirable title just because of a procedural impropriety. Any advice? -- R'n'B ( call me Russ) 17:58, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
(Alansohn’s). When a category is nominated for deletion/merges/renames, post a note to the talk page of every page that is in the category. I imagine that this would require a simple bot. The note should be very clear that it is a category to be deleted/merged/renamed, not the pages in the category. The object here is to get a larger number of interested editors involved in category discussions. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 08:05, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
The majority of CfDs seem to be uncontroversial renames, and they make watching for interesting deletion discussions difficult. Alternatively, provide an indexing service to pull out CfDs where “delete” is proposed. (or is this already available?) -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 08:05, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Debessers comments seem to deny what I thought was a past agreement that wider community involvement in CfD was highly
desirable.
The point is taken that there is a continuum from deletions to mergers to contested renames to simple housekeeping.
-- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 00:52, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
See question/discussion here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:26, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Please express your opinion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion discussions#Renaming of multiple categories, including one or more stub categories. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:30, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Lack of sources documenting the refugee status for the articles of the "Polish emigrants" or "Polish refugees" category.IMHO, other categories are more appropriate for these people. Inappropriate relationship with the category called "emigrant" and "immigrant"-- WlaKom ( talk) 19:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
There are 47 categories in Category:Items to be merged. That is to say that they were tagged incorrectly with one of the merge templates. Anybody wants to take upon himself to list them on Cfd? In the mean time I have put up a warning on Template:Merge/doc (which is now the centralised documentation page for all remaining merge templates), that the merge templates are not to be used for categories, referring to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion instead. Debresser ( talk) 00:42, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone know of a bot that could go through a list of categories and delete the Template:Cfr-speedy in the categories? A few weeks ago a bunch of categories were speedily renamed, but because someone changed the coding on the Template:Cfr-speedy without telling the bot operators, a few hundred new categories were created with the template still attached. They can be seen here—all of the "Plays by ——" categories need the template deleted. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:29, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
I just noticed the change from Category:Canada-United States relations but can only trace it to CydeBot, which points only to WP:CFD and not to a specific CfD. When was this CFD posted, and was it listed at WP:CANTALK? i.e. "Whose bright idea was this?" Now when adding the category it requires a special dash-character instead of straight hyphen-typing.....categories should be for ease-of-use, not orthographicMoS nitpickery. Skookum1 ( talk) 02:23, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
There are at least two self-redirects on this page, contrary to WP:REDIRECT. I have found Wikipedia:Category deletion and Wikipedia:Category deletion policy. Maybe these should be redirected to an expanded WP:CAT? Mhockey ( talk) 09:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
In light of this, I'm adding speedy requirement #7. We can decide if we want to just merge this and make it part of #1, but to start out it's probably useful to have separate. Anyone choosing to nominate or process #7s should be familiar with WP:HYPHEN and WP:DASH. Should we require that soft redirects be created? Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:39, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
What's the difference, other than the colour of the link, between a category and a deleted category? I ask this because of Category:Rouge admins which, despite having been deleted a while ago, and now appearing in a more appropriate colour, still seems to be functioning perfectly well. Miremare 03:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. Though am I alone in thinking that the users in the category keeping it "alive" like that, is a little contrary to the spirit of the Cfd where the category was deleted? I mean, presumably consensus wasn't simply on whether the link should be red or blue, but on the function and purpose of the category, both of which seem to remain? :| Miremare 22:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Since there seems to be some confusion: I created two categories
This page is in the hyphen category.
It does not get put in the en-dash category.
Rich Farmbrough, 22:54, 28 September 2009 (UTC).
Whoa Nellie! RussBot can transfer pages that explicitly include categories, but that won't apply to transcluded and generated categories. Specifically:
Can Category:Railway stations in Indore be speedied or should it be brought to CfD again? It was deleted a couple of weeks ago as a result of this, but I can't figure out if there's a G4 equivalent for categories. cheers. - Spaceman Spiff 17:49, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
Noting that people don't want to separate deletion discussions from others (see Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion/Archive_2009#Proposal._Separate_Categories_for_Deletion_from_Categories_for_Discussion), can I ask that !voters try to avoid !votes such as "delete or rename" with a rationale that doesn't clearly differentiate between rationale for delete and rationale for rename. It can confuse the non-regulars. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 12:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Given the close of Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_October_12#Category:Wikipedians_who_say_CfD_is_broken, it is reasonable to conclude that the closer was confused by the interspersed variety of statements under "delete" or "rename". If the comments can confuse a reader, then there is a problem.. It is not OK to blame the reader for poor communication. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 00:26, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
There are way too many of these categories. I've spent the last hour cleaning up overuse of these categories amongst fictional characters in Power Rangers, where some characters were listed as "Fictional mass murderers" or "Fictional rock musicians" (when neither is the case as far as I can tell for the characters I removed these categories from). There should be some sort of clean up for all of these ridiculous categories, like Category:Fictional bojutsu practitioners.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 21:26, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
In this deletion discussion, HotCat (and maybe AWB) apparently does not 'know' about category redirects. So it allows users to easily place entries in the 'wrong' category. While any bot that does cleanup should be able to cleanup, as the implementation of the above consensus expands it could create a larger workload on the bots. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
That's another reason implementation of hard redirects on categories would be beneficial. When a hard redirect exists and the redirected category is added with hot cat, it automatically changes the applied category to the category that is the target of the redirect. (Though I wouldn't worry too much about "overworking" the bot that does these. It's a bot.) Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:41, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Since there seem to be no other reasons for not switching (at least, not from the participants here) I've started a proposal to make the change. It's at WP:Hard category redirects. Please comment or edit the proposal if I've made any omissions. Once it's tidy we can RfC it to a wider audience.-- Kotniski ( talk) 17:51, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
relisted here from archive, since it seems there is emerging consensus
I was idly musing on speedy rename criteria (yup, slow day...) when I came across a comment of Debresser's in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 September 25#Aircraft carriers by navy. The essential issue in that debate seems to be the non-conformance of a number of categories with the general convention for subcats of Category:Aircraft carriers by navy. In connection with this he said: "In my opinion this should be a speedy criteria...".
This is a fairly uncontroversial rename, so why not speediable? My reading of the speedy criteria and of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) leads me to think that this is not currently covered. While a speedy close could potentially come within the ambit of IAR and being BOLD, are there any views on the up and down sides of amending CSD to allow for speedy renames of categories in clear non-conformance with established naming schemes (not simply those outlined in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories))? Or am I simply being too restrictive in my interpretation of the speedy rename criteria as they stand?
Xdamr talk 18:12, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
We used to fairly routinely allow this type of thing to sneak through speedy renames based on #4. But then we had an incident where an editor got quite upset that we had done so, and the user argued that #4 only covered those that were enumerated in the conventions. He was right, of course. Since then I at least have been careful not to process any speedily unless they meet a criterion fairly squarely. That's also when the 4 "do not use speedy" negative criteria were created, and #4 of those essentially eliminates what we were doing before. I'd be willing to go back—just providing the background on why this is how it is. Good Ol’factory (talk) 20:59, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Based on the above conversation, do you think it's safe to alter #4 right now? Or does this need to be more formally proposed somehow? It's not really that big of a change. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:17, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and made the amendments. CSD 4 has been changed to:
I've also added a two sub-clauses to CSD 4:
I've altered 'when not to use speedy', removing No.3 (redundant given that we are now accepting de facto standards, which may well be derived from a WikiProject) and altering No.4 to be the general 'not' catch-all - "When proposing a change that does not qualify under any of the specified criteria above."
I think that that is pretty much in line with the consensus here?
Xdamr talk 00:04, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
I think that the text in
Wikipedia:CSD#Categories is that very same {{Wikipedia:Category deletion policy/Speedy criteria}}
, so I don't understand why you had to update it twice.
Debresser (
talk)
05:41, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi! As per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 October 25#Category:Theatres in the United States I'm trying to tag all categories for a proposed move. Please help me do so. Thank you WhisperToMe ( talk) 01:10, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Could anybody here help me give an answer on Template_talk:Merge#Instruction_creep? Debresser ( talk) 22:59, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
FYI, {{ CatDiffuse}} has been nominated for deletion. See WP:TFD at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2009 October 28
70.29.209.91 ( talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
There's an RFC open on replacing soft redirects with hard redirects, see WP:Hard category redirects ; the discussion is on the talk page.
70.29.209.91 ( talk) 19:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
A 'bot has emptied the contents of Category:Railway workshops in Great Britain into a new category Category:Railway workshops in the United Kingdom, that was recently created by the 'bot's owner.
I think that this is an out-of-process move, and I would like to know what the procedure is for an action like this. Thanks Iain Bell ( talk) 16:55, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
There is an ongoing village pump discussion about this here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:26, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to propose a limit to speedy nominations, given the vast number I am currently having to edit. 30 20 a day seems entirely reasonable.
Hiding
T
12:01, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Just as per Wikipedia_talk:MFD#Turn_MfD_upside_up., I think the order of the page should be reversed. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 12:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
I have a feeling that CFD has tended to delete "alumni by subject" categories, such as the newly-created Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge by subject of study and its sub-categories. Can anyone confirm or deny? Bencherlite Talk 19:52, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
There are three alumni subcategories for this one university: Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge by college, Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge by degree, Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge by subject of study. So previously anyone who was just categorized with one alumni category would now have three for the same institution, and more if they earned multiple degrees or changed their "subject of study." Those latter two will also largely duplicate occupation categories. My non-notable (though lovely and talented) wife and I have five degrees between us, so you can imagine how these could rack up on notable people. postdlf ( talk) 21:03, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Unlike virtually all other XfD processes, editors are often completely unaware of the fact that a category has been targeted for deletion or renaming. While articles nominated for deletion have a rather large and unmissable message posted at the top of the article and images and templates are noted when they are up for deletion wherever they appear, no one would ever know that a category is up for deletion unless they view the category itself. One of the best ways to provide some measure of transparency, to foster greater participation and to help ensure that CfD results reflect actual consensus of the community as a whole is to make a genuine effort to make the Wikipedia community aware of the categories up for discussion. This could be done, among other ways, by displaying a CfD message and link in all those articles and categories wherever those categories under discussion are displayed. Alansohn ( talk) 16:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
If a software change would function to append a deletion notice to the category tag itself, at the bottom of the article, that seems fine to me, as long as it wouldn't otherwise interfere with the article content. In the meantime, a talk page notice isn't a bad idea, provided that it's bot-implemented. But we should actually check that the WP community as a whole wants article talk pages to be bothered with these notifications. postdlf ( talk) 19:53, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I posted at Village pump to take the wider community's temperature on whether they want the talk page notices. postdlf ( talk) 13:46, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Just a note on the recent controversy over speedy rename criterion #6 (matching un-disambiguated subcategories to disambiguated parents). There was a discussion at Village Pump about this—only 5 editors really expressed views, and the views were fairly evenly split on retention vs. elimination, so because a lack of consensus for the speedy criterion has been manifest, #6 has been discontinued. I was hoping for a bit more input so we could determine if there was a real controversy or if it was just 2 editors who didn't like it, but based on the comments I think we need to say there's no strong consensus for it, and the speedy criteria require a quite a strong consensus to retain their legitimacy. All the "Georgia" → "Georgia (U.S. state)" ones and similar will have to be put through full discussion now. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:56, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Is there some reason that WP:OVERCAT is often ignored? Overlapping, duplicate and odd combination categories. Just ridiculous overkill. Apathy, or no patrol? Does any attempted oversight get done or is it mostly a matter of trying to catch newly-created categories and bulking them for CfD? Even then, I see very groups being taken out, but it would be hundreds of CfDs a day without more control. Even while typing this I have 8 hits as new categories listed in Huggle. ...Make that 11. It looks as bad as if new articles had no patrol. 13. I'm getting depressed just casually browsing, so how do you manage and why isn't there any sizable help? 14. ♪ daTheisen (talk) 14:42, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I may have made an unintentional blunder. I came across Ancient Artillery which is I believe, in effect, the same as slingshot or sling (weapon) and put the merge request on the talk page. I do not mean to step on any toes l santry ( talk) 18:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I wish that WP:CFD would change the format to one discussion per page, as per MFD and AFD. The reason is to allow the participant to follow the discussion using their watchlist. The current page per day format makes it hard to follow a particular debate for new contributions, or even the close, because of subsequent edits to unrelated discussions on the same page. Personally, I like to look through my watchlist especially for XfD closing edits, and then review the debate, the close, and to see what there is for me to learn. This only works where the format is one page per discussion. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 13:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
If WP:CFDALL could retain closed discussions, as per WP:DRV, this would make review or recent discussions much easier. WP:CFDALL makes participating in new and continuing discussions easy, but they way they suddenly disappear is disconcerting. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 03:58, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I created Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Last three weeks. It's large to load, but I think it will serve my desire, which is to easily review recent closes. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 05:54, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
The CfD tags we place on categories give notice of exactly what we propose—to delete the category, to rename it to a particular thing, or to merge it somewhere. Often a CfD discussion, however, will deviate from that original request and a renaming proposal will turn into one for deletion (I'm sure I've done it myself on many occasions). Yet the CfD tag on the category will continue to state that only renaming is proposed.
On the one hand, we're not big on tying the hands of discussion participants to say they can only vote yay or nay on a single, narrow issue. On the other, it's possible that many people interested in the category would ignore a rename proposal as uninteresting or uncontroversial, and then miss the deletion discussion. Or maybe that doesn't happen, I don't know. Thoughts? postdlf ( talk) 22:56, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
This category is currently being reviewed at Categories for discussion. Your input is welcome here.
The initial proposal is to {delete the category}/{rename it to X}/{merge it to Y}, but other options may be considered in the course of the debate (including renaming, deletion, or merger). You should not assume that the outcome will reflect the initial proposal.
In thinking about the recent discussions of Cfd being somehow "broken", I quickly pulled together some statistics. Some editors might find them of interest. (I know this doesn't "prove" anything, but it is interesting data to consider.)
From January through October 2009, there were 4739 discussions at CfD. In the same period of time, there were 33 DRVs from CfD, representing around 0.7%, or one for every 143 discussions.
Of the 33 DRVs, the results were as follows:
Let's call the "overturn" ones and (to be generous) the "no consensus" DRVs "problematic". Of the relists, 3 resulted in a result that was consistent with the initial close that was appealed, and 3 resulted in a result that was inconsistent with the initial close. So we can be generous and add 3 more to the "problematic" category.
That leaves us with 5+3+3 = 11 CfD discussions in 2009 that have been confirmed by the community to have been "problematic" in some way. 11 of 4739 is 0.23%, or one for every 435 discussions. Since in this period of time CfD averaged 474 discussions per month, that's a rate of less than one per month (although 11 in 10 months suggests just over one per month). 5 were so blatantly wrong so as to be overturned at DRV. 5 of 4739 is 0.11%, or one for every 909 discussions.
If any process "works" 99.77% of the time and is not obviously wrong 99.89% of the time, it is a relatively good and reliable process. To me, a 0.23% "failure" rate and a 0.11% "obvious failure" rate suggests that the process is pretty good, considering we are all humans who will always make occasional mistakes. — Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:18, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I think Carlaude's idea is a tad too bureaucratic. I also think it is not a good idea to propose a council of governors - it is cabalist, elitist. What I think could work is a requirement that consensus for the creation of a category be established *before* it is created. To get things started, I suggest that sufficient demonstration be the agreement of any two editors. Not much, but a big step forward from where we are. We could have the boilerplate for category creation altered to point to the "rule". The two editors should sign the category talk page. Dubious categories created unilaterally would be speedy deleteable. I wouldn't enforce anything technically, as it is desirable that users who know what they are doing can just do it. For editors who prefer to work alone, perhaps there could be a request for category creation process. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 13:39, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm wary of solutions which appear to increase bureaucracy, and restrictions on creation appear to do just that. What I suggest instead is to look at the problem from the other side, and make it easier to delete newly-created categories. We already have some relevant criteria at WP:CSD, but I don't think it would be helpful to expand those. I think that instead it would be better establish a category version of the {{ prod}} process used with articles. Like article-PROD, this would allow deletion without discussion unless challenged. Because of the obscurity of categories, I suggest that category-PROD:
This would avoid imposing extra, cumbersome, steps on editors who are creating valid and useful categories, but also make it easier to remove frivolous categories. By removing some of the "obvious deletions" from CFD, we'd also focus attention more on the categories which do need serious consideration. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:40, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_19#Categories_for_discussion. Debresser ( talk) 15:04, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Help_in_adding_category_to_Domesday_Book_settlements Johnbod ( talk) 19:34, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Since there seems to be discussion as to where and how CFD is broken, one instance is the application to recreated categories of speedy criterion G4. "Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion." Now when this was proposed it wasn't thought applicable to categories, but over the years that line has been forgotten. This is an area which can cause contention on Wikipedia and it would behove editors to work out a way of limiting the application of this criterion in category space. Hiding T 22:30, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
I haven't actually suggested removing it's applicability to categories, merely codifying what everyone here agrees happens anyway. As to the point that it is in the general category of speedy deletion criteria, if you examine the history you'll see that it appears there not through design but by chance and circumstance. I've been through the history and posted about it somewhere around these parts before. I hope you'll accept my word for it. Hiding T 23:30, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
I think part of the problem occurs when there are very few people participating in a discussion that results in a delete. Granted, that "problem" is not with G4 but rather getting more people to CFD, but the perception is that G4 is to blame. I can see how people would become frustrated that (for example) four people wanted to originally delete, and that "consensus" is used to G4 a category, perhaps multiple times. Admins should probably take that into consideration when deciding to speedy delete. If a category has only gone through one CFD with limited participation, it won't hurt to send it through again. -- Kbdank71 17:58, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Looks like if you change a category for a template and the category is actually transcluded with the documentation, clydebot does not make the change. Give how few of these there are, I don't see this as a big problem. Vegaswikian ( talk) 23:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me there is now a problem regarding Criterion G6. I'm not sure of the best way forwards, appreciate comments on how to tackle this. I assume that if it does get re-instated and someone objects to a speedy nomination under the criterion it still needs to go to a full debate? How will that play out in practise? Hiding T 22:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Good Ol’factory , I think that the discussion on Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_18#Category:Mixed_martial_artists_from_Georgia has already decisively answered your question. Not to forget the predecessing discussion above. Debresser ( talk) 23:02, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
The link is a section at WT:POLICY with a lot of subsections ... could someone who has some free time look at the last few subsections, and tell me whether you would rather have this discussion at WP:VPP or here? It's primarily a policy question, but per WP:POLICY, whether a page is policy or not is a matter of which cat it's in, so it's also a cat question. - Dank ( push to talk) 22:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Can someone find out why there was no setup done for Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 December 1? Vegaswikian ( talk) 01:40, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I hope this is the right page for suggesting new categories. I think the confusion displayed in discussions like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jerome Vered largely stems from the mixing of a)fame and b)quizzing ability. While the former always will be somewhat vague, the latter can usually (not always) be determined. That's the case because with the creation of the body IQA in 2003 the European top players have had the chance to continually play each other (no money prizes, off-TV for trophies and glory), their tournaments are the current bellwether. American competition has been spotty (with an upwards trend) but good enough to enable international comparison. Vered was 8th at the WQC 2009, Ken Jennings 9th at the EQC Open 2007, so it's safe to say they're both world class but not the men to beat, Brad Rutter who has beaten both of them in the US has yet to play IQA, he must be regarded as 5 or better. Englishman Kevin Ashman is the 2009 European Quizzing Championships and World Quizzing Championships champion and must be called world #1. Now check out his category: Category:Contestants on British game shows!! LOL. I suggest to establish categories Category:IQA medalist (single) and Category:IQA gold medalist (team), I'd prefer to reduce the Cat to only the winners of the team competitions as wins here are less conclusive about an individual player's ability. I also suggest a Category:IQA competition to include the British Quiz Championship, the WQC and the EQC and I finally suggest a Category:British Quiz Championship winner. German.Knowitall ( talk) 02:18, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
This cat Category:Prisoners and detainees of Switzerland I assumed that the definition of this cat would be for people that were actually being detained at the present time, on the cat page there is no qualification as to what it actually is meaning, I thought cats were supposed to be quite narrow and therefore assumed that it couldn't mean anyone who had ever been a prisoner of Switzerland, please comment. Off2riorob ( talk) 13:52, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#XfD logs. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 16:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
There have been ongoing discussions at Wikipedia talk:User categories re. removing guideline status from the page. Comments welcome. -- Xdamr talk 13:33, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Looking to close a debate which may end up with a merge to multiple targets outcome. Memory like a sieve, but I do vaguely recall from the distant past that one of the bots could potentially handle these sort of outcomes. Am I right, or just confused?
Xdamr talk 15:19, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Note in Category:General style guidelines that there are a bunch of userpages that have imported General style guidelines pages, including their cats. Is there a way to create categories that have no effect if they are imported into userspace, or is there a bot available that can remove them from userspace? - Dank ( push to talk) 01:13, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
<!-- TEXT -->
) manually per the
user page guideline (see
WP:UP#NOT #14: "Categories and templates intended for other usage, in particular those for articles and guidelines."). –
BLACK FALCON (
TALK)
04:36, 5 December 2009 (UTC)This RFC is called to discuss the consensus behind a speedy renaming criteria, and possible ways of improving it and the process. Hiding T 14:26, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi. I'm just looking to gauge the community stance on the sixth speedy renaming criterion after related discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 69#Disambiguating categories, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 November 18#Category:Mixed martial artists from Georgia and Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Speedy criteria#G6:
Are there ways of tweaking the guidance, perhaps so that we guide that the disambiguation style matches the parent article, for example?
Or is it even necessary, given that per Wikipedia:Disambiguation, disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might use the "Go button", there is more than one Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead.
Given that it is unlikely that people actually search for categories using the go button, and that most people will navigate to a category through articles or other categories, which will make context clear, is there a need to pre-emptively disambiguate categories on a wide scale, or should any such renamings be subject to a full discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion rather than speedily performed?
Experienced editors at CfD argue that the criterion saves time since most of the changes are uncontroversial. However, it could be that a lot of these changes are being missed by a number of editors. It has been suggested that a bot be tasked to notify relevant WikiProjects and/or category creators when categories are nominated for speedy renaming, or even nominated for a full debate. Would that also be a worthwhile endeavour? Thank you for your time. Hiding T 14:26, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't think this criterion is suitable; disambiguation isn't always needed just because a parent category is disambiguated (example: Category:Presidents of Georgia (country) - the "(country)" is entirely superfluous, even though it's needed in the parent Category:Georgia (country)). These things need to be discussed; there's no automatically right answer. (Unless the criterion can be reworded to cover only genuinely uncontroversial cases.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 14:50, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
As the instructions read now, mistakes that occur between an editor's brain and fingers are eligible for speedy renaming, but not mistakes that are made as a result of deficient education. It is not always possible for the person discovering such an error to discern the cause. If I have missed a discussion that concluded that it is important to distinguish between them and handle misspellings another way, I apologize. Chris the speller ( talk) 19:28, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Even if we aren't going to have a separate category for history, etc, can't we at least make it easy for people taking history articles to AfD know which is the appropriate category? Dougweller ( talk) 06:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
At Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 December 7#Polish boroughs, there was a decision to rename three categories, yet only one of them was actually done. Could someone who handles this sort of thing have a look at it? (Or should I just redirect them manually and wait for RussBot?)-- Kotniski ( talk) 17:30, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
The rename of :Category:Rugby union footballers --> :Category:Rugby union players was approved and completed recently (nominated 11 Dec). All of the 87 subcategories that contain the "footballer" term should also be changed to "player". Surely there should be a better way than tagging all of them by hand? This is an umbrella-consensus from the wikiproject WP:RU and affects every use of the term. Any suggestions as to easily do it all? Is there a bot available for this? - Sahmejil ( talk) 12:39, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
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Archive 5 | ← | Archive 9 | Archive 10 | Archive 11 | Archive 12 | Archive 13 | → | Archive 15 |
User:Taemyr/bridges by period, the argument is essentially that most of these categories are far to small. I am a bit unsure of how to proceed though, since I am not confident of how precedences run for this kind of thing. And tagging 100+ articles for merging can be seen as disruptive. Taemyr ( talk) 01:29, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
There's a disagreement here whether the category applies to released prisoners. Can I get some category experts to chime in. Thanks, -- brew crewer (yada, yada) 05:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
Based on a series of full CfD discussions, I propose adding the follow to criteria #1:
This covers an issue raised in some recent speed rename nominations. Vegaswikian ( talk) 20:01, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
What does one do if a (sub)category is under the wrong parent category? I see instructions and templates for deleting, merging and renaming but none of those really apply. Is there a way to "move" a subcategory? Specifically, Category:People from Chinatown, Manhattan really should be under Category:People from Manhattan, not Category:People from New York City, where it is now. In other words, it needs to be moved 'down' one level. Station1 ( talk) 21:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
Can someone look at the last two discussions and see if there are in fact objections that are holding up these nominations. Vegaswikian ( talk) 07:04, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
Hi all - sorry to impose, but I'm going to need help with this one (possibly a bot), as I have dial-up and am also recuperating after surgerym, so I'm not at full strength or concentration level! I've just noticed Category:Olympic medalists and all its subcategories, especially the Category:Olympic medalists by nation tree with all its 100+ subcats. As was recently pointed out inr enames for the equivalent Commonwealth games categories, most English-speaking countries use the British spelling of medallist (with two Ls), and it seems to be normal practice to also use this spelling for continental Europe, Commonwealth countries, and countries using continental European languages as their main tongues (e.g., Latin America and former French colonies). What';s more, the IOC's English-language website uses the double-L spelling exclusively. That's likely going to require at the very least the majority of the by-nation categories to be renamed, which is a lot of work for a recuperating, dial-up, no-bot editor. Any help would be gratefully appreciated! Grutness... wha? 01:23, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm interested in Category:Sporting knights. I'm not proposing to delete or necessarily rename the category, but to better define who qualifies for inclusion and who doesn't. At the moment, there are some people in it who were sportsmen who were knighted, but whose knighthoods were for reasons other than their sporting achievements. In one sense they're "sporting" "knights", but in another sense they're not "sporting knights". Some would say they should be included regardless; others would surely disagree. And there needs to be a discussion about it so that we're agreed what the rules for the category are. The talk page for the category directed me to the Help desk, which suggested I either raise the issue on individual talk pages for the knights in question, or use the CfD process somehow. The first suggestion seems inefficient - there's no guarantee I'll capture the attention of all users interested in this general category, unless I post the same question on dozens of talk pages, which I just ain't gonna do. The CfD idea seems to be all about deleting or renaming, which is also not what I'm wanting to do. I'm a little stuck as to how to proceed. Any ideas? -- JackofOz ( talk) 23:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
In going through the century renames, an interesting error shows up in that at least 2% of the entries in most century categories are incorrect. Remember that the 20th-century runs from 1901 to 2000. The 1st-decade of the 20th-century runs from 1901-1910. So when you place a category of the 1900s in the 20th-century, you are adding 1900 which is not correct and at the other end of the century we are dropping the last year of the century 2000 which is included in the 21st-century. I think that a 2% error is worth discussing to see if there is a simple fix. Vegaswikian ( talk) 16:48, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
This is a tricky problem. From looking at the Opera cats I just re-worked, it looks like the century categories are correct. Category:21st-century operas goes from 2001 on. The decade cats are incorrect. Category:2000s operas starts at 2000. However, if you look at 2000s as "starting with "200-", and not the "200th decade" it is correct. I guess if we wanted to fix it, at least for opera, we'd just need to fix Template:Operadecade. I say "if" because it's not just opera that has the problem, and that adds up to a lot of work. While technically incorrect, I don't know if we're going to get a lot of people that are flummoxed by the year 2000 being in the wrong decade. -- Kbdank71 17:08, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
An editor unilaterally deleted the entire list of the century/millennium hyphenation changes that were listed on the speedy page, arguing in the edit summary that they are not speediable.
How should we approach this? Three very recent CfDs ( [1], [2], [3]) have approved and re-approved such changes, and the general sense I have taken from the general discussions about these was that these should now be speedied. But now that opposition has been expressed here, should we have full CfDs for all of them? At least for those who participate at CfD, that would get really old really fast since there are so many of these categories. If they are just going to be approved renames as the others have been, what's the point of having a full CfD vs. a speedy change? For now I've restored the list at WP:CFDS but of course won't process any more until we have some sort of consensus on how to proceed. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:21, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
"unilaterally deleted"? In my book, speedy equals uncontroversial. Since this is about a controversial mass move of literally thousands of long-standing categories, I dare say they aren't "speedies". So there were one or two votes for implementing "adjectival hyphenation" in century cats. I happen to think this is a terrible idea, but I am of course prepared to accept a true consensus for this mass move. By "true consensus" I mean an above-board advertisement of these plans of mass renames, with an input of at least several dozen community members, and at least 80% support votes. Once you can point to such a true consensus, I will accept your renames as speedies. -- dab (𒁳) 09:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
Good Olfactory, if you want to implement a giant renaming spree, it is your burden to establish consensus before declaring it "speedy". Can you please appreciate the point that this isn't some remote category in the backwaters of Wikipedia that may well be renamed based a two or three votes consensus? This affects thousands and thousands of long-standing categories. Did it occur to you that Wikipedia has been going for eight years, with its share of grammar nazis, and until late 2008 nobody ever objected to "20th century philosopher"? I will tell you why: when "$Nth century" is used as an adjective it should be hyphenated is simply not a rule that is alive in the real world. I readily admit it sees some use. But by no means is it more common, or " more correct" than the unhyphenated spelling. Check the google books results for
at first glance well below 1:10. This is nowhere near anything that would make this giant move at all arguable. What irks me is that this huge transition went underway with all of two CfD votes, no community review, and nobody even bothered to check who is prescribing this, which major publications use it and which don't, the very basic minimal standard for any significant rename. Now I have made my point. It is now up to you to seek wider input for this, and if you manage to gain an 80% consensus for this thing, I will graciously step down and embrace our brave-new-hyphenation order. Otoh, if you do not, I fully expect you to send in the bots with equal zeal to "speedily" undo this disaster. -- dab (𒁳) 09:33, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
I recently came across a recreation of a deleted category. I mentioned to the new editors that it was a recreation but he didn't seem to care. I know that there is WP:DRV for articles, and that recreated articles can be speedily deleted. How are recreations of deleted categories handled? The page in question is Category:Jewish American actors. Will Beback talk 07:51, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
I've just entered it at DRV. Nietzsche 2 ( talk) 14:01, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
Please move this if it is better elsewhere
I have put forward a proposal to the Wikipedia bot community (see WP:BON) that, if it gains a consensus, will hopefully bring order into chaos. First off, it would be nice to have some that it conversant in the naming criteria for categories to check over the names I have proposed. Secondly, is this something I should be bringing in front of a wider audience? Essentially it can be all handled within the community, and the categorisation of no mainspace pages if affect. All help appreciated. - Jarry1250 ( t, c) 16:59, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
See discussion here. -- Kbdank71 18:13, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
I recently proposed a category for renaming, and it's been approved, but the renaming hasn't happened yet. Is this the way the process is supposed to work? I thought the approval would result in an actual rename happening. 70.251.149.197 ( talk) 15:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
In my work resolving DEFAULTSORT conflicts and adding the listas parameter those pages that lack it I have noticed that sum Vital information missing categories have moved from the article page to the Talk page. I have learned that the decisions to do this was made here almost two years ago. I would ask that those decisions be reversed and the tags that have been moved be moved back to the main pages as soon as possible and not in 2011.
I apologize. I did not notice that there was a response even though this page is on my watchlist.
There are two bits of information that I believe are absolutely vital for a biography article, the date of birth and the place of birth. Without those pieces of information the articla is not a biography, it is a minor bit of fluff about a person who is not suficiently notable to have an article on WP but managed to get a fan to write it anyway. The date of birth of a person and the place of birth of a person only appear on the Main Page. The only reason for either to be on the Talk Page is when there is a dispute about the accuracy of the information. A tag of any sort really should be on the page that contains the reason for the tag.
The other two pieces of information apply to persons who are no longer living, the date of death and the place of death. The same rationale applies to death information as to birth information.
Again I stress that if a category's listing is intrusive, even if it is necessary to some one or some group to be able to track the pages in the category, the the listing should be hidden. It is not difficult to view hidden categories if one wants to do so. It is not necessary to view such categories unless one has a need to do so.
Is that better? My request, very tersely put, is to put the tags for missing date of birth, place of birth, date of death and place of death at the end of the Article rather than at the top of the Talk Page of the Article.
On 26 April 2007 it was decided here that the Date of birth missing tag should be put on the Talk Page rather than the Article Page and on 22 April 2007 it was decided here that the Place of birth missing tag should be put on the Talk Page rather than the Article Page. That is why this section is named "Request for reconsideration". I would like for some one who is more experienced than I in the ins and outs of WP politics to look at those discussions and figure out how to reverse the decision that was announced.
Does that make sense?
I do not have any personal stake in this. It is hard to imagine how anyone could have a personal stake in this. I guess the reasons that I am harping on it so much are that
I guess I have to figure out how to propose a discussion on a category. I really did not want to add that to my cv.
The organization of this page is horrid. Most users coming to this page will do so with the intent of nominating articles for some kind of discussion. We should make it easy for them by having appropriate subsections, so that it's obvious where to look for delete, rename, etc. As it currently stands, a user coming to this page has an easier time finding the nomination process for "speedy renaming" than just straightforward "renaming". The way the article currently reads, it's like a mess of red tape. Proper organization will significantly reduce this problem. 70.251.251.175 ( talk) 02:28, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
Is there a place to discuss proposed categorization schemes before there implementation? For example, there have been recent discussions at WT:PHARM:CAT on how to categorize pharmacology articles, a discussion involving a lot of the WP:MED and WP:PHARM people. However, is there general a place where this discussion can be posted to get feedback from the general wikipedia community (as occurs with formal CfD threads) before anything is actually implemented? Thanks in advance for your response. kilbad ( talk) 18:12, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to discuss the choice to use "women" and "woman" as adjectives. I know this usage has been going on for a several decades now, and this may be a contentious (to those who care about these types of things, anyway), as well as major proposal (in terms of altering the names of so many Wikipedia Categories) but my very strong feeling is that the time has come to let the rules of English back into play in terms of this usage as a means of (1) celebrating the gains of the women's rights movement and (2) in order to move on from a time of (understandable but now unnecessary) reactiveness and insecurity on the part of some feminists.
This irregular (and grammatically speaking, marked; and in my opinion, ugly looking and sounding) usage (we don't say "man nurse" or "men nurses") comes from a time when some feminists felt the need to assert the sacredness & importance of the concept of femaleness (oops!) womanhood by forbidding the use of 'female' when applied to humans, and breaking the rules of English grammar (which was seen as one of the agents of patriarchy & oppression) was felt to be one way of accomplishing this.
However, unfortunately the usage actually achieves an unintended - and very unfeminist - effect in that it makes a woman's gender seem like an obsession, and moreover a thing of more importance than her profession is (which implication I personally, as a woman, resent). (Why else impose an awkward noun before another noun when a perfectly good adjective exists for the purpose?)
The usage is now an anachronistic gesture, based on an insecurity and reactiveness which we no longer need to engage in (however understandable it might've been in its time).
Another strong reason for reverting to the correct grammar on this is: how in the HECK are we to explain this bizarre irregularity to learners of English? And is it worth having to?
(I know, it's a long, pedantic rant. But I'm really curious to see if anyone out there agrees. Or cares.)
--
Tyranny Sue (
talk)
04:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure if this is where I should raise this but I have noticed that there is a Category called Culture by city and that it has a Subcategory called Culture by nationality and city. This seems a bit odd to me. Any ideas? Sterry2607 ( talk) 11:06, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
What is the rationale behind this please? It seems very silly to go through a five day CFD just because an editor fumble-fingered twice instead of once in creating a category. Otto4711 ( talk) 19:26, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
I've started implementing the changes to the image categories that was discussed here. I did the first two, but my internet connection is getting flaky and slow, and I could use some help with the rest.
Care needs to be taken, as these categories (and their dated subcats) are populated by a template, as is the link that creates the new subcat each day, and the images themselves need null edits to show up in the correct subcat, etc, etc. It's just a lot of work, and it's easy to miss something.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. -- Kbdank71 19:22, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
Per the discussion above, I've copied several CFD pages into my user space in an attempt to simplify CFD.
They are
Many of the preliminary changes I made were simply removing duplicate information and instructions. I also consolidated some stuff and added an "optional notification" section.
If you want to make edits of your own, feel free, but please be careful; I didn't move everything into my userspace. Some parts of User:Kbdank71/CFD, such as the "Discussions awaiting closure" and "Speedy criteria" sections are still transcluded from Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working and Wikipedia:Category deletion policy/Speedy criteria, respectively. If you want to edit either of those sections, let me know and I'll copy them to my user space as well.
Opinions?
-- Kbdank71 20:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
When a category is renamed based on a CfD, perhaps we could document a link to the CfD on the category's talk page for easy reference if needed in the future? kilbad ( talk) 15:44, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Per the suggestion a couple of sections up, this is to formally propose the elimination of criterion #2 of when a speedy rename can't be done: When proposing that two or more changes should be made, each of which qualifies under the speedy criteria. If both of the changes qualify for speedy renaming, meaning they are both uncontroversial changes, it strikes me as an exercise in pointless bureaucracy to go through a full five-day CFD to fix the mistakes. The idea was expressed that allowing multiple speedy changes would somehow open the speedy rename process to abuse, but given the diligence exercised by a number of editors here the potential for abuse seems low; honestly I'm having difficulty envisioning how one could commit abuse through this process anyway. Otto4711 ( talk) 23:18, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
OK, project page was updated per the discussion. Vegaswikian ( talk) 00:41, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
Please see User_talk:KenWalker#Category:Clayoquot_Sound_region_or_.3F.3F. I'd like to avoid having to pursue a CD by naming the suggested categories wrongly....advice pls. Skookum1 ( talk) 02:18, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
While cleaning up Erlang programming language article I spotted Category:Programming languages created in 1986. I have seen quite a few silly categories related to programming languages ("families", use of brackets, semicolon as separator), trivial but at least somehow valid and of entertaining value.
Not so for "creation date" - such concept is absurd, programming language is not a child or a product with fixed release day. Most of the languages are gradually developed over years or even decades and the year when the ideal was first announced or initial version made public is practically irrelevant for anyone. It doesn't make splash like new model of car and nobody chooses between languages by such date.
Should this be just a single category I would propose it for deletion but the guy who added it created a whole tree of categories starting with
Category:Programming languages by creation date. I do not have stamina to create specific CfD for every member of this tree and have no clue about a simpler mechanism. If someone knows a better way or has enough of time to deal with this beast, please do. The
WP:CfD page could give hint what one could do in such case.
Pavel Vozenilek (
talk)
20:07, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Before starting a mass-CFD, are these past precedents on "Wikipedians who like <insert tv show here>" i.e. Category:Wikipedians who like Star Trek ? – xeno ( talk) 17:51, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
Is there some sort of holy war in progress to delete as many categories as possible? I ask because several categories related to spaceflight, which have existed and been well-used for years, have recently been nominated for deletion. What's up with that? Is this truly an effort based on some idea that it helps our project to delete well-used categories? If so, please provide a pointer to the rationale for that! ( sdsds - talk) 01:58, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
Would someone please speedy close the CFD on Category:Suspended deck bridges as a mistaken nomination, here? Same as was done for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Suspended deck bridge. Thanks. -- Una Smith ( talk) 15:10, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
So, after the original decision to split UCFD out from CFD, it seems to have outlived its usefulness. There were only five UCFD noms for all of March. Looking back through the various talk archives, I can find the re-merger being discussed first here, then there, with nobody objecting to the re-merge, but it was never actually done. If no one objects in the next few days, I'll merge them. (And no, this is not an April Fool's joke; it's already April 2nd in my time zone.)-- Aervanath ( talk) 17:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Ok, so the two concerns raised so far appear to be that the working page and archives should stay separate. The working page is not something that'll be hard to deal with, as jc37 said: just add notes to the working page and to the closing instructions to make clear that user cats are handled differently. Anyone closing CFDs should be competent enough to figure out that minor increase in complexity. As far as separate archiving goes, should we just keep the current archival system going? That way, UCFDs, once closed, would be cut from the CFD log page and pasted to the UCFD archive page for that month. Since that's the way UCFDs are archived now, it shouldn't be a tall order. Any other caveats I should be aware of? I have reviewed the old discussions, but I may have missed stuff.-- Aervanath ( talk) 08:13, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
How about making UCFD a subpage of Wikipedia:Categories for discussion (i.e. Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/User), much like WP:CFD/S is right now? I know that this is not quite the same as merging the two processes into, but it's a step above having two entirely separate processes. By the way, I don't think that this would set a precedent for creating CFD subpages for every namespace, since only the user namespace has two guidelines devoted just to its categorization: Wikipedia:User categories and Wikipedia:Overcategorization/User categories. – Black Falcon ( Talk) 00:46, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm missing something, but if UCFD were to merge back into CFD, but retain its separate "working page" (I read as "nomination page") and archive list, then... what would actually change? To me, those are the only two things in the process, other than the nomination template. Please explain. — Goodtimber ( walk/ talk) 04:39, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
I have added a {{ historical}} tag to UCFD, and removed all references to it from WP:CFD. I have also edited Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Administrator_instructions so that user cats will be treated differently than others. I have also created {{ ucfd top}} (as noted in the admin instructions) for use with user cats. It is the same syntax as {{ cfd top}}. If I missed anything, please let me know, or do it yourself.-- Aervanath ( talk) 05:28, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
If I want to discuss a set of categories, and not immediately propose to delete, merge, or rename one or more of them, with more than those who read the categories' talk page, where can that take place? patsw ( talk) 22:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
User:John Carter thinks that "as an admin", he is entitled, both before and after a debate, to empty a category and then speedily delete it (this a category related to a dispute he has been involved in, indeed a major protagonist in). Can someone explain to him why this is not acceptable behaviour? Thanks. His comments are here. Johnbod ( talk) 19:02, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
I'm going to offer the hypotheses that most users interested in editing and categorizing articles do not care what happens to categories for wikipedians interested in pokémon, etc. From what I can see of the merge discussion the only real argument was "low traffic" but that seems to have (cough cough VegaDark) risen with a vengeance following the merge. Does anyone have a good reason not to just revert back to the way it was? — CharlotteWebb 20:01, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
Sorry if I caught anyone off guard-I try to do nominations in groups as to minimize the number of edits necessary. It certainly isn't going to be an everyday occurance. That being said, I hadn't done any nominations for a while so there had been a lot of recently created categories that had gone unchecked, and I still have a few weeks of category creations to look over to be caught up. I'd have to mildly oppose having them permanantly default as collapsed whenever nominated (although I can understand the one made in this instance), as one of the main reasons people had been discussing a merge is the lack of participants at UCFD, and having it collapsed like that is likely to turn people off from participating. VegaDark ( talk) 21:28, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
Could we hold off a month or two and see how it goes with the merged CFD working as normal, without any special variations for user cats? I.e., no "hide" boxes, no extra sections, etc. Yes, VegaDark nominated a whole bunch right away, but sometimes you're going to have mass noms of categories, whether user or not. I think that we will find that it won't be as much of a nuisance as it initially appears. If I'm wrong, and it does turn out to be a nuisance over the long run, I will be happy to un-merge the processes, as I'm the one who merged them in the first place (although I didn't make the decision on my own). However, I would request that CFD editors give the re-merge a trial run of at least a month before declaring it a failure. Thanks,-- Aervanath ( talk) 16:09, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, VegaDark nominated a whole bunch right away, but sometimes you're going to have mass noms of categories, whether user or not. ← Yes, this is a small price to pay in the process of building an encyclopedia, but most user category discussions have scupper-all to do with that. On a more practical note, when multiple categories are nominated for CFD at the same time they tend to be hierarchically related in some way, so it usually makes sense to put them under the same heading (and inside a show/hide box whenever the complete list of categories is likely to take up more screen-space than the total salient discussion related to them, that is, the larger-scale renamings tend to be less controversial—most of us exercise good judgment in that area). — CharlotteWebb 00:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
So, uh...how many user cats am I allowed to nominate at one time now before people start panicking again? I currently have 6 written up with another 4 I still need to write up. If I nominate all 6 I have done, are people going to start demanding we unmerge user cats from here? Do I need to disguise the amount by only doing a couple a day? Is having 1 a day for a month really that different than having 10 nominated 3 days out of the month? VegaDark ( talk) 03:54, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Simply put: There is absolutely zero limit on the number of nominations that are allowed here on any particular day.
And further, it doesn't disrupt these pages any more than any other nomination might.
If you don't want to comment in a particular discussion, it's easy: don't comment.
To help soften the merging, we've even allowed for moving them to the bottom of a page, and even placing a separate header at the top of the section.
But suggesting that there should be a limit to the number nominations, especially ones that someone has already written up?
No. Absotively posilutely not. - jc37 09:12, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Is there any reason why we shouldn't just use the CFD top and bottom templates when closing UCFD discussions? It would appear that the only difference between CFD and UCFD is a) color, and b) the word "user" in front of "category", neither of which I believe are necessary. I ask because I use User:The wub/CloseCFD.js to close CFD discussions, and it doesn't differentiate between CFD and UCFD. Since we've merged the two, why not make it easier for administration? -- Kbdank71 14:42, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
I thought the consensus from before was to copy closed UCFD's to the monthly log pages, i.e. Wikipedia:User categories for discussion/Archive/April 2009. I've just done that for April 5th, but I'd like to either a) remind closers to do the copying when they perform the close or, if that's not acceptable to other closers, to b) come to a consensus about how to properly archive these if no one else is willing to do it manually.-- Aervanath ( talk) 15:38, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
In case anyone wants to give their opinion on how to figure out how long a category has been empty in regards to CSD C1. -- Kbdank71 16:41, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
I noticed a category that seems to be for use by a single user. Surprisingly, I can't see any precise policy or instructions on handling this type of category, so I'm posting here so someone with a clue can work out if any action is required. The category is Category:Where Zheliel2 signed. Johnuniq ( talk) 03:46, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
Hi,
Textline 1 of the page says: On this page, deletion, merging, and renaming of categories (pages in the Category namespace) is discussed.. No, it is described. And why use 'Namespace' here? Suggest replace: "On this page, deletion, merging, and renaming of Wikipedia categories is described." Thank you, Lord ;-) -
DePiep (
talk)
23:48, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Given that Afd has been extended to seven days (see Wikipedia_talk:AFD#Proposal_to_change_the_length_of_deletion_discussions_to_7_days) does anyone object to lengthening the term here to seven days, due to the same reasons?-- Aervanath ( talk) 07:11, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
As there is no opposition, I'll go ahead and make the change. If anyone has a good reason why this shouldn't happen, feel free to revert me. -- Kbdank71 13:14, 1 May 2009 (UTC)
FYI, there is a discussion about eponymous categories here. -- Kbdank71 16:18, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
Archiving this "discussion". Nothing positive happening here now, "debate" or otherwise. Time, I think, for everyone to move along before the accusations of bad faith and the like end up becoming more disruptive, and thus possibly getting someone blocked. - jc37 20:28, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I find it interesting that debate of a category for which deletion has been suggested has been terminated by archival activities. This is both a pity, and a dirty trick. Can't stand the heat? William R. Buckley ( talk) 04:55, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
Wow, elitists are all over the place on Wikipedia. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
If a parent article is moved with clear consensus, it should only be understood that the categories be renamed to match. For instance, John Whatever's article goes through requested moves and is moved with a clear consensus to John Q. Whatever, then "Category:John Whatever albums/songs" would need to be moved as well. The category rename is clearly non-controversial, so why drag it through CFD if it's clearly not going to be contested? Therefore, I propose a new criterion for speedy renaming that is phrased something like this:
Of course, there might be a couple bugs to work out in this criterion, but that's basically what I'm going for — only speedy rename to match parent article if the parent article was moved after an RM consensus. This might help trim the huge CFD backlog, at least a tiny bit. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ( Many otters • One hammer • HELP) 18:51, 10 May 2009 (UTC)
I proposed some pretty sweeping changes within Category:Musical instruments, but did so at the end of the GMT day and got no input at all. For something that big that got no agree/disagree, will the admins automatically re-list it on a new day, or should I delete it from the 5 May CFD and move it to a new day, or do I request a re-list, or what? Here are the proposals in question:
MatthewVanitas ( talk) 04:28, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
I noticed that quite often living persons has categories as such "Christian communists " "Communist Party of the Soviet Union members" etc, while in fact such people there were in the past associated with communists, like article Algirdas Brazauskas. Perhaps those categories at least should have word former ? Any suggestions? M.K. ( talk) 15:24, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
WikiProject Orphans and foundlings has been renamed Wikipedia: WikiProject: Orphaned, abandoned and removed children. I started an orphans and foundlings category page here and need some help to change this to Category: Orphaned, abandoned and removed children. Thanks. Fainites barley scribs 15:01, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
I've thought of a category that seems worthy of being created, but there are very good reasons against having it, not the least of which is previous deletion of similar categories. Should I make the category and list it here? That seems a little...strange. But waiting for someone else to find it and (probably) list it here seems almost dishonest.
The category I've thought of is Athletes with diabetes. This doesn't seem to have existed before, but Category:People with diabetes and Category:Diabetics were both deleted previously. I think in the case of athletes, the disease becomes a defining characteristic ( Adam Morrison, Brandon Morrow, and Jay Cutler (American football), just off the top of my head, are very well-known as diabetics and there have been stories in print and TV media about their stringent diabetes management regiments), but I can absolutely see why others wouldn't think so. Nosleep break my slumber 00:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
There are a number of cats currently at Category:Empty pages for speedy deletion that start with the word "non-article". We're having a discussion about whether these qualify for speedy deletion here. If they otherwise qualify, then how do I check to see if they were empty 4 days ago? - Dank ( push to talk) 20:05, 15 May 2009 (UTC)
I just noticed Category:Max Schreck disappear with a delete log summary of " per 2009 MAY 7 CfD". At that CfD link I see it was nominated on 7 May 2009. I did not see any message on my talk page about this. Shouldn't the editors involved be notified first so that more input could be obtained? I am not sure I agree with the deletion in this case, but I would be concerned even if I agreed. Editors may have other suggestions, rename, cleanup, mergeup, clarify inclusion criteria and so forth, but if they are not notified ... 84user ( talk) 03:13, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
FYI, I have now recreated the deleted category and reverted the Cydebot moves. 84user ( talk) 03:29, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
Maybe someone should just tell me not to bother? Ok, the category just got deleted again. The reason is "(G4: Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion)". My point is there was no sufficient discussion. It looked like a rogue bot, in all seriousness, or a process gone wrong. However, if this is now the accepted policy (to nominate stuff for discussion without telling people) please tell me and I will not bring this up again. 84user ( talk) 03:43, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I've just returned here after posting a request for suggestions on possible renaming on the talk pages of the users in the discussion. As to caring, it was on my watchlist, only that is now so large I only see about 5% of what notice everything. I have just learnt to select Namespace:Category so I should be happier in future. I realise there's a balance between efficiency and avoiding spamming user talk pages. I just got caught by surprise.
But please note that I really did not see the discussion. It could have remained open for 100 days and I still wouldn't have seen it. Finally thanks for the link to WP:DRV, that is what I was looking for, but I would rather just discuss it on your talk page for now. Believe it or not, it is not straightforward to find and follow these things. 84user ( talk) 04:53, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
Rich Farmbrough ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) is still at it, changing categories out-of-process without consensus. He not only should know better, he's already participated in the earlier complaints. Perhaps I'm more irritated by these as I'm the one that started some of these particular maintenance categories, so they showed up on my watch list. What can be done?
Probably missing some, where he fails to provide an edit summary:
Is this still going on?
It's more straighforward than this. WP:BRD. Someone made a bold change. was reverted, now it's time for a consensual discussion. And oh look, WP:CFD is right around the corner. Imagine, a process set up just for such discussions...
So please just make a nomination and please stop with the disruption.
I really have no opinion on the changes, but this controversy really is looking like several tempests in a teapot... - jc37 05:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
Following discussion at WT:CAT#Eponymous cats, I've begun drafting an RfC to determine what to do about articles with eponymous categories (e.g. should France be only in Category:France or in its natural categories as well). Input very welcome at Wikipedia:Categorization/Eponymous RFC.-- Kotniski ( talk) 06:10, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
Did I miss a discussion or have most of the CfD categories been renamed out of process? Vegaswikian ( talk) 06:27, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
I don't know anything about the correct procedures here. I proposed this at the Village Pump (link above) and all agreed, including some experienced editors. So there was discussion, and consensus, before anybody started doing anything.
Apart from that, as you see, this is just working on the "housestyle" of Wikipedia, while absolutely no changes are made to the workings of these categories and templates. And for sure no heavily altering, as all can see. So I really can't see what the heat is about. Anyway, let's see what Rich will have to say. Debresser ( talk) 20:58, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
May I ask one small question, please. Is there something that is not working? I mean, apart from people having to spend a minute looking for a renamed category? I think all is working just fine. Debresser ( talk) 21:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
I would suggest moving to "Categories for discussion from... " in place of the current name(s). This will be easy enough and should provide both clarity and consistency. Rich Farmbrough, 17:47 21 May 2009 (UTC).
I now see that my mistake was mainly using the word "deletion" in stead of "discussion". Which was indeed a mistake, rooted in inexperience. I will nominate the one category left for speedy. While reading this section again, I feel that the spelling out of "CfD" as "Categories for deletion" and changing the dateformat from "YYYY-MM" to "Monthname Year", were not what made the resistance here so strong. I will await User:Rich Farmbrough or someone else nominate the rename. Debresser ( talk) 02:01, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
The recent category renaming (and bot renaming in existing subst'd templates) reminds me that wouldn't be a problem had we retained the two step process that I'd setup (see Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion/Archive 7#cfd1, cfm1, cfr1). Changing the Cf(D,M,R) templates would have put the categories back in place automatically.
That is, the first subst would create a template, rather than a huge splash of wikitext, just as {{ subst:afd}} creates {{ AfDM}}. When I was doing {{ cfd1}} et alia, we wanted the regular {{ cfd}} to continue to work as usual with the old directory structure, so the compromise was our CfDM was merely CfD (not subst'd in those days).
As I was trying to find out what had changed in 3 years, I see that there was a recent discussion (in the wrong place) at Template talk:Cfd#Remove need for subst. That also proposed (and created) a {{ CfDM}}. Broken, but the same idea.
Anyway, I don't understand what was bad about the process? I'd proposed that we could change underlying directory names at 2007 January (using one of the #if functions comparison against 2006).
Instead, some folks decided to subst everything, including {{ cfdend}} and {{ cfdresult}}, formerly prohibited from subst'ing. Unfortunately, the person subst'ing forgot to add <includeonly>subst:</includeonly> to the parser functions, so the output is a mess!
Anyway, I'm agreeing with December's discussion that we reinstate the two template process. If folks prefer names like {{
cfd}} and {{
CfDX}} (we shouldn't use "M", as that would make the confusing {{
CfMM}} for merging), that's fine.
--
William Allen Simpson (
talk)
04:08, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
I have nominated Category:Number-one singles in Australia for deletion due to the results of a CFD over number-one albums (once in 2006 and one just recently). I have no qualms over the decision/consensus but am seeking consistency between how songs and albums are categorized/listed, which is why I attempted to recreate the number-one albums category to renew the discussion. For this reason as well, I would like to nominate each "Number-one singles by country" category, and most of their sub-categories (except "Lists of" cats.), and add to the umbrella nomination. Due to the number of these categories, I am requesting help to put them under the same umbrella. Thank you. -- Wolfer68 ( talk) 06:14, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
I've done a few umbrella nominations lately, and found that {{ cfd2}} seems to work properly on the initial nomination, but {{ cfr2}} ignores the supplied section heading. Anybody remember how/why that changed?
Found it.
Same problem with {{ cfm2}}.
Happily, {{ cfd2}} currently works because:
I'd fix them, but they're protected. (heavy sigh)
Found complaints in the archives as far back as 2007 March 7, but no responses (or fixes).
The RfC mentioned above, on eponymous categories and what to do about them, is now live. Please read Wikipedia:Categorization/Eponymous RFC and comment at that talk page. Thanks. Kotniski ( talk) 13:10, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_May_21#Writers_by_language
Three CFD's were combined, but the links in the tagged categories were not corrected to point to the umbrella nomination. CharlotteWebb used the span tag to catch the incoming links and make sure people got to the right discussion. I'm not sure if this is something we can use, but I think it's a great idea. -- Kbdank71 15:10, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
There is a note on the project page stating in relation with speedy renaming and merging "If the nominator decides to change a nomination based on comments, simply delete the old nomination and create a new one as long as it still meets the speedy criteria". As of late I have noticed one nominator who has repeatedly changed his nominations and/or added other related categories to his nominations. Often this makes it impossible to know whether the opinions of commenting editors relate to the current proposal.
I propose to make the above note a little stronger "If the nominator decides to change a nomination, simply delete the old nomination and create a new one (as long as it still meets the speedy criteria)", and add a note with the same content to the project page in relation with non-speedy nominations as well. Apart from that I think changes in the nomination (apart form typos) should be sufficient reason for immediate administrative closure of the nomination. What are your opinions? Debresser ( talk) 07:39, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
There is now a nomination for rename at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_June_9#Category:CfD_2009-06. Debresser ( talk) 17:53, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 16#American people and topics required that the moves take place in sequence:
Looking at the history of John Baker (musher) ( | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (in time sequence order):
WRONG ORDER!
Now, Kbdank71 deleted
Category:Alaska Natives as empty. How do we put back the material?
--
William Allen Simpson (
talk)
02:05, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I hate to throw a human under the bus when it's just easier to blame the bot, but Cydebot did nothing wrong on this. The problem was caused by Vegaswikian with this edit. Vegas correctly added a NOBOTS tag to the Category:Alaska Native people to Category:Alaska Natives line, but then added the same line below without the NOBOTS tag. So the first run through, Cydebot properly moves articles from Category:Alaska Natives to Category:Alaska Native, but then immediately moves Category:Alaska Native people to Category:Alaska Natives. In that run, John Baker (musher) gets moved from Alaska Native people to Alaska Natives. The next hour when Cydebot runs again, it goes to again rename Category:Alaska Natives to Category:Alaska Native, and finding John Baker (musher) there, moves it to Alaska Native. Cydebot did exactly what it was supposed to. -- Kbdank71 15:27, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
And I double checked that to make sure that I had it right! Sorry for the mess, but at least it is cleared up now. At least I don't have to spend time in deletion review! Vegaswikian ( talk) 17:58, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
If a category and a "List of..." page effectively duplicate each other, should the category be listed here? - eg Category:Ghost ships & List of ghost ships. Thanks. 58.8.7.135 ( talk) 18:43, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
I have started 2 new discussions in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories), and there are three more active discussions there (one is only a redirect to the actual discussion). Since that page is not frequented by a high number of editors, which tends to make for limited discussion hence limited consensus, I decided to post a notification here. Debresser ( talk) 02:56, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
Since we had a conflict over there, the page has been protected. So please give your input. Debresser ( talk) 17:11, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Steam5 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has been on a roll over the last 36 hours or so, tagging categories for speedy deletion and changing category links without paying any heed to the guidelines. Most recently, he/she tagged Category:Bell Canada Enterprises with {{ db-c2}}, even though it seems clear to me that renaming "Bell Canada Enterprises" to "Bell Canada" does not fall within the speedy renaming guidelines; and, as far as I can tell, this proposed renaming was never listed on WP:CFD at all. The user simply went ahead and manually changed category links in all articles that used to be in Category:Bell Canada Enterprises. I left two messages on this user's talk page yesterday; he/she deleted each of them without responding, and continued on his/her campaign. Before I raise this on WP:ANI and complain more officially about this user's conduct, I wanted to raise it here and make sure that I am not the one who is out of line. If I am mistaken in my understanding of the process, please let me know and I will back off. -- R'n'B ( call me Russ) 15:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
Category:Fast Folk artists was previously deleted, but was then relisted at CFD after a deletion review. The CFD resulted in keeping the category (see the CFD); however, the category is still empty. I'm not sure how to go about re-populating it automatically, since I'm not too familiar with the technical aspects. Is CydeBot the only bot that does this? If there are other bots, how do you figure out which one it was? And then, can the bot be easily programmed to undo it's edits removing the articles from the category, or is that something that interested editors have to do manually? I'm asking on behalf of an editor who posted to my talk page, thinking that I would know because I closed the latest CFD. (Gosh, thinking that an admin actually knows something; boy, does he have a lot to learn!) Thanks in advance for educating me, -- Aervanath ( talk) 17:23, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
Do you folks think there's a need for a {{ oldcfdmulti}} template? The page exists, but just as a redirect to {{ oldafdmulti}}, which doesn't allow for links to CFD archives. I just combined the four old discussion templates in use at Category talk:Fast Folk artists, but I used {{ multidel}}, because I'm unaware of another template that would work. It functions, but it lacks the sophistication of {{ oldafdmulti}}. Is there a better way to list multiple deletion discussions on category talk pages? - Eureka Lott 04:08, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
There is a deletion backlog at Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion. Vegaswikian ( talk) 21:47, 17 June 2009 (UTC)
Background: I created {{ catdesc}} to help solve the problem of category documentation/description. It was nominated for deletion; no-one but me saw any use for it (not that there were significant numbers wanting it deleted either), so it's now officially being deleted (although there's a deletion review for it). It is nonetheless already transcluded on a lot of pages, and if it is to be deleted, then these transclusions will be converted with a script.
The Question therefore arises: if such conversion takes place, what of the information that this template generates should be kept, and what should be discarded? Obviously the parent categories defined in the template need to be retained, and personally I would have thought the useful information provided for readers would stay too. What about the information on the categorization scheme intended for editors (the bit in the collapsible box) - should it stay or go?
(Please have a look at some of the transclusions from the list linked to above to understand what this is about. See here for some technical discussion. Of course, if you think the template might still be useful - even if not exactly in its present form - then please say so at DRV. A possibility might be to userfy it while further development takes place. Or someone might have a totally new idea on how to solve this problem. But the above Question is the one that needs answering most immediately.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 13:46, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
After the recent renaming of Category:Pages for deletion to Category:Pages for discussion we now have a major break in the category tree. Please see that category talkpage Category_talk:Pages_for_discussion for my proposal in relation with this issue. Debresser ( talk) 01:01, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
Not sure if this is the right place or not, but the Subclasses of Flower class corvettes discussion closed on 16 June as "rename all". Usually, the changes are made quickly after a close, but I notice that is not the case here. Is there a backlog of changes that need to be made or did this one maybe slip through the cracks? Thanks in advance. — Bellhalla ( talk) 14:57, 19 June 2009 (UTC)
I only found out about this after the decision was made, but basically despite notable CfD opposition, every single Surname by X Nationality category was deleted, dumping over 14,000 articles into the basic Category:Surnames. I agree that confining surnames by nation-state is a clumsy way to go about it, but dumping over ten thousand articles into a base cat was ludicrous. If you feel that Category:Iranian surnames cultivates a false sense of unity, go ahead and divide it into Category:Baloch surnames, Category:Persian surnames, etc. Now anyone wanting to categorise by culture as opposed to "nation" has to comb thgrough 14,000 articles. In short, I feel this was a ludicrously drastic move pushed by a fringe element of "nationality is a fiction" biased persons, which undid thousands of hours of labour. Yes, "nationality" is a somewhat artificial way to categorise cultural aspects, being that cultures transcend borders, but but hundreds of surnames could be generally agreed to be "Japenese" instead of "Welsh", and compeltely wiping cats rather than sorting was a terribly hasty move. MatthewVanitas ( talk) 01:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Can a few admins look at Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion? Looks like someone ran a bot to dump a bunch of entries into here. Looks like some were upmerged as underpopulated. Not sure why others are here, but I don't have the time to dig right now. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:30, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
In my opinion, may of the discussions that are still open and awaiting closing have consensus. However many of the regular closers have participated in the discussions so they should not really be involved in the close. So if any other admins see this, could you please review the these open discussions and close those with a consensus? Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:32, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
I've just come across Category:Political corruption and Category:Corruption, and this seems like a big problem of overlap here. The Corruption disambiguation page essentially points at Political corruption - the other senses are more synonyms of other meanings. Certainly looking at the category contents, it's hard to see why not to merge. But how to do this? I've never done this. Help, anyone? Disembrangler ( talk) 08:40, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
Just a heads up. In doing a speedy close on some of the latest Jewish categories, I noticed that I had actually closed Category:Jewish inventors as a listify a while ago and it is sitting in the manual work queue. However one user took it on themselves to remove the notice from the category which then resulted in the category being renominated for deletion. It might be good if some other editors watched this category for further vandalism which is what I consider an editor revert of a close decision. My restore of the close decision was reverted and the user was warned. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:57, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
While we often hear arguments that a category must be deleted because it is not defining, we have no objective definition of what the term means. For articles, the General notability guideline provides a strong definition of which subjects are deemed to have a presumption of notability. When nominated for deletion, arguments for retention for articles that meet these criteria through the inclusion of reliable and verifiable sources about the subject will generally win the day over arguments that insist otherwise. We have no corresponding objective standard for categories. Even worse, we have the insistence that reliable and verifiable sources -- even ones that demonstrate that the category is used in books, magazines and newspapers as a means of grouping the subject -- have no place whatsoever in the CfD world. Taking the first steps on this first issue, providing an objective definition that can be met to demonstrate that category is defining, will play a major role in eliminating much of the arbitrary nature of the CfD process. Alansohn ( talk) 05:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
The problem with "It's essentially a judgment call" is that it turns the whole process into a game, exactly what CfD has turned into, rather than a formal, standards-based process as at AfD. With an article, editors can point to Wikipedia:Notability an its statement that "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article", and each significant clause there is defined. There is nothing that corresponds for categories. The "lede sentence" criteria is entirely specious, as there are plenty of things in the lead that we don't categorize by (e.g., year of death), and plenty of things that hardly ever appear in a lead (e.e., college, places of residence, cause of death, LGBT-related television episode status), which we do; The standard neither brings anything in nor does it exclude anything. The straw man that not every fact should be categorized is one few would disagree with, but again leaves the choice as arbitrary. WP:OCAT, merely provides a rationalization for deleting categories -- and its use and abuse to mean anything is another story -- but provides no basis to demonstrate that a category is defining. The closest we've heard here is Postdlf's statement that a category is defining if "the category is actually used as a means of grouping the subject in academia or popular media", but even that is qualified into near complete uncertainty. In a popularity contest, no one needs to have a meaningful reason for why category A is kept and B is deleted, as it's just an arbitrary preference. Is that all we have here? If we don't have (and can't craft) a statement that begins "a category is presumed to be defining if..." and ends with a clear and concise statement of what bears that presumption, then all we are left with is a popularity contest, and even then the vote counting often appears fixed. Alansohn ( talk) 22:34, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
Setting out what is "not defining" accomplishes absolutely nothing in showing what "is defining". The same usual suspects can decide that anything is not defining, without providing any guidance as to what is. By ensuring that no definition exists, all we have is a fifth-grade level popularity contest. The CfD game continues. Alansohn ( talk) 20:10, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
I just had a short interesting discussion that relates to defining. I had removed Category:English Americans which is a type of category that many consider problematic. Basically a editor added this since the individual is a 12th generation decedent! Clearly in my mind that is simply not defining. But it does show that editors don't consider that categories need to be defining and that these mixed categories are being included down decedent trees. Both of these are issues. Maybe we need to define how many generations something like this is defining for. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:18, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
Anyone know what Category:Selected anniversaries is used for? Vegaswikian ( talk) 08:02, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
I think that there is a problem at CfD.
I have some ideas on what that problem is.
I don’t actually have much of an idea of what can usefully be done about it (but maybe some ideas can be developed).
The reasons to believe that there exists a problem include:
I think the problem is that a few administrators running WP:CfD understand wikipedia's categorisation system, and most other editors do not.
I offer a test of the above theory. Have the CfD-experts take a break from CfD closings and see what happens. Will the results change significantly, or stay the same. Perhaps the system will evolve to something better. Perhaps chaos will result. Note that this “test” is not suggested as solution. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 12:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
One idea is that we should relax on the standard for userspace categories, so that more editors can get involved in the mechanics of categorization, and perhaps learn a few things that are obvious to the experts. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 12:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
At
Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_review#resolve_the_issue_on_the_XfD_discussion_talk_page, I've made a suggestion, mostly with CfD in mind, for a subtle reform, involving reformatting CfD to "one page per discussion" (like AfD & MfD), and asking editors with problems or queries to raise their questions on the discussion talk page before going to WP:DRV. --
SmokeyJoe (
talk)
14:21, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
Kbdank71, thanks for responding. I think it is true that by percentages, few CfD discussions are problematic, but this doesn't mean there is no problem. I also see Johnbod's point that the problematic CfD often involve contentious categories, rather than the system itself. However, I recall a recent case involving Category:Surnames by nationality (or similar), where the category wasn't so much contentious, and the deletion dealt a harsh blow to some editors involved, in terms of loss of information. I also note that the respected editor User:DGG, who is not prone to ranting, has occasionally made a strongly dissenting view at DRV that was ignored. And where Alansohn might be said to be ranting, I read valid points being made and repeated in frustration, and dismissed as ranting, leading to further frustration.
I don't see the three respondents disagreeing that there is a degree of complexity or non-intuitiveness that makes at less a small barrier for new partipants, and that if there is any problem, it might be simply due to lack of widespread participation. On this point, I note that the regular expert closers are not deliberately rude to newcomers, but that their statements can be read as dismissive.
Perhaps we need a page or section "Categories for beginners", if it doesn't exist already. I just discovered Help:Category, which is almost it. I know I've asked and been told some answers before, but here is a good place to repeat it. What are all the pages that should be read in order to understand how we do and don't categorise? -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 02:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
As it stands now, CfD is a pathetic game. A few steps to deal with these problems might include:
As it stands now, a disturbing number of CfDs are based almost entirely on WP:IHATEIT votes, which are accepted as gospel truth while any contrary votes are repeatedly ignored or disregarded as somehow "unconvincing" by biased admins who too often appear to have prejudged the close before they looked at any arguments. The greater openness, transparency and broader participation these changes can bring might not solve all the problems at CfD immediately, but would be an excellent start in ensuring that CfD closes start to reflect actual consensus of the community as a whole, not just the arbitrary preferences of the usual suspects. Alansohn ( talk) 05:21, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
" 4) Add a notification that is displayed in each article where a category appears that the category is up for deletion. As it stands now, even regular editors who have used the category will only see the CfD notice if they happen to look at the category. Every other type of deletion discussion in Wikipedia -- article, image, template, redirect, etc. -- is marked by notification on the articles themselves where they are used."
Sorry I didn't see this sooner. I haven't been spending much time around here recently, but years back I was heavily involved with CfD and the writing of the categorization guidelines.
There is a perennial problem with categorization and since the problem has not been addressed, it creates a perennial problem with CfD. When categories were created there was no consensus on what they should be used for, and over time competing philosophies of categorization have arisen that are incompatible with each other. Categorization is seen as:
An indexing system implies bigger categories, classification leads to smaller ones, tagging systems conflict with hierarchies and classification. The system we have created does all four of these things together, some better than others, but none perfectly. It is a strange compromise, one that is very hard to explain, hard to understand and difficult to defend.
On top of the philosophical problems, there are technical ones. The lack of an automated dynamic system to create category intersections leads to disagreement on how many intersection categories should be manually populated. The inability to quickly revert categorization changes makes it very difficult to prevent the creation of smaller and smaller subcategories and the depopulation of larger ones. The lack of a pure-wiki revert process makes it much more difficult to exert pressure against the desire to diffuse. I cannot understand why we allow categories that have existed for years without controversy, to be depopulated as they are diffused into smaller ones. If a category is valid and useful, it is still valid and useful after a smaller sub-unit has been created.
So as I see it, we have no choice, given the technology that we have, to be anything other than quirky. If we are going to make any improvements, we would first have to have some consensus about our underlying philosophic goals and our technological limitations and an understanding about how to deal with both. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 09:16, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to request assistance in tagging these categories appropriately. — C M B J 19:51, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Card games belong to three distinct families: Trump, Rummy and Solitaire. Unfortunately, none of these are listed as "Categories" in Wikipedia. All the articles about card games are listed in categories which actually are sub-groups of card games, like Matching games, Trick-taking card games, etc, of the three families mentioned above. Some categories, like Anglo-American playing card games, list games like Ecarte (which is historically of French origin) and many others which could never be classified as Anglo=American. Is there anything that could be done ? Krenakarore ( talk) 14:35, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Ok, I want to recreate a category that was previously deleted via discussion. The category was deleted over a year and a half ago. At the time Wikiproject:Poker was not notified so we couldn't defend the the category, but that is not the grounds upon which I want to recreate the category. Over the past few years the prestige and prominence of belonging to the Poker Hall of Fame has grown. This year in particular, the World Series of Poker which now administers it, has done a terrific job of marketting the POH. Heck, the article on the Poker Hall of Fame in 2007 was a genuine POS, it is now a featured list. I have zero doubt that if the category were placed for CfD today, it would survive because the prestige of the award has blossomed. As a category, there really isn't much to add to the category... so how do I go about recreating it? Do I just recreate it knowing that it was once deleted and leave rationale on the talk page explaining why it shouldn't be speedied? (Also, personally, I think the problem really stems from adding the category to the two players who were awarded the award post humously, I don't think it should be added to them, as there the criticism of overcat might be applicable, but today, it is a designation sought out by poker's top players.)--- Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 22:44, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
This is a follow on to this discussion. In deleting these, it appears that there are several things going on. One is that there is a lot of activity within projects to rename the projects. When this happens they apparently change the templates which moves everything to a new series of categories and leaves the old ones as empty. While emptied out of process, I have not found a reason to reject any of these. It would be nice if some admin that runs a bot or script could delete these. That would make it much easier to find the other stuff which clearly does have issues, like one today which was a no consensus at CfD in June and someone emptied out of process after the discussion. Right now, it is difficult to find the problems since the project stuff overwhelms everything else. So if a few admins can stop by Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Categories possibly emptied out of process to help out it would be appreciated. Vegaswikian ( talk) 19:29, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
Hi.
I noticed that a lot of persons are listed in the Congressional scandals category. I don't think they belong there, so I added a comment to the talk page. But maybe this is a better place to discuss the matter. But this is neither a delete, nor a rename, a conversion or a merger. So what do I do?
Cheers LarRan ( talk) 19:42, 20 August 2009 (UTC)
I'd like tagging assistance with the many subcategories of Category:Dance redirects. I already have an umbrella of 3 nominations here Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_August_24#Category:Arts_redirects, but I did not realize how many were under dance. Clubmarx ( talk) 02:45, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Category deletion policy had its policy status removed and were moved to Wikipedia:Category deletion, now all the content from that page is included in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion, so it's proposed there to simply redirect it here. Cenarium ( talk) 01:23, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
I have a proposal for a new category but need some input on what to name the category.
Roughly it is a category for people with the word "the" in their name. We have a list for people named "the great" but their are other words besides great. Examples are Charles the Fat, Frederick the Wise,-- T1980 ( talk) 21:10, 5 September 2009 (UTC)
Discussion seems to have taken place in mid-2005 at Wikipedia talk:Centralized discussion/Speedy category renaming and Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion/Archive 4#New speedy criteria, and it was added in this edit. However, nobody seems to have noticed the elephant in the room: Category:Georgia (U.S. state). This was created in June 2004 and has remained there to this day, matching the article Georgia (U.S. state).
I would like to propose a change to this criterion to exclude any categories that have the abbreviation in the parenthetical disambiguation, or that otherwise match the article name (example: Category:U.S. Route 50, clearly much more common than "United States Route 50"). -- NE2 04:43, 9 September 2009 (UTC)
G'day, I would like to bring up for discussing the bringing back the Disney Legends category, three of the four people who voted delete gave reasons that were really quite bogus 1) Disney is NOT a private owned company, stocks can be bought for $1000 US 2) per nom, I've read other delete votes and when I read per norm for a reason to delete I get incredibly annoyed, that's no better then the nominator voting twice 3) It is not a bloody employee of the month award, it's more then just that, the Disney Legends award states that you are apart of the Walt Disney legacy, that you made a large contribution to such a great legacy. One vote stated they already have a list and another vote stated it doesn't have an encyclopedic purpose, well there are dozens of other hall/walk of fame categories, so what makes the Disney hall of Fame any different.-- The King of Australia ( talk) 17:45, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
What is the procedure for addressing a category that has been emptied out of process (i.e., without having followed any of the processes outlined on WP:CFD)? I have in mind, for example, Category:Administrative and municipal divisions of Adygea, all the articles in which were moved into Category:Administrative divisions of Adygea by User:Ezhiki, who, being an admin, then deleted the "empty" original category. I'm not quite sure what if anything to do now; the renaming itself seems to make sense, even though it did not follow the "approved" process. And I certainly wouldn't propose to un-do the renaming and go back to a less desirable title just because of a procedural impropriety. Any advice? -- R'n'B ( call me Russ) 17:58, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
(Alansohn’s). When a category is nominated for deletion/merges/renames, post a note to the talk page of every page that is in the category. I imagine that this would require a simple bot. The note should be very clear that it is a category to be deleted/merged/renamed, not the pages in the category. The object here is to get a larger number of interested editors involved in category discussions. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 08:05, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
The majority of CfDs seem to be uncontroversial renames, and they make watching for interesting deletion discussions difficult. Alternatively, provide an indexing service to pull out CfDs where “delete” is proposed. (or is this already available?) -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 08:05, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Debessers comments seem to deny what I thought was a past agreement that wider community involvement in CfD was highly
desirable.
The point is taken that there is a continuum from deletions to mergers to contested renames to simple housekeeping.
-- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 00:52, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
See question/discussion here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:26, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
Please express your opinion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion discussions#Renaming of multiple categories, including one or more stub categories. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:30, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Lack of sources documenting the refugee status for the articles of the "Polish emigrants" or "Polish refugees" category.IMHO, other categories are more appropriate for these people. Inappropriate relationship with the category called "emigrant" and "immigrant"-- WlaKom ( talk) 19:41, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
There are 47 categories in Category:Items to be merged. That is to say that they were tagged incorrectly with one of the merge templates. Anybody wants to take upon himself to list them on Cfd? In the mean time I have put up a warning on Template:Merge/doc (which is now the centralised documentation page for all remaining merge templates), that the merge templates are not to be used for categories, referring to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion instead. Debresser ( talk) 00:42, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Does anyone know of a bot that could go through a list of categories and delete the Template:Cfr-speedy in the categories? A few weeks ago a bunch of categories were speedily renamed, but because someone changed the coding on the Template:Cfr-speedy without telling the bot operators, a few hundred new categories were created with the template still attached. They can be seen here—all of the "Plays by ——" categories need the template deleted. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:29, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
I just noticed the change from Category:Canada-United States relations but can only trace it to CydeBot, which points only to WP:CFD and not to a specific CfD. When was this CFD posted, and was it listed at WP:CANTALK? i.e. "Whose bright idea was this?" Now when adding the category it requires a special dash-character instead of straight hyphen-typing.....categories should be for ease-of-use, not orthographicMoS nitpickery. Skookum1 ( talk) 02:23, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
There are at least two self-redirects on this page, contrary to WP:REDIRECT. I have found Wikipedia:Category deletion and Wikipedia:Category deletion policy. Maybe these should be redirected to an expanded WP:CAT? Mhockey ( talk) 09:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
In light of this, I'm adding speedy requirement #7. We can decide if we want to just merge this and make it part of #1, but to start out it's probably useful to have separate. Anyone choosing to nominate or process #7s should be familiar with WP:HYPHEN and WP:DASH. Should we require that soft redirects be created? Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:39, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
What's the difference, other than the colour of the link, between a category and a deleted category? I ask this because of Category:Rouge admins which, despite having been deleted a while ago, and now appearing in a more appropriate colour, still seems to be functioning perfectly well. Miremare 03:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. Though am I alone in thinking that the users in the category keeping it "alive" like that, is a little contrary to the spirit of the Cfd where the category was deleted? I mean, presumably consensus wasn't simply on whether the link should be red or blue, but on the function and purpose of the category, both of which seem to remain? :| Miremare 22:40, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Since there seems to be some confusion: I created two categories
This page is in the hyphen category.
It does not get put in the en-dash category.
Rich Farmbrough, 22:54, 28 September 2009 (UTC).
Whoa Nellie! RussBot can transfer pages that explicitly include categories, but that won't apply to transcluded and generated categories. Specifically:
Can Category:Railway stations in Indore be speedied or should it be brought to CfD again? It was deleted a couple of weeks ago as a result of this, but I can't figure out if there's a G4 equivalent for categories. cheers. - Spaceman Spiff 17:49, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
Noting that people don't want to separate deletion discussions from others (see Wikipedia_talk:Categories_for_discussion/Archive_2009#Proposal._Separate_Categories_for_Deletion_from_Categories_for_Discussion), can I ask that !voters try to avoid !votes such as "delete or rename" with a rationale that doesn't clearly differentiate between rationale for delete and rationale for rename. It can confuse the non-regulars. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 12:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
Given the close of Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_October_12#Category:Wikipedians_who_say_CfD_is_broken, it is reasonable to conclude that the closer was confused by the interspersed variety of statements under "delete" or "rename". If the comments can confuse a reader, then there is a problem.. It is not OK to blame the reader for poor communication. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 00:26, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
There are way too many of these categories. I've spent the last hour cleaning up overuse of these categories amongst fictional characters in Power Rangers, where some characters were listed as "Fictional mass murderers" or "Fictional rock musicians" (when neither is the case as far as I can tell for the characters I removed these categories from). There should be some sort of clean up for all of these ridiculous categories, like Category:Fictional bojutsu practitioners.— Ryūlóng ( 竜龙) 21:26, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
In this deletion discussion, HotCat (and maybe AWB) apparently does not 'know' about category redirects. So it allows users to easily place entries in the 'wrong' category. While any bot that does cleanup should be able to cleanup, as the implementation of the above consensus expands it could create a larger workload on the bots. Vegaswikian ( talk) 18:42, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
That's another reason implementation of hard redirects on categories would be beneficial. When a hard redirect exists and the redirected category is added with hot cat, it automatically changes the applied category to the category that is the target of the redirect. (Though I wouldn't worry too much about "overworking" the bot that does these. It's a bot.) Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:41, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
Since there seem to be no other reasons for not switching (at least, not from the participants here) I've started a proposal to make the change. It's at WP:Hard category redirects. Please comment or edit the proposal if I've made any omissions. Once it's tidy we can RfC it to a wider audience.-- Kotniski ( talk) 17:51, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
relisted here from archive, since it seems there is emerging consensus
I was idly musing on speedy rename criteria (yup, slow day...) when I came across a comment of Debresser's in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 September 25#Aircraft carriers by navy. The essential issue in that debate seems to be the non-conformance of a number of categories with the general convention for subcats of Category:Aircraft carriers by navy. In connection with this he said: "In my opinion this should be a speedy criteria...".
This is a fairly uncontroversial rename, so why not speediable? My reading of the speedy criteria and of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) leads me to think that this is not currently covered. While a speedy close could potentially come within the ambit of IAR and being BOLD, are there any views on the up and down sides of amending CSD to allow for speedy renames of categories in clear non-conformance with established naming schemes (not simply those outlined in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories))? Or am I simply being too restrictive in my interpretation of the speedy rename criteria as they stand?
Xdamr talk 18:12, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
We used to fairly routinely allow this type of thing to sneak through speedy renames based on #4. But then we had an incident where an editor got quite upset that we had done so, and the user argued that #4 only covered those that were enumerated in the conventions. He was right, of course. Since then I at least have been careful not to process any speedily unless they meet a criterion fairly squarely. That's also when the 4 "do not use speedy" negative criteria were created, and #4 of those essentially eliminates what we were doing before. I'd be willing to go back—just providing the background on why this is how it is. Good Ol’factory (talk) 20:59, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
Based on the above conversation, do you think it's safe to alter #4 right now? Or does this need to be more formally proposed somehow? It's not really that big of a change. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:17, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
I've gone ahead and made the amendments. CSD 4 has been changed to:
I've also added a two sub-clauses to CSD 4:
I've altered 'when not to use speedy', removing No.3 (redundant given that we are now accepting de facto standards, which may well be derived from a WikiProject) and altering No.4 to be the general 'not' catch-all - "When proposing a change that does not qualify under any of the specified criteria above."
I think that that is pretty much in line with the consensus here?
Xdamr talk 00:04, 25 October 2009 (UTC)
I think that the text in
Wikipedia:CSD#Categories is that very same {{Wikipedia:Category deletion policy/Speedy criteria}}
, so I don't understand why you had to update it twice.
Debresser (
talk)
05:41, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
Hi! As per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 October 25#Category:Theatres in the United States I'm trying to tag all categories for a proposed move. Please help me do so. Thank you WhisperToMe ( talk) 01:10, 24 October 2009 (UTC)
Could anybody here help me give an answer on Template_talk:Merge#Instruction_creep? Debresser ( talk) 22:59, 27 October 2009 (UTC)
FYI, {{ CatDiffuse}} has been nominated for deletion. See WP:TFD at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2009 October 28
70.29.209.91 ( talk) 19:12, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
There's an RFC open on replacing soft redirects with hard redirects, see WP:Hard category redirects ; the discussion is on the talk page.
70.29.209.91 ( talk) 19:57, 29 October 2009 (UTC)
A 'bot has emptied the contents of Category:Railway workshops in Great Britain into a new category Category:Railway workshops in the United Kingdom, that was recently created by the 'bot's owner.
I think that this is an out-of-process move, and I would like to know what the procedure is for an action like this. Thanks Iain Bell ( talk) 16:55, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
There is an ongoing village pump discussion about this here. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:26, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd like to propose a limit to speedy nominations, given the vast number I am currently having to edit. 30 20 a day seems entirely reasonable.
Hiding
T
12:01, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
Just as per Wikipedia_talk:MFD#Turn_MfD_upside_up., I think the order of the page should be reversed. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 12:52, 5 November 2009 (UTC)
I have a feeling that CFD has tended to delete "alumni by subject" categories, such as the newly-created Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge by subject of study and its sub-categories. Can anyone confirm or deny? Bencherlite Talk 19:52, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
There are three alumni subcategories for this one university: Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge by college, Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge by degree, Category:Alumni of the University of Cambridge by subject of study. So previously anyone who was just categorized with one alumni category would now have three for the same institution, and more if they earned multiple degrees or changed their "subject of study." Those latter two will also largely duplicate occupation categories. My non-notable (though lovely and talented) wife and I have five degrees between us, so you can imagine how these could rack up on notable people. postdlf ( talk) 21:03, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Unlike virtually all other XfD processes, editors are often completely unaware of the fact that a category has been targeted for deletion or renaming. While articles nominated for deletion have a rather large and unmissable message posted at the top of the article and images and templates are noted when they are up for deletion wherever they appear, no one would ever know that a category is up for deletion unless they view the category itself. One of the best ways to provide some measure of transparency, to foster greater participation and to help ensure that CfD results reflect actual consensus of the community as a whole is to make a genuine effort to make the Wikipedia community aware of the categories up for discussion. This could be done, among other ways, by displaying a CfD message and link in all those articles and categories wherever those categories under discussion are displayed. Alansohn ( talk) 16:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
If a software change would function to append a deletion notice to the category tag itself, at the bottom of the article, that seems fine to me, as long as it wouldn't otherwise interfere with the article content. In the meantime, a talk page notice isn't a bad idea, provided that it's bot-implemented. But we should actually check that the WP community as a whole wants article talk pages to be bothered with these notifications. postdlf ( talk) 19:53, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
I posted at Village pump to take the wider community's temperature on whether they want the talk page notices. postdlf ( talk) 13:46, 10 November 2009 (UTC)
Just a note on the recent controversy over speedy rename criterion #6 (matching un-disambiguated subcategories to disambiguated parents). There was a discussion at Village Pump about this—only 5 editors really expressed views, and the views were fairly evenly split on retention vs. elimination, so because a lack of consensus for the speedy criterion has been manifest, #6 has been discontinued. I was hoping for a bit more input so we could determine if there was a real controversy or if it was just 2 editors who didn't like it, but based on the comments I think we need to say there's no strong consensus for it, and the speedy criteria require a quite a strong consensus to retain their legitimacy. All the "Georgia" → "Georgia (U.S. state)" ones and similar will have to be put through full discussion now. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:56, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
Is there some reason that WP:OVERCAT is often ignored? Overlapping, duplicate and odd combination categories. Just ridiculous overkill. Apathy, or no patrol? Does any attempted oversight get done or is it mostly a matter of trying to catch newly-created categories and bulking them for CfD? Even then, I see very groups being taken out, but it would be hundreds of CfDs a day without more control. Even while typing this I have 8 hits as new categories listed in Huggle. ...Make that 11. It looks as bad as if new articles had no patrol. 13. I'm getting depressed just casually browsing, so how do you manage and why isn't there any sizable help? 14. ♪ daTheisen (talk) 14:42, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I may have made an unintentional blunder. I came across Ancient Artillery which is I believe, in effect, the same as slingshot or sling (weapon) and put the merge request on the talk page. I do not mean to step on any toes l santry ( talk) 18:34, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I wish that WP:CFD would change the format to one discussion per page, as per MFD and AFD. The reason is to allow the participant to follow the discussion using their watchlist. The current page per day format makes it hard to follow a particular debate for new contributions, or even the close, because of subsequent edits to unrelated discussions on the same page. Personally, I like to look through my watchlist especially for XfD closing edits, and then review the debate, the close, and to see what there is for me to learn. This only works where the format is one page per discussion. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 13:11, 14 November 2009 (UTC)
If WP:CFDALL could retain closed discussions, as per WP:DRV, this would make review or recent discussions much easier. WP:CFDALL makes participating in new and continuing discussions easy, but they way they suddenly disappear is disconcerting. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 03:58, 15 November 2009 (UTC)
I created Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Last three weeks. It's large to load, but I think it will serve my desire, which is to easily review recent closes. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 05:54, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
The CfD tags we place on categories give notice of exactly what we propose—to delete the category, to rename it to a particular thing, or to merge it somewhere. Often a CfD discussion, however, will deviate from that original request and a renaming proposal will turn into one for deletion (I'm sure I've done it myself on many occasions). Yet the CfD tag on the category will continue to state that only renaming is proposed.
On the one hand, we're not big on tying the hands of discussion participants to say they can only vote yay or nay on a single, narrow issue. On the other, it's possible that many people interested in the category would ignore a rename proposal as uninteresting or uncontroversial, and then miss the deletion discussion. Or maybe that doesn't happen, I don't know. Thoughts? postdlf ( talk) 22:56, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
This category is currently being reviewed at Categories for discussion. Your input is welcome here.
The initial proposal is to {delete the category}/{rename it to X}/{merge it to Y}, but other options may be considered in the course of the debate (including renaming, deletion, or merger). You should not assume that the outcome will reflect the initial proposal.
In thinking about the recent discussions of Cfd being somehow "broken", I quickly pulled together some statistics. Some editors might find them of interest. (I know this doesn't "prove" anything, but it is interesting data to consider.)
From January through October 2009, there were 4739 discussions at CfD. In the same period of time, there were 33 DRVs from CfD, representing around 0.7%, or one for every 143 discussions.
Of the 33 DRVs, the results were as follows:
Let's call the "overturn" ones and (to be generous) the "no consensus" DRVs "problematic". Of the relists, 3 resulted in a result that was consistent with the initial close that was appealed, and 3 resulted in a result that was inconsistent with the initial close. So we can be generous and add 3 more to the "problematic" category.
That leaves us with 5+3+3 = 11 CfD discussions in 2009 that have been confirmed by the community to have been "problematic" in some way. 11 of 4739 is 0.23%, or one for every 435 discussions. Since in this period of time CfD averaged 474 discussions per month, that's a rate of less than one per month (although 11 in 10 months suggests just over one per month). 5 were so blatantly wrong so as to be overturned at DRV. 5 of 4739 is 0.11%, or one for every 909 discussions.
If any process "works" 99.77% of the time and is not obviously wrong 99.89% of the time, it is a relatively good and reliable process. To me, a 0.23% "failure" rate and a 0.11% "obvious failure" rate suggests that the process is pretty good, considering we are all humans who will always make occasional mistakes. — Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:18, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I think Carlaude's idea is a tad too bureaucratic. I also think it is not a good idea to propose a council of governors - it is cabalist, elitist. What I think could work is a requirement that consensus for the creation of a category be established *before* it is created. To get things started, I suggest that sufficient demonstration be the agreement of any two editors. Not much, but a big step forward from where we are. We could have the boilerplate for category creation altered to point to the "rule". The two editors should sign the category talk page. Dubious categories created unilaterally would be speedy deleteable. I wouldn't enforce anything technically, as it is desirable that users who know what they are doing can just do it. For editors who prefer to work alone, perhaps there could be a request for category creation process. -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 13:39, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
I'm wary of solutions which appear to increase bureaucracy, and restrictions on creation appear to do just that. What I suggest instead is to look at the problem from the other side, and make it easier to delete newly-created categories. We already have some relevant criteria at WP:CSD, but I don't think it would be helpful to expand those. I think that instead it would be better establish a category version of the {{ prod}} process used with articles. Like article-PROD, this would allow deletion without discussion unless challenged. Because of the obscurity of categories, I suggest that category-PROD:
This would avoid imposing extra, cumbersome, steps on editors who are creating valid and useful categories, but also make it easier to remove frivolous categories. By removing some of the "obvious deletions" from CFD, we'd also focus attention more on the categories which do need serious consideration. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 16:40, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_19#Categories_for_discussion. Debresser ( talk) 15:04, 19 November 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Help_in_adding_category_to_Domesday_Book_settlements Johnbod ( talk) 19:34, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Since there seems to be discussion as to where and how CFD is broken, one instance is the application to recreated categories of speedy criterion G4. "Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion." Now when this was proposed it wasn't thought applicable to categories, but over the years that line has been forgotten. This is an area which can cause contention on Wikipedia and it would behove editors to work out a way of limiting the application of this criterion in category space. Hiding T 22:30, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
I haven't actually suggested removing it's applicability to categories, merely codifying what everyone here agrees happens anyway. As to the point that it is in the general category of speedy deletion criteria, if you examine the history you'll see that it appears there not through design but by chance and circumstance. I've been through the history and posted about it somewhere around these parts before. I hope you'll accept my word for it. Hiding T 23:30, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
I think part of the problem occurs when there are very few people participating in a discussion that results in a delete. Granted, that "problem" is not with G4 but rather getting more people to CFD, but the perception is that G4 is to blame. I can see how people would become frustrated that (for example) four people wanted to originally delete, and that "consensus" is used to G4 a category, perhaps multiple times. Admins should probably take that into consideration when deciding to speedy delete. If a category has only gone through one CFD with limited participation, it won't hurt to send it through again. -- Kbdank71 17:58, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
Looks like if you change a category for a template and the category is actually transcluded with the documentation, clydebot does not make the change. Give how few of these there are, I don't see this as a big problem. Vegaswikian ( talk) 23:46, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me there is now a problem regarding Criterion G6. I'm not sure of the best way forwards, appreciate comments on how to tackle this. I assume that if it does get re-instated and someone objects to a speedy nomination under the criterion it still needs to go to a full debate? How will that play out in practise? Hiding T 22:01, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Good Ol’factory , I think that the discussion on Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_November_18#Category:Mixed_martial_artists_from_Georgia has already decisively answered your question. Not to forget the predecessing discussion above. Debresser ( talk) 23:02, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
The link is a section at WT:POLICY with a lot of subsections ... could someone who has some free time look at the last few subsections, and tell me whether you would rather have this discussion at WP:VPP or here? It's primarily a policy question, but per WP:POLICY, whether a page is policy or not is a matter of which cat it's in, so it's also a cat question. - Dank ( push to talk) 22:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Can someone find out why there was no setup done for Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 December 1? Vegaswikian ( talk) 01:40, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I hope this is the right page for suggesting new categories. I think the confusion displayed in discussions like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jerome Vered largely stems from the mixing of a)fame and b)quizzing ability. While the former always will be somewhat vague, the latter can usually (not always) be determined. That's the case because with the creation of the body IQA in 2003 the European top players have had the chance to continually play each other (no money prizes, off-TV for trophies and glory), their tournaments are the current bellwether. American competition has been spotty (with an upwards trend) but good enough to enable international comparison. Vered was 8th at the WQC 2009, Ken Jennings 9th at the EQC Open 2007, so it's safe to say they're both world class but not the men to beat, Brad Rutter who has beaten both of them in the US has yet to play IQA, he must be regarded as 5 or better. Englishman Kevin Ashman is the 2009 European Quizzing Championships and World Quizzing Championships champion and must be called world #1. Now check out his category: Category:Contestants on British game shows!! LOL. I suggest to establish categories Category:IQA medalist (single) and Category:IQA gold medalist (team), I'd prefer to reduce the Cat to only the winners of the team competitions as wins here are less conclusive about an individual player's ability. I also suggest a Category:IQA competition to include the British Quiz Championship, the WQC and the EQC and I finally suggest a Category:British Quiz Championship winner. German.Knowitall ( talk) 02:18, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
This cat Category:Prisoners and detainees of Switzerland I assumed that the definition of this cat would be for people that were actually being detained at the present time, on the cat page there is no qualification as to what it actually is meaning, I thought cats were supposed to be quite narrow and therefore assumed that it couldn't mean anyone who had ever been a prisoner of Switzerland, please comment. Off2riorob ( talk) 13:52, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)#XfD logs. Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 16:11, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
There have been ongoing discussions at Wikipedia talk:User categories re. removing guideline status from the page. Comments welcome. -- Xdamr talk 13:33, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Looking to close a debate which may end up with a merge to multiple targets outcome. Memory like a sieve, but I do vaguely recall from the distant past that one of the bots could potentially handle these sort of outcomes. Am I right, or just confused?
Xdamr talk 15:19, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
Note in Category:General style guidelines that there are a bunch of userpages that have imported General style guidelines pages, including their cats. Is there a way to create categories that have no effect if they are imported into userspace, or is there a bot available that can remove them from userspace? - Dank ( push to talk) 01:13, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
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) manually per the
user page guideline (see
WP:UP#NOT #14: "Categories and templates intended for other usage, in particular those for articles and guidelines."). –
BLACK FALCON (
TALK)
04:36, 5 December 2009 (UTC)This RFC is called to discuss the consensus behind a speedy renaming criteria, and possible ways of improving it and the process. Hiding T 14:26, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Hi. I'm just looking to gauge the community stance on the sixth speedy renaming criterion after related discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 69#Disambiguating categories, Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 November 18#Category:Mixed martial artists from Georgia and Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Speedy criteria#G6:
Are there ways of tweaking the guidance, perhaps so that we guide that the disambiguation style matches the parent article, for example?
Or is it even necessary, given that per Wikipedia:Disambiguation, disambiguation is required whenever, for a given word or phrase on which a reader might use the "Go button", there is more than one Wikipedia article to which that word or phrase might be expected to lead.
Given that it is unlikely that people actually search for categories using the go button, and that most people will navigate to a category through articles or other categories, which will make context clear, is there a need to pre-emptively disambiguate categories on a wide scale, or should any such renamings be subject to a full discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion rather than speedily performed?
Experienced editors at CfD argue that the criterion saves time since most of the changes are uncontroversial. However, it could be that a lot of these changes are being missed by a number of editors. It has been suggested that a bot be tasked to notify relevant WikiProjects and/or category creators when categories are nominated for speedy renaming, or even nominated for a full debate. Would that also be a worthwhile endeavour? Thank you for your time. Hiding T 14:26, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
I don't think this criterion is suitable; disambiguation isn't always needed just because a parent category is disambiguated (example: Category:Presidents of Georgia (country) - the "(country)" is entirely superfluous, even though it's needed in the parent Category:Georgia (country)). These things need to be discussed; there's no automatically right answer. (Unless the criterion can be reworded to cover only genuinely uncontroversial cases.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 14:50, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
As the instructions read now, mistakes that occur between an editor's brain and fingers are eligible for speedy renaming, but not mistakes that are made as a result of deficient education. It is not always possible for the person discovering such an error to discern the cause. If I have missed a discussion that concluded that it is important to distinguish between them and handle misspellings another way, I apologize. Chris the speller ( talk) 19:28, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
Even if we aren't going to have a separate category for history, etc, can't we at least make it easy for people taking history articles to AfD know which is the appropriate category? Dougweller ( talk) 06:29, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
At Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2009 December 7#Polish boroughs, there was a decision to rename three categories, yet only one of them was actually done. Could someone who handles this sort of thing have a look at it? (Or should I just redirect them manually and wait for RussBot?)-- Kotniski ( talk) 17:30, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
The rename of :Category:Rugby union footballers --> :Category:Rugby union players was approved and completed recently (nominated 11 Dec). All of the 87 subcategories that contain the "footballer" term should also be changed to "player". Surely there should be a better way than tagging all of them by hand? This is an umbrella-consensus from the wikiproject WP:RU and affects every use of the term. Any suggestions as to easily do it all? Is there a bot available for this? - Sahmejil ( talk) 12:39, 24 December 2009 (UTC)