Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 February 6: Difference between revisions

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6 February 2010

Category:Scandals with -gate suffix

This category was deleted because it was a recreation of a category that was previously deleted. It has been previously deleted four times: 1 2 3 and 4. There is a list that covers -gate constructions at List of scandals with "-gate" suffix. I want to bring this to deletion review because in all of the CFD discussions there was no mention of -gate constructions as a linguistic phenomenon (specifically snowclones). I think this category is most well understood and utilized in that context. There is precedent for categorization by rhetorical technique as seen in Category:Figures of speech. Gobonobo ^T ^C 23:50, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So, you are not challenging the deletion as a recreation of previously deleted categories with a similar name? You are proposing that the category be allowed to exist as a snowclone collection. If that was the case, wouldn't the category be properly titled Category:Snowclones which already exists? Vegaswikian (talk) 00:08, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would consider it a separate sub-category of category:snowclones. Since there are around 70 pages that would fit into the -gate category, I thought it would clutter up the snowclones category to put them all there. I brought this to Deletion Review to reexamine the creation of the category because there is significant information pertinent to the debate that was unavailable at the time the debate took place. Perhaps I should have brought one of the previous CFD deletions up for review? I'm not very familiar with DRV procedures or the best way to go about this. Gobonobo ^T ^C 00:54, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that is what is meant, as I read your example "categorization by rhetorical technique as seen in Category:Figures of speech", is actually categerization of the technique themselves, not of articles which are titled according to that technique. If there is an encylopedia article to be written about -gate, then that would be added to the snowclones category, but not every article which in some way has a snowclone relation. --82.7.40.7 (talk) 10:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. I was referring to the subcategories of category:figures of speech. Just as category:onomatopoeias is a collection of onomatopoeias and category:euphemisms is a collection of euphemisms. Gobonobo ^T ^C 17:26, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I understand, though I personally thing some of those are overcats the categorised articles. In the case pf category:onomatopoeias it doesn't contain articles which happen to contain onomatopeia in the title likewise If there were an article about the use -gate, that would fit in the snowclones category, not every article about something dubbed -gate. --82.7.40.7 (talk) 17:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment can't see what extra is being added here, this isn't CFD round X. We don't have precedents on wikipedia, so something which you see as similar doesn't mean a lot, as above that category is a category of articles about the techniques themselves, not every article which could conceivably related to the techniques. --82.7.40.7 (talk) 10:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Allow recreation now that there is a parent structure to organize this ctageory, there's a great reason to allow the category to be recreated despite the prior deletion of categories with vaguely similar names. Alansohn (talk) 17:35, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
allow re-creation Consensus can change. In general if there is a category there should be a list, and vice versa. DGG ( talk ) 17:51, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
less than a month ago the last CFD had 5 deletes vs 1 keep. Ok it was only open a couple of hours, but given the poor turn out many CFDs get, it would certainly seem to point one way. Just stating consensus can change is pretty meaningless, especially when the most recent discussion tends to point to an underlying state that consensus hasn't. --82.7.40.7 18:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.7.40.7 (talk) [reply]
Allow recreation It's useful to readers. Usefulness may not be a good reason to keep an article, but it's an excellent reason to keep a category. A reader trying to figure out a name can find this category from any of the "-gate" articles it covers, then search out the article the reader wants. Very convenient. You couldn't find the list article that fast unless you already knew the exact name. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 20:23, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- In my experience, WP:USEFUL is referred to just as much in CFD as AFD. Wherever the argument "it's useful" is cited, it is never accorded much weight. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:53, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - The language you linked to: There are some pages within Wikipedia which are supposed to be useful navigation tools and nothing more, disambiguation pages, categories, and redirects for instance, so usefulness is the basis of their inclusion. There's also some language in there about explaining the usefulness of a page, which I also did. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 23:28, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - Additional reasons for allowing recreation: The last CfD closing [1] referred to this CfD [2] for "Category -gate", didn't take into account the name change to "scandals with -gate", the current category name. Vegaswikian, in closing the last CfD, went against G4 policy [3] because the name change created a substantially different category, for which the reason for the deletion no longer applies. The name change was significant and showed that the category is about scandals (a subject), not all words with "gate" at the end of them. Policy clearly allows subject-related categories, and this is a subject-related (as opposed to "word-related") category. The close was against deletion policy. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 00:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - I don't think that's right. This is not a subject-related category, because the articles that would be included are not about the abstract concept of a snowclone. The articles are about a variety of scandals which are otherwise unconnected to each other. Your argument would suggest that as long as the name of something is a pun, we could categorize it in Category:Puns. That's clearly not correct. We wouldn't categorize a bunch of articles together just because they were called "the mother of all X", but that too is a snowclone. This has been discussed many times and the categories have been repeatedly rejected. You might also want to be a tad careful in stating without any equivocation that users violated policy when that opinion rests upon an interpretation that not everyone agrees with. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse repeated deletion. Having this category would directly contradict the long-standing guideline that says we don't categorize unrelated subjects by shared name. There is a guideline and three or four past CFD discussions that have come to the same conclusion. Yes, consensus can change, but where is the evidence that it has? If re-creation is allowed, it will just be subjected to yet another full CFD, and it is very likely that it would be deleted again. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:37, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- These threats just go to show how little "consensus" at CfD has to do with what the community as a whole thinks. I'm glad that this issue has been taken to a broader set of editors than the cloistered few who participate at CfD. Alansohn (talk) 22:25, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - I'm not sure that you (who reguarly participates at CFD) + two other editors (one of whom regularly participates at CFD and appears to have a non-consensus-based personal policy of allowing the existence of any category if a list also exists; and another who argues WP:USEFUL) represents "the community as a whole", but whatever. By the way, I was not making a "threat"; I was predicting what would happen if it were re-created. I would appreciate it if you retracted that part of your comment. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - Not only can WP:USEFUL be an excellent argument for keeping a category (see my response to you above, at 23:28), it gets to the very heart of why we have categories in the first place -- helping our readers. And that trumps the principle that we shouldn't have categories about shared names, because that guideline section, which you may want to consult on the subject of usefulness, assumes that a name-based category is, ah, useless unless the subjects of the articles themselves are related. Well ... they're related. The suffix is NOT a non-defining characteristic of the subject because they're all about modern-day scandals, and that's why they're named "-gate". This "-gate" naming happens so often that it's useful to have an easily-accessable page (even more accesable than a list page, because the category link is at the bottom of every "-gate" page). Note that this isn't simply a category for names with "-gate" at the end of their names -- only scandals. So Stargate, for example, won't fit. ~~Olfactory, please read the guidelines you link to. It would save time.~~ -- JohnWBarber (talk) 23:44, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
      - JohnWBarber, please assume that users have read the guidelines that they refer to. It would save you assuming bad faith and from assuming that your own interpretation of the guideline is the only correct one. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        Why I was assuming good faith, Good Ol'. The two pages you linked to both clearly state the exact opposite of what you said they stated (it's obvious and isn't open to interpretation: "usefulness" is a criterion; "-gate" is not just a linguistic commonality but indicates something essential about the subject of each article in the category). A lot of editors link to guideline and policy pages they haven't read in a while and they often forget that those pages have statements that actually eviscerate the arguments the editors are making. I've probably done it, too. This time, for whatever reason, you've done it. Happens to the best of us. Nevertheless, I'm crossing out the sentences that offended you. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 05:23, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        I disagree that they say "the exact opposite of what [I] said they stated". I think you need to review what I said. (You are the only user here who has ascribed a particular meaning to WP:USEFUL, by the way.) You've completely misunderstood me or you haven't read the entire guideline. I assume the former. You're free to interpret guidelines in your own way, but don't try to tell other users what they mean or how they must interpret the guideline in context. Anyone can read and quote guidelines; the key is that I disagree with your assessment of the applicability of guidelines in this context. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 06:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        Try to avoid personalizing this and look on this as an argument about the subject at hand ("you" below, means "anybody"): You must interpret WP:USEFUL as "usefulness" being a criterion for categories. You must. In fact, it's not really interpretation: It's simple reading. If you want to interpret WP:OC#SHAREDNAMES as saying "-gate" is more like anybody named Jones (the example given there), then you would call "-gate" a "non-defining characteristic", but if it's more like "a particular family named Jones", then it's a "defining characteristic" that can be worthy of a category. It falls in-between those two Jones examples, but it certainly isn't as empty of meaning as any old Jones last name, and whenever it's applied to a new subject, the intent is to call that subject a scandal. WP:USEFUL (an essay) states An encyclopedia should, by definition, be informative and useful to its readers. Try to exercise common sense, and consider how a non-trivial number of people will consider the information "useful". A non-trivial number of people would remember that a scandal they vaguely remember or have heard about ended in "-gate". It's an easy-to-remember thing. In the real, common-sense world, which Wikipedia is supposed to try to cater to, a category would be an easy way for those people to find their "-gate" article. I'm trying to think of how this category might hurt the encyclopedia, by setting a bad example, for instance, and I can't. We have an opportunity to help our readers and do it within the guideline. Even if you insist it violates the guideline, look at what the guideline itself says: common sense should be used and occasional exceptions are fine; "useful" is the fourth word in the Overcategorization guideline, and "ease of navigation" is in the first sentence. Just below the lead, there is a section on "Non-defining or trivial characteristic", which distinguishes trivial elements from the rest by asking whether or not the information is useful: "Such things may be interesting information for an article, but not useful for categorization." It all boils down to usefulness. Even "category clutter", the problem WP:OC is meant to solve, is defined as something that gets in the way of usefulness. Is category clutter a problem with more than a few of these articles? I guess the most famous are these, and there's no clutter: [4] [5] [6] [7] -- JohnWBarber (talk) 19:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
        As I've said above, I disagree with your interpretation of the guideline as it applies to this situation. You can't force others to agree with your approach. I'm personalizing only to the extent that you are the only one advancing this interpretation and application. Thus, I refer to it as "your" approach. If you prefer to de-personalize: I disagree with the interpretation of the guideline as it applies to this situation that you have advanced. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 20:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. Consensus can change. I don't see that it has. --Kbdank71 02:17, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse closure. No evidence of any change in the long-standing consensus against categorisation by shared name, either generally or in this specific case. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse Entirely appropriate closure in light of widely accepted guidelines and in light of consensus as expressed in a long line of past Cfd discussions. --Xdamr^talk 08:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Endorse repeated deletion – I can't think of any instance when categorisation by a random feature of the name of an article has been supported. Should French scandals ending in portail be included? If not, what is the French equivalent? Occuli (talk) 14:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse repeated deletion. The prior rationales for deletion remain strong and convincing. The use of the -gate suffix doesn't point to any underlying, categorical relationship between the scandals, other than that they all occurred in American politics after Watergate. Note also that there are no instances of Category:Snowclones categorizing instances of snowclone use, but rather articles on and about snowclones, such as List of scandals with "-gate" suffix, so that category does not alone provide justification for recreating this one. postdlf (talk) 15:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- (1) other than that they all occurred in American politics after Watergate, sounds like this is NOT a "characteristics of the name rather than the subject itself" (2) Is deleting this category making the encyclopedia more useful for our readers or less? (3) Why would any other factor override the previous two points? -- JohnWBarber (talk) 19:35, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - Actually, I was just incorrectly assuming that "-gate" pertains only to American politics, when in fact List of scandals with "-gate" suffix (and the category name itself) have no such limitation, being applied to non-political as well as non-American scandals (I'm coming back to comment here further after noticing a recent issue of Glamour referring to the Tiger Woods infidelity scandal as "Tigergate"). So "-gate" is just media shorthand for scandal, and that suffix originated with Watergate, so obviously all scandals named in such a way occurred after it...but that date is otherwise arbitrary as a categorical relationship. So, 1) yes, it is just categorization based on shared name, 2) no, it does not make the encyclopedia more useful because it clutters articles with trivial categorization, and 3) is another point necessary? Category:Scandals and its various subcategories already exist; Category:Scandals by shared naming scheme is not a useful addition. postdlf (talk) 21:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - Referring to (1) if they've all been called scandals, they've got more in common than unrelated people named "Jones" (the example used at WP:OC#SHAREDNAMES); it's an essential "characterization of the subject itself", not some random, trivial word or part of a word, like Westfield-Middlefield-Suffield or Billingsgate-Stargate-Aldersgate (2) What's not useful in helping the many readers who will easily remember that a scandal ended in "-gate" but can't remember the name of the scandal to find it by using the category? And where's the clutter? Not here: [8] [9] [10] [11] We have the opportunity to make the search process as simple as possible for readers. What if you were trying to find that British political scandal from years back. You remember it ended in "-gate" and began with a woman's name. Was it Dianagate? No. Irisgate? Nope, that's not it. Noemigate? Nah. Oh, there it is: Betsygate. How would you find that, otherwise? How fast? And if you found your way to the category, you'd find the "List of" article quickly (you likely wouldn't have known it exists) and then be able to quickly distinguish the various soccer, car racing and other scandals. It's subject-related, does no harm and does much good in a common-sensical way. It's what we're here for. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:28, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse per the points in this case against WP:CCC as noted above. Eusebeus (talk) 21:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse repeated deletion. I am commenting here following an invitation at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom. Most of the scandals ending in "gate" are completely independent of each other; I can see no reason to group a random selection of articles based on their name. You could probably write an article explaining how the name traces back to some older scandal (Watergate?), but there is no reason to add every article to the same category. Road Wizard (talk) 21:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- The list article helps explain how the practice got started. They're all scandals, and there's a rather limited number of them. As for "no reason", that's been answered above. As for "random", guess what Herbert Hoover and John Kerry have in common (a category fully in compliance with WP:OC). -- JohnWBarber (talk) 22:47, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  - I said "I can see no reason". Whether you can see a reason or not does not concern me; I am here to put forward my position on the issue, which seems to be shared by a number of other editors. I don't know what your point is with the family category, but if two people are related then that isn't random. What is random is trying to link Corngate with Flakegate or Noemigate simply because they have gate in the article name. Road Wizard (talk) 23:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    - From the relevant policy: a category may be useful if the people, objects, or places are directly related—for example, a category grouping subarticles directly related to a specific Jones family. Corngate and Flakegate have a lot more in common than Herbert Hoover and John Kerry, whatever family they have in common. Whether you can see a reason or not does not concern me It's a discussion, RW. Rather than be concerned about the finer points of just how related two things that are both scandals are, it would be better to think in a common-sense way about how we make ourselves useful to our readers. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 02:20, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse repeated deletion Following from a general invitation at WP:AUSPOL - Aside from the consensus issue, which I agree with, I can only speak for my country but most of the ones here are a product of lazy journalism rather than common naming, are utterly unrelated to each other and it would probably not be difficult to find a more encyclopaedic name for the articles which would reflect the low public usage of the names. I don't know anyone who calls our involvement in the oil-for-food program "Wheatgate" (it's generally called "the AWB affair" or the "AWB scandal"), although both "Utegate" and "Iguanagate" got a run in the press. Orderinchaos 23:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- Since we know that some of these names are the most common ones used for certain scandals, it's irrelevant to this discussion that others aren't. It isn't our job to "find a more encyclopaedic name", it's policy to use the common name. As for "utterly unrelated", see my comment just a little below with the same timestamp. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 03:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse deletion and salt if necessary. Those wishing to restore have been unable to articulate just why the WP:OC#SHAREDNAMES guideline should be set aside. Tarc (talk) 00:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Is Category:Scandals next on the chopping block? After all, there isn't any more connection between articles in that category than there would be in this one. How is one a collection of "random" or "unrelated" articles and not the other? Lot's of talk here about trivial points like former consensus, but nobody else here has addressed the most important issue, usefulness to readers — what we're supposed to be about here. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 03:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Being able to navigate from one contrived "-gate" controversy to the next doesn't seem particularly useful to the overall reading audience. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other, apart from being graced with a cliched and catchy title by the drive-by media. Tarc (talk) 03:38, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Sceabhar na dheasa

Currently doing post graduate research in Irish history and would like to see a temporary review of what this article contained. Just briefly. Many thanks Ian Pender (talk) 16:14, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you enable email on your account then an admin can email you the article's contents. Hut 8.5 21:22, 6 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Something's a bit strange here - the article was created by you, was two sentences in length, included your name, and was deleted as a hoax. While I could send you the contents at your talk page, I'm inclined to conclude this request too is a hoax. Orderinchaos 00:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 62: / Line 62: @@
 *'''Endorse deletion''' and '''salt''' if necessary.  Those wishing to restore have been unable to articulate just why the [[WP:OC#SHAREDNAMES]] guideline should be set aside. [[User:Tarc|Tarc]] ([[User talk:Tarc|talk]]) 00:49, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 *'''Comment''' Is [[:Category:Scandals]] next on the chopping block? After all, there isn't any more connection between articles in that category than there would be in this one. How is one a collection of "random" or "unrelated" articles and not the other? Lot's of talk here about trivial points like former consensus, but nobody else here has addressed the most important issue, usefulness to readers &mdash; what we're supposed to be about here. -- [[User:JohnWBarber|JohnWBarber]] ([[User talk:JohnWBarber|talk]]) 03:23, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
+*:Being able to navigate from one contrived "-gate" controversy to the next doesn't seem particularly useful to the overall reading audience.  One has absolutely nothing to do with the other, apart from being graced with a cliched and catchy title by the drive-by media. [[User:Tarc|Tarc]] ([[User talk:Tarc|talk]]) 03:38, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
 ====[[:Sceabhar na dheasa]]====