User talk:Kbdank71

If you post something for me here, I'll respond to it here. Likewise, if I leave a message on your talk page, I'll watch it for your response. It just makes for easier reading. Thanks.

Archives
Feb 2005-Jun 2005 Jun 2005-Jul 2005 Jul 2005-Sep 2005 Sep 2005-Dec 2005 Dec 2005-Feb 2006 Feb 2006-Aug 2006 Aug 2006-Oct 2006 Archive of Thank You's

If you are here because you are one of the growing numbers of people who want to complain about me following policy instead of ignoring all rules, take a hike. Or rather, you can complain all you want, but I won't listen to it, I won't respond to it, and I'll probably remove your comments from my talk page. So don't waste your time. I make a determination on a case by case basis on whether to follow policy or ignore it. Don't get all whiney because I don't ignore all rules as a rule.

Opposition categories

For the "WIkipedians opposed to online censorship" grouping, given that it was a rename nomination where two other people voted rename and two voted delete, why did you decide that "delete" was the right conclusion? --Mike Selinker 00:54, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Yours was the only opinion to rename that I took into account. JC's was struck, and later wanted to delete. Kingboyk's only reason for wanting a rename was because he believed those five were being singled out for deletion, and seemed to indicate that he'd be ok with it otherwise. That and we recently have had consensus to delete "foo supports/opposes bar" categories at CFD. --Kbdank71 02:20, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

How about User:Cswrye, who voted to rename? And the latter argument applies to Wikipedia subjects, who are not likely to form groups to edit articles. Are you suggesting that makes a precedent to delete every "Wikipedians who support (X)" category? Seems specious to me. Your mileage may vary.--Mike Selinker 05:45, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps not, but this might: Here we are Wikipedians, out there we are advocates. And also what I state on my userpage: Consensus is ... also based upon what is best for the encyclopedia. Those categories do nothing but plant people on one side of an issue. It's meant to divide. --Kbdank71 10:36, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

You fellows are heading down a very long road. This is essentially part of the overly long and heated debate about userboxes. The core issue is whether it is better to pretend that all Wikipedians can leave their biases at the door or to know where someone's coming from. There is no easy answer to this. In my opinion, such categories (especially those with opinions about Wikipedia) are actually very helpful because virtually nobody is unbiased when it comes to these topics, and it is far better in terms of working together to know who you're working with. For example, if someone is a declared deletionist, you will be better off knowing it than spending time discussing why they just deleted a whole section or article. I recommend that you not use these types of arguments as justification for deleting things, because this attitude in and of itself will plant people on opposite sides of the issues. It is a very divisive approach to editing and will cause increasingly more time to be spent worrying about CfD policies instead of just writing an encyclopedia. --NThurston 13:53, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

will cause increasingly more time to be spent worrying about CfD policies instead of just writing an encyclopedia That's right. We're here to write an encyclopedia. If people spent more time doing that than categorizing themselves by what they believe in, we'd get alot more done around here. --Kbdank71 14:04, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

"If wishes were fishes we'd have a great fry." I don't pretend to know much, but what I have seen is that efforts to eliminate divisiveness by fiat (deleting pages & categories, pushing on userboxes, etc.) has not created much consensus, and arguably has led to more time away from WAE. An alternative philosophy might be to preach unity and let people figure it out over time. --NThurston 14:11, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Problem is, for every one person that figures it out, there are two or three that just discovered WP and userboxes and step in to take that person's place. Preaching unity is a good thing, it's just sometimes we need to speed up the "over time". --Kbdank71 15:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm with NThurston. I'm willing to remove categories that are clearly nonsense or clearly inflamatory, but a category about being opposed to online censorship doesn't fit into either of those. But I'm also willing to be outvoted. My only problem was, this time I wasn't. There were three "renames" and two "deletes" (three if you count your implied one, kb). At minimum that should indicate "do nothing."--Mike Selinker 19:38, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Let me ask you this: How does telling the world that you are opposed to online censorship (or bananas, or ipods, or bellybutton lint, or whatever) help you write the encyclopedia? --Kbdank71 20:09, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

ROFL @ "Just say no to bellybutton lint" : )

(Restarting indent) - I believe that the difference MS is talking about is the difference between "does not like" <some noun> and "supports/opposes" <some issue>. I also believe that there is a distinct difference.

I think we have concensus that in general that the "not" categories should go. And I think we have concensus that in general the "support/oppose" <issue> cats should go due to questions of verifiability. However, Wikipedian "support/oppose" cats don't have the verifiablility issue, since Wikipedians themselves put themselves in these categories. So on those grounds, I don't believe they should be deleted.

However, as I noted on the UCFD page, I'm "on the fence" about this, at the moment, since I wonder whether such categories stray too close to the "advocacy" concerns that have been stated elsewhere. - jc37 22:00, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Category hierachy intact

When Category:Incorporations by year was deleted, the recursive catalogues were left remaining. They should also be deleted. See search. __meco 16:00, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

They were left remaining because they weren't nominated for deletion. If you would like to nominate them, they'd need to be tagged and listed at CFD. --Kbdank71 16:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The entire hierarchy was named. __meco 17:39, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

If you want to nominate the category and it's subcategories, you need to nominate it as such. For example, "Category:Incorporations by year and Subcats". You should also list each one (the only category listed was the supercategory). Finally, they all need to be tagged with {{cfd}}. If you would like to nominate the subcats, just tag them and list them at CFD. --Kbdank71 17:45, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I can live with the mess for now. __meco 20:28, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:CfD 2006-xx

Hello, I just wanted to leave you a note for when you get ready to finish clearing out the category for September. Beta's bot had a problem relating to the subst'ing and a result was that for CFRs, the bot accidentally copied over the cfr tag to the newly created category. I noticed this on one of them and mentioned it to Beta, and I think he cleaned up some of them, but not all. I went through the bot's contribution list and found another half dozen or so that I cleaned up, but some of these may still be in place. I mention this only because I assume that after you (or someone else) finishes closing everything on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 September 30 that you will then go to clear out anything that is remaining in "CfD 2006-09". I wanted to make sure that you knew to not automatically treat these as though they were tagged with cfr1 and that someone forgot the cfr2, but rather that the cfr1 should just be removed. (Of course, you may already have that as part of your plan, and if so, sorry for wasting your time to read this.) This should also be a issue for "CfD 2006-10" since Beta didn't get it figured out until after the month changed. If you want any diffs or anything please let me know and I will be happy to provide. Note that I understand that this probably could have been posted on the cfd talk page, but I didn’t want to make a big spectacle out of this so as not to hurt Beta, so I just came here to you (since you seem as the lead-admin on this activity – whether that is official or just looks de facto to me). BTW, sorry also for rambling…. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 17:28, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

And another thing... / May I help?

First, if you'd like some pretzels, I can probably add some to your award. <grin>

Second, is there a way that I can help with the Cfd backlog? I specifically wondered about speedies that are more than 48 hours old with no objections: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Add requests for speedy renaming here:

• Category:London metros to Category:London metro systems Simply south 15:59, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
• Category:ECM Software to Category:ECM software JonHarder 14:05, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
• Category:Streetcar Builders to Category:Streetcar builders —tregoweth (talk) 13:41, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
• Category:Nebraska Law Enforcement Agencies to Category:Nebraska law enforcement agencies ProveIt ^(talk) 13:19, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
• Category:Sinhalese People to Category:Sinhalese people Brammen 09:57, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
• Category:German Ministries to Category:German ministries Brammen 08:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

These are all instances of renaming categories to take care of upper- vs. lower-case words in category names; can't imagine that I could do much damage. I'm assuming that the new category has to be created, the pages that link to the old one visited and edited with the new category name, and then ask that the old category be deleted?

If this is something that's reserved for administrators, no worries. Just thought I'd offer to do some "grunt" work.—Chidom ^talk  17:49, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, if you want to help, that'd be great. Yeah, that's the way to do it:

1. Create the new category.
2. Edit the old category, copy all contents except for any cfd or cfd-speedy tags, and paste it into the new category.
3. Edit each article and subcategory, changing the category to the new one. Use an edit tag of "per WP:CFD speedy" or something.
4. List the old category at WP:CFD/W under "Ready for deletion".

That's about it. If there is a category talk page, you can move that over too, but whoever deletes it will catch it if you don't. Give me a holler if you run into trouble or have any questions. --Kbdank71 17:57, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Should I delete the categories from the list at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Add requests for speedy renaming here once I've listed them at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working#Ready for deletion?—Chidom ^talk  19:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep. --Kbdank71 19:13, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

You're probably wanting to get your flyswatter about now to put an end to my bugging you - but I think this is the last question about this process. All the category rename requests I just did were from September 30; are the ones from October 1 fair game? Or do we wait until October 4 just to be sure?—Chidom ^talk  19:19, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Nah, it's no problem. :) I personally don't worry so much about getting it down to the minute. In other words, I think Oct 1 is fair game. --Kbdank71 19:31, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

My User Page

Thank you for AWBing my user page. However, a |}div> tag was misplaced. No worries.

This user reserves the right to completely screw up his own edits.

goes both ways. :)

E. Sn0 =31337= 01:18, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, sorry about that, I hadn't noticed that AWB did that also. I'll let the developer know about it, hopefully they can fix that. --Kbdank71 10:20, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Hey, sbleep happens. it was easy to fix once I'd figured it out. You have a most excellent day, sir. E. Sn0 =31337= 18:25, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Calgary Hitmen Players on CfD

Howdy, I noticed that you closed the CfD I created by deleting the category for Hitmen players. I noticed though that the other three categories I included (perhaps not in the proper place?) were left untouched: Category:Prince George Cougars players, Category:Tri-City Americans players and Category:Seattle Thunderbirds players. I'm just curious if this was a bit of an oversight, or what to do about these three categories. Thanks! Resolute 01:42, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Complete oversight on my part. Sorry about that. I just deleted them per the discussion. Thanks for the heads up! --Kbdank71 01:50, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

No prob. Thanks for clearing that up. Resolute 02:49, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Template substitution

Why are you substituting these cfm templates? —Centrx→talk • 20:19, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

this and this. --Kbdank71 20:21, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay. —Centrx→talk • 20:26, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Adding {{subst:cfd}} to category pages

Howdy. Nice to see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working with such a short list; I was amazed that AWB's count of my edits exceeded 500 last night. I must be insane. Or incredibly bored. <grin>

I got involved with Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Actors / Actresses who portrayed because it started as a speedy rename but garnered objections. Again because it started as a request for a speedy rename of a single category, once folks started saying "delete all"; all the category pages needed to be tagged with {{subst:cfd}}. (See? I did "get it".)

I took it upon myself to add the tags, and wanted to use AWB to help me. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get it to do so; is this just a task that it's not capable of doing? I was trying to pipe the names of all the categories that needed the tag—but I couldn't find a way to just look at the category pages themselves. Any help would be appreciated.—Chidom ^talk  20:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Ugh. Man, I really hope they all come up delete, or I'm in a world of hurt in about a week... As for AWB, the easiest way to do it would be to find a supercategory that they're all in and just create the list from that. Or, if you know the names, you can put them in a text file and create the list that way. But I find the best way to get around having to tag tons of categories is simply to not nominate tons of categories. If it's someone elses nomination, I let them deal with the tagging (not that I'm not a nice guy, just incredibly lazy :) --Kbdank71 20:20, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

cfd

why did you delete:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=Category:User_Cyrl-0

seems like the debate did not result in deletion and furthermore process was not followed Tobias Conradi (Talk) 00:50, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Because the consensus was to delete. One person wanted to keep while the rest wanted to delete. [1] --Kbdank71 01:58, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Category merge destination not appropriate

Hi there. You were the closing admin at the discussion here. Most of the stuff has been cleaned up now, but just for future reference, merging to the top level category like that is not appropriate. Each of the individual entries were already in appropriate subcategories of natural disasters, so all that was needed was to remove the "deadliest natural disasters" category tag. Thanks. Carcharoth 13:37, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip, but I don't always have time to check each article to see if they are already in a more appropriate category. If the discussion is relatively easy to close, like this one was, I just close it and move on. --Kbdank71 13:42, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

OK. No probs. Thanks for explaining. Carcharoth 13:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Entertainers who performed for troops during the Vietnam War

It seems to me that 12 votes to delete versus 11 votes to keep hardly represent a "clear consensus to delete" as outlined in Wikipedia:Category deletion policy. Shouldn't the discussion have been moved to Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/unresolved for an additional 7 days? —Xanderer 14:07, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Consensus building is not vote counting. Plus, several of the keep opinions were discounted (some of the anonymous editors have one edit, which is them saying "keep"). --Kbdank71 14:27, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand consensus building is not vote counting. However, I also know that what was reached here (and other cats deleted today, such as Category:People known by first name only) was not a consensus by any definition of the word, particularly as outlined in Wikipedia:Consensus. Perhaps pursuing listification (as per jc37) as opposed to deletion would help reach a consensus. —Xanderer 17:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I too was confused by that closure. And after checking the anons, you're right, 2 of them were single contribution voters. That makes it 8 to 13. And while it's obviously not supposed to be a "vote", I think that's still kinda close. However it's within Kbdank's perogative as closer to make that judgement. - jc37 16:26, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

As an aside, several people supported listify or put in an article. Is the information retreivable to do so? - jc37 16:26, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The category hasn't been emptied yet, if anyone wants to listify it. --Kbdank71 18:11, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I'll check into it. (Unless Xanderer has already : ) - jc37 18:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:People known by first name only

Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 1#Category:People known by first name only

I was also confused by this one. Can you clarify? - jc37 16:26, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

It was already deleted by User:Mikkalai five days ago [2], you'd need to check with him. --Kbdank71 18:10, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh ok, thanks. If he deleted it "out of process", any suggestions what should/could I do then? - jc37 18:20, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd start by asking him why he did it, and if I wasn't satisfied with the answer, I'd take it to WP:DRV. --Kbdank71 18:29, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

He was very friendly about it. He undeleted it. But now I'm not certain what to do. Suggestions would be welcome. (I would be more than happy to just let you make a "closing" dermination, as if he hadn't pre-deleted it.) - jc37 19:09, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. However, seeing as it's just a rename, the end result is that it'll be deleted anyway. If you want to create the new cat and populate it, I'll re-delete this when you're done. --Kbdank71 19:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

This is where I idly whine that the cat is currently empty. sigh. (DO you know of any ways to determine what was in it?) Anyway, I'll work on populating it tonight. Thanks again for your input/help. - jc37 19:29, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know exactly who was in it, but you can check through Mikkalai's contribs for that day [3] and check diffs from around the time it was deleted. --Kbdank71 20:45, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I went through Category:Category:People known by pseudonyms, and moved all the sinlge-names to Category:People known by single-name pseudonyms. If I did it incorrectly somehow, let me know : ) - jc37 20:20, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

subst cfd template using AWB

I just wanted to give you a heads up that when you subst a cfd template, the resulting "this category's entry on the Categories for Discussion page" link doesn't work (not that it would work without the subst). So if you're feeling extra vigilant, you might want to update the link to the day when the nomination was posted. I have no idea if you do this often, I just came across one such broken link and thought you might want to know... — Reinyday, 04:40, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually they do work, look at the link from Category:Justice League television series. What doesn't work are some of the categories that were already tagged when I changed and subst'ed the template. There should have been only a small handful that do not work. --Kbdank71 11:15, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia sockpuppets of Outoftuneviolin

Hello. Regarding the Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 4#Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Outoftuneviolin, I was wondering if that should have ideally been listed at WP:CFDU? Note that I have no problem with it being decided as it was, I'm just asking for future reference if I would be correct if I just moved it myself, assuming that it was early enough after it was nominated. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 23:22, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I saw your comment on the discussion. I look at it this way: CFDU is for user categories that users use (wikipedians that breathe, etc). These two are not anything that a user is going to place on their userpage. These are for administration. That's why I didn't relist them. --Kbdank71 01:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I see the differnce, and that certainly makes sense. I was being too literal. Thanks for taking the time to respond. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 01:25, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Actors who portrayed...

I've just discovered that a set of subcats to Category:Batman actors have been deleted rather than merged, leaving the most prominent members of the cateogies without any listing now (i.e., all the actresses who have portrayed Catwoman). Is there a way to correct this without having to search out each article and hand edit them? Because of the number of subcats that were deleted, this would be a huge task. CovenantD 19:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Shoo, I'm not sure. If you knew who emptied the categories, you could check their contribs, but I don't know who did that. All I know is who finally deleted the categories, but that won't help. --Kbdank71 19:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Cydebot did most of them, I believe, but you also had a hand, as seen in this example[4]. That's the reason I came to you with this question :) CovenantD 20:34, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I did the categories that had 5 or fewer articles in them. I'm still unaware of a quick, easy solution to do what you're looking at, unfortunately. --Kbdank71 20:45, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. CovenantD 03:30, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Ground warfare

Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 4#Category:Ground warfare

I'm curious about your thoughts about my comment. - jc37 00:27, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

You mean as for what to do with the articles? Not overly concerned. Part of the reason I close CFD's and not AFD's is because I don't have to worry about the history on a rename or merge. Or rather, I wouldn't know how (I guess I'm what you would call a category-specialist admin), never having done it. I could have probably fixed it if the copy and paste had just occurred, but there have been a lot of changes to the Land warfare article since the "move". --Kbdank71 13:08, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

It wasn't so much that, as that the votes were based on the article name, which apparently was moved without consensus, and was a copy/paste, at that. - jc37 19:19, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, that. Well, as for consensus, article moves can be done by anyone (unlike categories, which aren't moves but create/deletes and need an admin to complete). And I didn't see a real problem with the cut and paste method used (in this instance), because Ground warfare wasn't deleted. True, it's now a redirect, but the page history is still available. So nothing was lost, really. --Kbdank71 20:15, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not certain you understand my concern. The "votes" on the CfD were based on the article name. The problem is that the article was renamed "out of process", possibly counter to consensus, and rather poorly handled at that. So that could invalidate the CfD votes. I just think that this has problems, and in hindsight, those problems should have been addressed prior to deletion, especially considering how difficult it can be to "undo" a category merge/deletion (AFAIK). In any case, I think the ground vs land issue is moot (since it's a rename, rather than merge/delete, if someone is interested, we may just see it listed again in reverse.) At this point I'm now more interested at thinking about what we should do with such instances in the future. - jc37 21:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

SACD

• Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 8#Category:SACDs

I'm rather confused by the "delete" resolution. Could you explain? - jc37 19:19, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

More people wanted to delete, but mainly it was Postdlf's explanations, both in his rebuttal to Daniel Olson, and his own desire to delete, that swayed me. Well, that and the nomination itself. --Kbdank71 20:11, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that PostDlf's response is definitely noteworthy. Thanks for the response : ) - jc37 21:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thought

You know, looking over your talk page, you get a lot of concerns/questions... But not a lot of positive feedback. I just thought I'd mention that I think you do a great job, with sincerity, and good will. If you're not opposed to receiving awards and such, I think I'll look around and see if I can find one for you : ) - jc37 21:02, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_October_9#DC_Comics_group_members

Per guidelines at Deletion Review, I'm asking you to reconsider this huge number of category deletions. Quite frankly, I'm baffled as to how you arrived at the determination that there was consensus to delete them. By my count there were 10 editors in favor of keeping them and 11 in favor of deleting them, hardly a consensus. While I understand that CfD is not a vote, I also don't understand by what criteria they were deleted. It looks as though every argument that cast them in a "confusing" light was adequately addressed. CovenantD 00:40, 17 October 2006 (UTC)