Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion

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Category:Pages for discussion

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)

There is no (major or minor) "break" in the tree. I have little or no interest in opinions, we deal in facts and process here. Section renamed.
--William Allen Simpson (talk) 17:29, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Editors please contribute to discussion there. More opinions are needed to reach a conclusion. Interested and objective editors will surely notice the major break in the tree I referred to. Debresser (talk) 15:52, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Question about changes for closed discussion

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)

Sometimes there's a lag with the bots. It looks like I listed it properly at WP:CFDW when I closed it, although I've never seen the CFD bots let the backlog go for four days before. Don't worry, it'll get taken care of as soon as the bots get to it.--Aervanath (talk) 17:26, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

No worries. Just wanted to make sure it wasn't missed. — Bellhalla (talk) 12:00, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I removed and readded these but the bot is still not processing them. Not sure why. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:13, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Fixed them; they should process now. (The bot won't process them unless there is a target category. In this case there were only target articles.) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 05:45, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. You don't know how many times I looked for the obvious there. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:34, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Somebody slap me with a fish, please. I can't believe I made such a n00b mistake. :) --Aervanath (talk) 01:43, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Displeased with changes to Category:Surnames

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)

The CFD has been appealed, and is currently under discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2009_June_25. Please comment there.--Aervanath (talk) 01:41, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Help request

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)

Hi, see Wikipedia:Cfd#How_to_use_this_page; it provides instructions on how to nominate categories for deletion, renaming, or merging. Cheers, --Aervanath (talk) 17:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

"If a group of similar categories or a category and its subcategories, use an umbrella nomination (each category must be tagged, for nominations involving large numbers of categories tagging help can be requested at the talk page)..." I'm asking for help. It's a complex nomination and I've never done even a simple one. Disembrangler (talk) 17:45, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Do I understand you correctly that you want to merge Category:Political corruption to Category:Corruption? Or are you trying to do the opposite, merging Category:Corruption to Category:Political corruption? Either way, those would be single merges, not umbrella nominations, so you don't have to worry about the more complex instructions. Or have I misunderstood your intent?--Aervanath (talk) 04:25, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Well this is one of the problems - I'm not entirely sure what to do; I just see a mess that needs cleaning up. Category:Political corruption is currently a subcategory of Category:Corruption, but Category:Corruption overlaps contentwise 100% (I think) with the meaning of "political corruption". I suppose Category:Corruption should be merged into Category:Political corruption, to match the political corruption article. But equally, "political corruption" is probably not the best title for that page anyway - "political corruption" is vague and not normally used and on some definitions would exclude parts of that topic. Maybe corruption should be moved to corruption (disambiguation), and political corruption to corruption, and merge the cats to match? NB I've left a note at talk:political corruption, and pointed here. Disembrangler (talk) 12:20, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Many articles lie within the scope of Corruption and outside that of Political corruption. Ponzi scheme, Insider trading, Shell (corporation), Securities fraud, Enron scandal and War profiteering are examples of corruption that lie within the field of business, with the latter being more political and such as Whitewater controversy and Sixteen words being more political still. There is far more to the scope of Corruption than merely politics. Moreover, these are excellent categories and obviously many more articles could be listed. My only regret is that I cannot think of a synonym for corruption. Anarchangel (talk) 01:56, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Category:Empty categories awaiting deletion - 7/2

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)

Open backlog

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)

There is a problem at WP:CfD.

Good Ol’factory suggests to me that ranting in CfD DRVs is less productive then opening a discussion here. OK then.

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).

Is there a problem?

The reasons to believe that there exists a problem include:

1. Some people allege so
2. CfD closes regularly are contentious and lead to contentious DRVs --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:29, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

What might the problem be?

I think the problem is that a few administrators running WP:CfD understand wikipedia's categorisation system, and most other editors do not.

I think the root of the problem is that wikipedia’s categorisation is too complicated for the average editor. There is a division between editors who understand how we decide to categorise (the “experts”, and the rest of us (“the non-experts”). Occasionally, non-experts working with a local categorization come into conflict with the experts. This has lead to great frustration to the non-experts, who see significant efforts thrown away in the interests of maintaining a system that they don’t understand.

A manifestation of the problem is disjointed debate at CfD. The experts and non-experts debate at cross-points. Each group is prone to be dismissive of the other. The experts, tending to be populated by experienced administrators, tend to win the day at CfD. Sometimes the debate goes to DRV where it is joined by experienced administrator non-CfD-experts, and the debate becomes messy, again involving cross-points.

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)

Solutions? How might we move forward?

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)

Discussion

• Ok, I'll bite. Is there a problem? Alansohn is usually the one ranting about alleging how CFD is broken, but never backs it up with any facts. I've asked, repeatedly, for statistics to prove that it's broken. After all, people can allege anything they want, but that doesn't make it true. So maybe you can help. Out of all the closed CFD's, how many were taken to DRV? Out of those, how many were overturned? Until someone can separate proof from opinion, I'll say no, there is not a problem. --Kbdank71 12:45, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
• I don't especially agree with this analysis. It is certainly true that CfD is dominated by regulars, but I don't think the way it works and the understanding of policy needed is any greater than for AfD, and new faces usually pick things up fairly quickly. I understand aspects of things may be puzzling to first-time visitors & put them off. The interaction with specialist editors and projects can be problematic. They don't always explain their case very well, and sometimes have emptied categories before the nomination, which regulars rightly dislike. But I think nearly all regulars are very ready to defer to specialist expertise, if it is properly explained, and broader categorization principles are not breached. Most of the recent Review cases relate to issues that also split the regulars, especially ethnic/religious people categories, which is about the longest-running and most divisive issue here, & has seen a big revival in recent months. It's probably true that the regulars tend to lapse into shorthand comments they all understand, & don't always trouble to explain the issues as they see them to "visitors". The closes here are also notably laconic, & have become more so. But Good Olfactory & other editors are good on both these points, when needed. Johnbod (talk) 12:46, 17 July 2009 (UTC)