Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/Small with no potential for growth

Should SmallCat continue to be a guideline

Based upon how controversial this guideline has been over the years, I think it is worth discussing whether part or all of this guideline should be deprecated to an essay.

For transparency, I'm honestly not sure, but I think that community discussion on this could be productive.

One possible option could also be to just deprecate this in favour of WP:OC#NARROW.

I welcome others' thoughts. - jc37 06:41, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

 Comment: Notified WT:WikiProject Categories of this discussion. A smart kitten (talk) 11:49, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

• Neutral for now Lean delete; replace with new Merge For Now guideline I'm honestly not sure either; I'm in the middle of considering all options and alternatives. At User talk:Marcocapelle#Draft essay and at Wikipedia:Merge for now#Proposals, we are working on several possibilities. We could reform SMALLCAT and introduce Merge For Now (MFN) as a new, separate criterion, or have MFN entirely replace SMALLCAT.

As it stands, the Arbcom unanimously concluded today that reasonable editors can reach differing conclusions about other elements of the guideline, including the potential for growth and whether categories are part of a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme. So those two phrases are no longer viable as they currently are, because there is no consensus about what they mean and how they should be applied. Thus, they should either be amended or removed. At Wikipedia:Merge for now#4. Address "part of large scheme" ambiguity and Wikipedia:Merge for now#5. Address "potential for growth" ambiguity, I've outlined the pro-amend and pro-remove arguments. I'm open to be persuaded, but currently I find myself on the pro-remove side in both questions. But if both are removed, there won't be much text to SMALLCAT left, will there? Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:51, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Added Wikipedia:Merge for now#Subcategories of Category:Works by creator and Wikipedia:Merge for now#6. Address lack of "subcategories of Category:Works by creator" justification. I complained about the arbitrariness of this sentence at ANI, but at the time nobody responded. We should critically examine it. My conclusion is that it makes no sense, and should be removed. Combined with the removal of the bad examples of no potential for growth, and the "potential for growth" and "scheme" phrases, that leaves only the following text:

Examples: Husbands of Elizabeth Taylor

Avoid categories that, by their very definition, will never have more than a few members.

Note also that this criterion does not preclude all small categories; a category may be kept even if only a small number of its articles actually exist at the present time.

Apart from the only example which is still correct, that doesn't leave many. Even something seemingly obvious like "Capitals of Fooland" may be more complicated than they seem, if that may include historical capitals of Fooland and not just the 1 city currently designated as the capital. Even a country which was founded yesterday may decide to move its capital tomorrow, and again next year, and again next year. Of course there is "potential for growth". Is it "realistic"? Well, lots of countries are currently moving their capitals as we speak, so in that sense, of course it is realistic. There are almost no categories which by their very definition, will never have more than a few members, simply because we've got no WP:CRYSTALBALL and can never say "never" about lots of things.

Finally, the last sentence just lacks any justification now. Why should we keep such a category? Just because the text says so? And what is "only a small number"? As long as this is not defined as a numerical threshold, this phrase can once again be exploited as a catch-all clause that can be employed to filibuster any CfD. That's not helpful.

For the first time, I'm leaning towards a complete abolition of the entire WP:SMALLCAT guideline, and its replacement with a new Merge For Now guideline. Nevertheless, we need to resolve the WP:GAMING risk first if we want to make it successful. I suppose one easy practical way to reduce that risk is for all CFD regulars to install the User:Nardog/CatChangesViewer.js script. That way we can detect it if anyone has been stuffing or ECOOPing a category in order to game the nomination. This script didn't exist back in December 2006. It does now. We may not be able to prevent all gaming, but we can more easily detect it. What do you think, @Jc37? Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 19:35, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

CFD discussions were at a low ebb already and we just lost two regular contributors. I attribute this to not putting cats on mobile view but, whatever the reason, one !vote is often enough to sway the outcome anyway without bothering to game the system. - RevelationDirect (talk) 02:08, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

• Comments - So I have spent some time going through category discussions over the last decade or so. Several things stood out to me from CfD discussions which referenced WP:SMALLCAT - First, many of these had issues under other WP:OC issues, such as NARROWCAT, or OCYEAR, or TOPTEN. But since smallcat was available to say, people just said that. And second, that a lot of these were very contentious due to "being part of 'something'". How effective is this if someone creates a tree of 50 subcats all with less than 10 members? Technically, it has been argued, the tree should be allowed per this guideline. Even though it may fall afoul of other guidelines. And the reverse is true, as well. If that tree was valid in everything but "member count" should we be deleting it for that reason alone? And finally, these discussions quite often have turned into behavioural discussions (about the "act" of adding or removing a page to or from category, rather than looking at the category itself). And by saying "small" (which, I'll - mea culpa - take responsibility for adding) human nature wants to ask "how small is small"? I think we are unnecessarily creating problems with this. And I think the rest of WP:OC covers this well enough that we can probably deprecate this as a "general rule". I suggest dropping an "historical" template on it and moving on. - jc37 06:00, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

  Another issue with this, is that SMALLCAT was often about assessing quantity over quality. And that's probably not the direction we should be going. - jc37 06:11, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

• Deprecate and mark historical - per my comments above. - jc37 06:14, 29 August 2023 (UTC)