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Debate discussion

I notice that the word 'debate' is used when closing discussions, it appears in the instructions as well. Is this the appropriate term for the discussions that have taken place? I believe this term could be misleading, perhaps another would help to build consensus and avoid 'polarisation'. cygnis insignis 10:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. I changed the word "debate" to "discussion". This is not dissimilar to when it was agreed that CfD should stand for "Categories for discussion", rather than "Categories for deletion", the latter somewhat indicating a keep/delete "debate", which is really not the case with CfD as much as it is with other XfD pages. - jc37 11:47, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

White space in category introductions

Any opinions about how far down the articles are appearing in categories like Category:Characters in written fiction? I think this is an effort to display all of the subcategories at the start. However, the fix may be worst then the problem. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:13, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:UCFD#Category:Wikipedians_by_interest

Is it necessary and appropriate to list a "discussion" that was speedily closed on the page "discussed"? Hyacinth (talk) 04:10, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Creation of speedy category renames

Does anyone know why it is quite common when categories are proposed for speedy renaming that the proposed category gets created soon after the proposal is made (and by "soon after", I mean long before the 2 day period has expired)? It seems to happen a lot when I propose speedy renames, and I'm not sure why. Snocrates 22:04, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Someone is not following the process? Vegaswikian (talk) 06:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Isn't the user who creates the cat listed in the history? Would it make sense to ask them why they have gone ahead and created the cat before discussion has finished. Is it the same person doing it or are these just random acts by newbies thinking they are helping? Sting au Buzz Me... 22:27, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I could ask them. It seems to be a different person each time, though, and they generally have been editors longer than me, so I thought there might be a rational reason I didn't know about. Snocrates 22:43, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Well it never hurts to ask. Just drop a note on their talk page and put your mind to rest. Sting au Buzz Me... 22:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

New procedure for moving categories to talk pages

In response to this discussion, I have drafted some new templates specifically for nominating a category to be moved to talk pages. This isn't an issue that comes up very often, but I think it happens enough to make a new procedure worthwhile. At the moment, there is not an appropriate tag to use. The drafts are here and here. Please comment on them, and feel free to edit them. They are more complicated than any other templates I have written, so I may have made grievous errors. Also, the explanation could probably be clarified. LeSnail (talk) 04:29, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Category:Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling championships

I've PROD'd the only two articles in this category, both of which will probably go uncontested and even if they don't, they will surely not survive AFD. Therefore, what do I do with the category? Do I need to list it here, or is there some other procedure in place for non-controversial (such as a category with no articles or soon-to-be-no-articles in it) deletions? Tromboneguy0186 (talk) 04:55, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Two options:
  1. List here
  2. Wait for it to be empty for 4 days then it can be speedy deleted as C1
The second is probably the way to go. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:28, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Any reason not to use category talk pages?

I understand that centralized deletion discussions have long precedent, but is there any reason not to use individual talk pages to discuss things like renames? This is how we use talk pages anywhere else- are categories special for some reason? Friday (talk) 14:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Don't bother with CFD

...unless you think it might be contested. Just go ahead and WP:Be bold and do the deletion/rename by hand. Some admin will come along later and reap the empty old category for you.

I've done this plenty of times and never had a problem. —Ashley Y 01:44, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

A proposed integration with RFC

I propose that this page be integrated with WP:RFC.

See Wikipedia:Request for comment#Request comment on categories

  • Discussion would be more centralized because it would all be on the talkpage of the category and not buried in this page's archives.
  • It would be easier to set up, since discussions could be initiated through just posting an RFC template on the category's talkpage. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 02:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
CfD is an AfD-like process. It's not just discussion. Merging it here would be inappropriate. — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 03:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
CfD stands for "categories for DISCUSSION," not just "categories for "DELETION." It doesn't just involve deletion discussions. It may also involve renaming or requests for additional consensus on certain changes. Overall, it involves people "getting people to discuss" the category (as opposed to "requesting a comment" on an article, user, etc..). The difference is strictly rhetorical.
For clarity, this should be split into:
  • Categories for deletion
  • RFC on categories
In the meantime, since there is no "RFC on categories," suggesting people come here to do that seems pretty sensible, since this the only place you could go to request comments on a category. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 03:57, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Thus AfD-like. Don't jump to conclusions. As for commenting on categories, that is covered with "articles". An RfC template for articles can be used with anything, and quite widely is. — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 04:16, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I realize it's AfD-like, but it's not AfD. I attempted to compromise by adding the clarification that this is AfD-like on RFC, but you still removed it.
If it's true that an RfC template can be used for categories, then I'll clarify that on the WP:RFC. It should eventually have its own template, however, and this article should be renamed "Categories for deletion." ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 04:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
No, it doesn't, because a category doesn't need to be commented on. It's subject does. Same goes for articles, hence the many variations. Also, you haven't tried this for templates, which goes equally unrepresented. In any case, this still categories for discussion because move requests and other such things are done in an AfD manner. — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 04:43, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
Saying categories don't need to be commented on implies that they don't need to be changed.
Discussion = commenting. I've attempted to compromise, Penguin, but you're being quite unreasonable. Also, it should exist for templates as well, but I wasn't sure how to go about doing it.
The main page on WP:RFC doesn't mention categories or templates, which is particularly confusing. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 04:50, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not being unreasonable, you're just not paying attention and keep jumping to conclusions from my comments. You don't comment on categories, you comment on their subject. This is what the templates are for. You don't need an instance for just categories or just templates, because they are covered under "Articles". Such pages supplement articles, and hence use of these templates extend to them. You do not need to cover every single variation for the sake of it. — Trust not the Penguin (T | C) 04:58, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

You do sometimes comment on categories, because a category, just like an article, can be spurious.

I'm confused as to why categories are treated as so unique. I know that you CAN use the RFC for articles template on categories. I just don't understand how it's supposed to be intuitive to do so. ☯  Zenwhat (talk) 07:10, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Input on almost redundant cats

Please see Category:Cendant brands and Category:Wyndham brands. Cedant has now become Wyndham, so I'm not sure it's necessary to have both categories, or at least repeat both categories on a dozen articles. Maybe the Cendant category can be used for companies that stopped existing before the name change? Not exactly what to do here, so I just wanted another set of eyes for input. Thanks.-Andrew c [talk] 23:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps a merge is in order. I checked a few of the articles in Cendant and several of them are in the other cat as well. Like you say that doesn't seem necessary. Do you know which of the companies ceased to exist before the takeover? Sting au Buzz Me... 00:12, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Not sure what the status of Wyndham was, but Cedant no longer exists. Perhaps a good first step would be to go through the categories and make sure all the brands that are currently covered by Wyndham are there, and see if the remaining brands all fit as former Cedant holdings. I'm not sure if Wyndham can retroactively be associated with former Cedant brands, so a full on merger may not work. Perhaps I should just do this myself when I get the time to research all the articles. It seemed more complicated when I first looked at it ;P-Andrew c [talk] 01:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Rename to what?

I found this cat Category:Rivers of the subbasins of small tributaries of the Black Sea and it just looks to me like it should be renamed? Except I'm not sure what it should be renamed to? Or in fact if it needs to be renamed. Asking here might be the best option. Sting au Buzz Me... 02:14, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Sports teams in each country

See Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories)#Sports teams in each country for what I hope is a fruitful discussion about the categorization of sports teams. Neier (talk) 22:55, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

consistency b/w CFDs & AFDs

I'd like to propose a different kind of deletion sorting: One that would consolidate CFDs that recommend "listify", and AFDs that recommend "categorize". For some time editors at CFD and AFD have noticed that some kinds of topics get bounced around. The Actors who died in their 20s and Category:Actors who died in their 20s is a perfect example. Both are up at the same time at AFD and CFD, respectively. List/articles and categories have different functions and therefore different criteria for keeping or deleting, but it's apparent to many of us who observe both fora that there is not always perfect consistency in outcome, and certainly a lot of editors involved in only one forum and not the other don't "get" the other one, and make comments based on imperfect knowledge. Thoughts? cross-posted @ WT:CFD & WT:AFD & WT:Deletion sorting --Lquilter (talk) 16:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I certainly agree about the problem , which I think has often been raised here. I'm not so sure how the solution would work. Johnbod (talk) 14:21, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Request for listing nominations

I would like to request assistance in nominating Category:Only-platform software and all of its many subcategories for deletion. The root category is an attempt to re-create Category:Single-platform software which was deleted -- see here. The category and all subcategories are using a non-defining criteria that is largely overlapping with Category:Software by operating system and Category:Video games by platform. Ham Pastrami (talk) 22:45, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Request for assistance

I've just listed a large number of categories for renaming at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 February 7#Baseball teams by country or state and I'd like to request assistance for adding templates to the category pages. Thanks.BRMo (talk) 23:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

The templates have been completed. Thank you, User:Sting_au, for helping out! BRMo (talk) 00:59, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
No worries mate :-) Sting au Buzz Me... 01:17, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Category:Mexican American actors

I suspect, based on bot edits on August 13, 2007 as seen in the history of this article, and this one, and this one, etc., that the category is a recreation. Can anybody confirm/locate the prior CfD discussion? Pairadox (talk) 05:15, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Auto archive

I plan on adding this talk page to the autoarchive bot. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Good idea. That will save a lot of scrolling once old messages are archived. Sting au Buzz Me... 07:21, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
This is setup and should run tonight. I'll probably combine all of 2007 into one archive after the first run. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Maintenance categories

I would like to propose deletion of all/most maintenance categories (things like "Articles with unsourced statements since 2007" etc.) For rationale see Wikipedia talk:Categorization#Maintenance categories. However as I guess this would be quite a significant policy change, I'm not sure of the best place to raise the issue. Any advice?--Kotniski (talk) 08:52, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Category disambiguation

I thought this was not supported and then I found Category:Disambiguation categories. Comments? Vegaswikian (talk) 07:20, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand what function these categories serve. There are no articles in any of these categories so the only way someone would find them was by navigating to them from the maintenance categories, typing in the name of the category in the search box, or miscategorizing an article. Once they get to the category what do they do next? I thought the soft redirects were for frequently miscategorized articles, so I'm not getting it. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 06:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Category deleted out of process

Please see this deletion review for a discussion on a category that was renamed and deleted outside of the identified process. In addition this action changed the result of a previous discussion here. Please comment as needed. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Question about the process

I've read, and reread, the text of the article, and still can't work this out: if a category rename is properly proposed, and agreed, is it then done automatically, or does someone have to use AWB or similar to go through all the articles in the category and edit the category name?

I have just done that to a category of 187 entries, before realising there was a proper process I should have followed (I think it was totally non-controversial, changing "Girls schools in England" to "Girls' schools in England" in line with the majority of other similar geographical categories). If it can be done relatively effortlessly, I'll propose some others for the same treatment: if it has to be done by hand, by me, I'll leave it alone having sorted out the one in which I have most direct interest. PamD (talk) 21:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

It's done "automatically" in that, once an admin has closed the discussion in favour of a rename (five days or so after the discussion starts), the admin then adds the category to a working list processed by bots, who go through the articles in the category and change the category to the new name. Nominate away - the boring stuff is done for you once the discussion ends! BencherliteTalk 02:12, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for useful info. I've nominated five more which lacked apostrophes. I couldn't work out, from the instructions, how to do them as a group! PamD (talk) 09:03, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Please join the discussion about hidden categories at WT:CAT

There is a proposal to create hidden categories -- mostly for intersection categories, and repopulate the parents. The details of this involve a change to how many categories are now populated. These changes would get us on the path to the implementation of dynamically created intersection categories, a feature that has been requested for a long time, and the implementation of which the developers are discussing. This change will take some getting used to, but has the potential of making categories more rational, less cluttered and ultimately much more powerful. Before this change gets widely discussed, I'd like to see if we can reach consensus among the regular participants at CFD. Please take a look. Thanks, -- ☑ SamuelWantman 06:31, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Def Jam merge

There are two categories, Category:Def Jam Recordings albums and Category:Def Jam albums, which is the same label. Is it possible to merge the latter with the former? Live and Die 4 Hip Hop (talk) 22:10, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Nonexistent categories

I'm asking here because regulars here will have experience as to what categories don't follow the naming conventions (and what properly-named category exist for the same thing), what ones are too specific and should be merged, experience w/ the category tree in general, and what sorts of category should exist... was wondering if anyone can help out at User:Random832/WantedCats or provide any input on where things should go from here. —Random832 18:06, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

What's so wrong with wikipedia, wikipedians and their voting

The polieces are extemely ambiguos and writen as if they were encyclopedic articles instead of policies, full with word such as "might" or "perhaps". Policies by definition can't be that weak and work.

I said so because it has comed to my attention that wikipedia has a clear no voting policy and yet the whole categories for deletion is filled with people voting like automatons. As always, most of them aren't even familiar with the topic and need to be explained what takes a career or years in some proffetion to know, and are posting strong commands destructive against our policies as if they had a clue. That's very frustrating. I get that editing in wikipedia is actually supposed to be a very frustrating experience, but the bottom line is the rule is clear, no voting, use consensus (to approach the closer policy or logic to the situation), and wikipedia alouds a "wikipedia:" page to work practically only by vote.

In my specific experience with the "Wikipedia:" administrative page in question (Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 March 8‎), I was actually proven wrong, and I admitted it soon enough (considering I changed my mind in less than a day), but the voting didn't help at all. Before people started doing their shameful voting, the nominator made me reailize the name of the category was not practical at all, and then I didn't get any help figuring out categories can't be moved to be renamed as articles can. But all the voting and no consensus reaching going on on that page is an obnoxious, frustrating unesesary shame on wikipedia, it's administrators and its own policies.

I'm sorry for the tone. I apologise. The again you can translate it into frustration and figure out how I feel.

--20-dude (talk) 19:58, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Could do with some improvement

In general, Wikipedia guidelines are well-written and easy to follow, but this page is an exception. In comparison with the guidelines for how to submit articles for deletion, these guidelines are much more confusing and likely to result in mistakes. JdeJ (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

There have been several discussions over how to name these such as this discussion. Before we get into another round of these, I think that we need to fully discuss the names and get a consensus outside of the comments in the rename discussions. If we archive this, then I'd like to see these renames be made speedy ones since there will not be a need to fully discuss everyone of what will likely be thousands of potential candidates.

  1. Settlement specific categories will match the article name. If there are multiple settlements that share the common name, then an additional qualifier will be used for disambiguation. This avoids the category disambiguation issue.
  2. Renames will be done to a city specific category only if the articles contained are in the settlement and the introduction is empty or it does not already state that it covers a broader area. By narrowing the scope of an existing category it will require maintenance to either rewrite the introduction or to recategorize articles. This is a manual effort which can not be automated. Retaining the parent category means that we break nothing. Renaming to the child created category errors. Also, not every area will want or need a category restricted to the major city.
  3. Area category names will be either Category:Foo area or Category:Foo, (state, country or whatever) area. The former is preferred since it is likely the common name but will be ambiguous in many cases. The latter is preferred since it would be unambiguous but would not be the most common usage in many cases. If a generally accepted name exists, then that should be used. If multiple names are used, then use the default. Sub categories can use industry specific names like Category:Radio stations in the foo Arbitron market.

One question is do the area categories get listed in the various 'by city' categories?

This is a bit different then the discussions so far, but I think it causes fewer issues. In any case, we need to resolve these questions before we start dealing with thousands of category renames. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:44, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Duplicate categories?

Looks to me like Category:Republican Party (United States) politicians and Category:Republicans (United States) are redundant, and should be merged. Am I missing something? -Pete (talk) 21:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

More detailed commentary below

I believe Category:Republicans (United States) should be merged with Category:Republican Party (United States) politicians. I recognize that the former could conceivably contain people who are not politicians, but I'd say that's a distinction that Wikipedia shouldn't bother to maintain.

According to the Politician article, a person need not hold public office in order to be a politician, but merely seek to influence policy or politics or public opinion. I'd contend that if somebody isn't seeking to be influential in that way, then it's not worth categorizing them as a member of a political party. On the flip side, it doesn't really do any harm to categorize them as a politician even if, technically, their influence on public opinion is only marginal.

Maintaining two categories that are almost identical though, though, just invites confusion and miscategorization.

I'd imagine this condition applies to the Democratic party and perhaps others, as well.

I don't really have an opinion on which of the two should be kept if merged. -Pete (talk) 02:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

If you think so, do a nomination. Personally I would oppose; the plain Republicans category is needed for people like Bob Hope. Johnbod (talk) 04:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, that's kinda why I wanted to get a feel for people's thinking before going to the trouble of nominating. Just to get a better sense -- do you see a problem with having the one category be Category:Republicans (United States)? If that's what it was, there could be a few Bob Hopes in there among all the politicians without causing any problems...at least, that's how it seems to me. -Pete (talk) 04:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Procedure

WP:CFD is for discussion of (among other things) deletion of a category. Right?

Is WP:CFD the proper place to discuss whether a particular article should be in a category? Thanks. Wanderer57 (talk) 13:43, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Nope. Not at all. If there is a reason to discuss such, then the place for it is on the individual article's talk page. - TexasAndroid (talk) 14:11, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Purpose of {{Cfd}} and {{cfd2}} (a proposal)

I am really finding this frustrating. Long story short, the Cfd page states that these templates are for deletion. But other users are saying that (and probably especially cfd2) they are for multiple actions.

To avoid confusion, i propose a few things.

For {{cfd}}

  1. Move the current {{cfd}} to {{cfdel}}
  2. If moved, in the redirect's place, place a new template similar to my experimentation of this. This new template means that users have the extra option, which they must fill in, of listing what action is to be taken (that is not deletion, merging, renaming or conversion).

For the puposes of this discussion, we will use my userpage.

So {{subst:User:Simply south/cfd experiment|listifying}} would produce:

{{User:Simply south/cfd experiment|listifying}}

(Note:for the purposes of this discussion, subst has been taken out).
3. Change the main categories for discussion page to show these changes.

Obviously it won't be listed under cfd experiment

For {{cfd2}}

  1. Move cfd2 to cfdel2 and add something like Proposed deletion at the start
  2. In cfd2's original place, use something similar to my experimentation of this. As well as the the usual things they fill out when placing this in the log, the thing they place before filling in the text would be filling in the action (again, that is not deletion, renaming, merging or conversion).

Again taking this from my using my userpage for this proposal... {{subst:User:Simply south/cfd2 experiment|Bana|bana|Scratch|Because i want to ~~~~}}


bana

Action: Scratch Category:Bana (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
Nominator's rationale: Because i want to Simply south (talk) 02:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

(obviously a more plausible action than scratch, and can someone fix the category title?)

Simply south (talk) 02:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment. {{cfd}} already takes an optional argument for a group discussion title; your proposal would clobber that. How about adding a {{{action}}} parameter instead; if the parameter isn't used, it would default to "deletion"? --Russ (talk) 13:59, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Help tagging subcategories of Category:Sports planes

Category:Sports planes and its various era- and nation- subcategories are named inconsistently with other aircraft categories and should be Category:Sports aircraft. This also creates a problem since we have articles on sports aircraft that are not planes (ie sports helicopters and at least one sports airship...) I'm happy to do the tagging of the individual categories manually if necessary, but I hope that there's a bot to help with such things! --Rlandmann (talk) 01:50, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Format

What is the reason that CfDs do not work the same as AfDs, with each having its own subpage? MrKIA11 (talk) 16:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I would say volume. With occasional exceptions, the volume of category deletions is much, much lower that the volume of article deletions, making it quite possible to keep a day's worth of discussions on a single page without conflict. AFD has just such a sheer volume that such a sinlge page would be impossible/impractical. - TexasAndroid (talk) 16:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Well what is the disadvantage of having subpages? I think the advantage is that they can be transluded on other pages, such as specific projects that would be concerned, which would also increase the amount of traffic that the nomination would receive. MrKIA11 (talk) 17:54, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Economy of ... categories

I'm considering putting these up for deletion since they appear to be a catch all for everything and anything. I just reverted Category:Economy of Arizona and Category:Economy of California from Terrible Herbst. While the company may be a significant distributer of gasoline in those states, I really don't see how it is a notable economic force in those states. It seems that the only criteria for listing is being a business in a state. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:44, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Also note my edits for Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:49, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Pre-emptied categories

The May 7 page includes 29 pre-emptied categories (1.18 - 1.47 inclusive, starting here), most of which the nominator says have been "renamed" - by him, apparently without any discussion, which doesn't seem to be the nominators strong point. It is impossible to discuss these without seeing what they looked like before, and neither the user's English nor his attitude inspire confidence. I think an admin can restore, or show, what they looked like before - maybe a sample batch initially. Or can all these edits be reverted, so our discussion is not pre-empted? Johnbod (talk) 00:14, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Ouch. And I note further discussion on the user's talk page. I'll second the request that the many categories' contents be restored. - jc37 00:20, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! Johnbod (talk) 00:22, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Oof I was not trying to start a controversy here! These have been redirected for a while, so I put them on the list. I'll withdraw them; it's very hard to sort out procedure here. And I am a native English speaker. Blueberrybuttermilkpancakes (talk) 01:21, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
The ones I have looked at were redirected between one and three weeks ago, all by User:Sumerophile, who was blocked for 2 weeks for disruptive editing on May 4th [1]. Many had been around since 2005. This section [2] on his user page is alarming - is this true? Both he and Blueberrybuttermilkpancakes have been doing large numbers of category changes which I certainly haven't analysed. Johnbod (talk) 02:20, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
It is also disconserting to have somebody jump all over one message on one's talk page, ignor any positive messages, and then take it up on a discussion board, instead of communicating on one's talk page. And people knowledgable about a subject area are certainly capable of categorizing it properly. Blueberrybuttermilkpancakes (talk) 03:14, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Where is the discussion on this? Between you are completely disregarding procedures, and the way you handled the nominations here, and the other guys blocking, frankly do not inspire confidence that you know what you are doing, whatever that is. Johnbod (talk) 11:32, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, it looks like it's time for re-population. See: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Sumerophile. Both users are apparently socks. We'll just have to start keeping a lookout for similar changes in the future. - jc37 20:33, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

2 days for speedy?

I see for WP:CFD/S, it takes 2 days before a category can be speedy renamed. Due to a misread of a timestamp, I accidentally moved a category requested 7 hours ago. To avoid this from hapenning again, I propose using a parser function to automatically bold requests that have been active for more than 2 days. It would be really simple. All that it would need to be is this: {{#ifexpr: {{subst:#time: U }} < {{#time: U | -2 days}} |'''}}Proposal{{#ifexpr: {{subst:#time: U }} < {{#time: U | -2 days}} |'''}}. It could even go into a template. What do people think? Soxred93 (u t) 07:33, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I have set it up an example in my userspace. User:Soxred93/cfrs contains a transclusion of User:Soxred93/dated cfrs. It is meant to be substituted, otherwise it fails. Dated cfrs includes all the if statements. The final example is at User:Soxred93/sandbox. Soxred93 (u t) 20:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Ridiculously complex

I've used Wikipedia for over three years and I must have handled a few category deletions in my time. The procedure, such as it exists, is to tag the category for deletion and put a brief entry on WP:CFD. I don't recognise that long established, lightweight procedure in the ridiculous long and tedious description in this page. The page needs to be trimmed down so that it clearly and unambiguously describes the extremely simple procedure for listing a category for deletion. The current version is just a heap of bureaucratic nonsense. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 14:06, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Why not draft a new version in a sandbox and see what others think? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:29, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
A sandbox? Not bold enough. If I get time I may take a hacksaw to the thing. --Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The 21:13, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Delete or Rename Queer Studies

Wikipedia:Categorization/Gender, race and sexuality, states 'Terminology must be neutral. Derogatory terms are not to be tolerated in a category name under any circumstances...' Queer is a derogatory term, equivalent, for instance, to nigger or kike. The category 'queer studies' violates wikipedia policy. It should be deleted or renamed as soon as possible. Skoojal (talk) 06:21, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible that your personal distate for the term is interfering with your perception of the modern neutral reality? The term "queer studies" is an academic term with "queer studies" programs at non-trend-setting institutions as such ho-hum places as Northern Arizona University, Humboldt State University, Wesleyan University, Knox College, University of Illinois, Chicago, Smith College, Tufts University, and University of Washington, Seattle. Additionally, Google Scholar has almost 5,000 literary and educational entries that include the term "queer studies." http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=queer-studies&hl=en&lr= - Davodd (talk) 23:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Empty by year categories

Not sure where this should be discussed but I just declined the speedy deletion of a number of empty "by year" categories. I don't have a very strong opinion on whether or not these should be kept but I do feel strongly that this is not a case where the empty category speedy criterion should apply. For the most part, these categories were created automatically by eventualist-leaning Wikipedians and were almost empty by design. Some sort of debate needs to take place before we really decide what to do. My first feeling would be sympathy toward eventualism in this case. As someone who has done quite a bit of categorization work, I know it kind of sucks to add such a category to an article and then find out you have to re-create it, proper templates and all, because it was deleted as empty. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 02:52, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

We don't need placeholder categories for "someday" when they get populated IMO. "By year" categories are deleted regularly if empty for more than 4 days, simply create the category when they get populated. I don't see why an eventualist would have a problem with this, since after all, the category will be created eventually, when it is actually needed. For instance, I deleted Category:2018 singles the other day. Are we seriously going to wait 10 years before this is actually used? I realize that is an extreme example, but for all we know it could be 10 years before some of these empty "by year" categories are actually used. Additionally, I find restoring the deleted category easier when it becomes populated, since there is no manual template or text restoration required. VegaDark (talk) 03:30, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Of course, from an admin's perspective, undeleting is no hassle. But that's just 1500 of us. With all due respect, this discussion will lead nowhere if we work with Category:2018 singles as our main example. Eventualism is not about preparing for articles to be written in ten years, it's about believing that the content you find missing today might be there the next hour. I was thinking more along the lines of speedys I declined earlier today like Category:18th century in Chile or Category:1669 novels. In the first case, I think it's obvious that deleting serves no useful purpose, whereas keeping it may motivate someone to move their ass and populate it, which clearly it could be. The second case, is not so obvious because it's not even clear that there will ever be an article on Wikipedia about a 1669 novel. However, suppose some newbie comes along and creates such an article. If he's smart enough, he adds the category and then goes "damn, that didn't work". Sure, odds are slim but then again, the idea of speedy deleting empty categories is that (a) they're often abandoned categories (b) they're categories whose emptiness shows their complete uselessness (c) they were de-populated for some good reason and finally (d) we don't want readers going to a category and being frustrated at its emptiness. If you go to Category:1669 novels and find it empty, you'll be smart enough to understand that there are either no such articles or that articles that should be there have not been categorized appropriately. This is actually fairly good info. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 04:07, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
If a person can't find a single article or page to put into a category, then I have no qualms about deleting the category description page. We're talking about categories that don't contain a single item; it's plain silliness to keep these pages around indefinitely in case they someday may be needed. It's not as though it takes more than ten seconds to create a category description page. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:09, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
I can see the arguments to delete them but I don't think this justifies a new speedy-deletion criterion. At the top of WT:CSD are four considerations that must be met for a new criterion. While this standard is certainly objective and probably uncontestable, I am not convinced that it arises frequently enough to justify expanding a page that is already overly long and complicated. Can prod or some other alternative be extended to these situations instead? Rossami (talk) 05:47, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Sorry. I misread the original notice and misunderstood one of the replies. Comment withdrawn. Rossami (talk)
I think you are misunderstanding the situation. CSD C1 already covers these types of categories, there is no new speedy criterion being proposed here. What is proposed is the creation of an exception to C1. VegaDark (talk) 06:08, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
As VegaDark correctly states, this discussion is proposing a change to an existing speedy deletion criterion. Although I don't feel strongly about it, I note that the biggest advantage of the existing criterion is that is simple to apply -- the category either has been empty for four days, or it has not. (In practice, I find that many of the empty categories were either created by mistake, or by users who didn't really understand the categorization process; or they were misnamed duplicates of other existing categories and simply have been abandoned.) If the criterion is changed so that admins have to explore why the category is empty, that will make the process more complicated and therefore make it less likely that this boring housekeeping work will ever get done. --Russ (talk) 12:45, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Also, I would ask someone to please explain why it is objectionable that Category:1669 novels be deleted, when Category:1661 novels, Category:1662 novels, Category:1663 novels, Category:1664 novels, Category:1665 novels, Category:1666 novels, and Category:1667 novels are all redlinks. Is it so difficult to recreate the category description page if/when it ever becomes populated? --Russ (talk) 12:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
Like I said, I don't feel strongly about it. But I'd like to note that I don't suggest changing the CSD criterion. The CSD policy is not a text of law and if there's agreement to leave these cats alone, then we just leave them alone. No need to write-in the exception, it's just an ignore all rules thing. Pascal.Tesson (talk) 18:26, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

New speedy criteria proposal

Renames to match a disambiguated parent category such as Category:Georgia (country) or Category:Georgia (U.S. state) from an unqualified name are eligible for speedy renames. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:20, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Support

Oppose

Discussion

Moving (renaming) cats

Registered editors can move article pages, but not categories? Only admins can move cats - is that right? If so, why? --Setanta747 (talk) 02:45, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

"Moving" cats involves editing all the articles in those cats to reflect the new name. No reason why any user can't do it if it's non-controversial, but for large categories it's much quicker if a bot is used.--Kotniski (talk) 08:54, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
And how does one know if it is not controversial? The process to nominate is quite simple and ensures that any controversies are aired. Also if you empty a category, you need an admin to delete it. Vegaswikian (talk) 09:01, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, if there's any doubt, best to nominate it here first.--Kotniski (talk) 09:23, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough. I've been out of sorts with Wikipedia recently, and forgotten a lot of things. I'm kinda getting back into the swing of things again, now. Thanks for the answers. :) --Setanta747 (talk) 21:52, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Backlog -- needing deletion!

There're two discussions that have been opened way more than seven days, and I believe they should be deleted. Specifically, the categories are Category:Albums produced by James Stroud and Category:Albums produced by Kyle Lehning. I would think that, despite the ongoing discussion of categorizing albums by producer, these should be non-controversial deletions, as neither James Stroud nor Kyle Lehning has a page, and there's no point in categorizing for red linked people. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells•Otter chirps) 16:54, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Special:Categories improved

This has been overhauled with the help of Brion Vibber. Check it out. This may make it easier to find cfd worthy listings. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 07:44, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

backlog needs work

There are a ton of open discussions. I'm working on these but there are some that I participated in. Since it appears that no other admin is really working to clear this out, I will be closing ones I participated in when the consensus is clear. If you have an objection to this, kindly step in and close those. Also, I'm trying to do as many as possible right now so I'm ignoring those with complicated discussions. If someone can close those it would be appreciated. Vegaswikian (talk) 19:21, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I spent a while trying to clean out some of the backlog and I think I made some progress. Someone needs to close the remaining ones that I participated in since the consensus is not all that clear in those so my closing the remaining ones would not be wise. Also the manual work queue is rather large and it could use some help. Most of the work can be done any anyone and admins are not required. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:23, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Userpage navbox

CAT


I've found this rather useful. Enjoy : ) - jc37 21:40, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Transcludable discussions

Would it be possible to set these debates up like AfD, where each debate has it's own page that be transcluded? I would like to add Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_June_24#Category:WikiProject_Video_games_XXX_pages to Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Deletion, but I see no way to. I'm sure this has been discussed before. Is it not desirable? JohnnyMrNinja 05:56, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I've already tried to discuss this here and here (I originally brought this up for exactly the same reason, to translude pages on the VG deletion page), but interest in the discussion always fades. If you are able to get something dome, the more power to you. I'm completely for it, and see no reason against it. MrKIA11 (talk) 19:51, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
Brought to Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Transcludable XfD discussions. JohnnyMrNinja 00:28, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
With the consensus formed at the above discussion, I have proceeded to make Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Transclusion as a place to begin test-editing the project pages. I have done this in the interests of moving forward with the proposal, and I must stress that I have no idea what I'm doing, and any and all help is much appreciated. JohnnyMrNinja 10:13, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposed change to category redirect process

I have posted a proposal to change the way category redirects are handled at Template_talk:Category_redirect#Proposed_change. Please review and comment on that page if you are interested. --Russ (talk) 18:52, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

London Boroughs

I couldn't ask for help in tagging all London Boroughs categories and subcategoriies for renaming, could i? I have a proposed cfd at User talk:Simply south/Woosh which i will move to main once this has been done. Simply south (talk) 14:53, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Category:Peace treaties

Am I correct to assume that our naming conventions would require renaming of country categories from Category:Polish peace treaties to Category:Peace treaties of Poland and so on? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:05, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Speedy rename instructions -- clarity

Would it be appropriate to change the instructions for speedy renaming to emphasize that categories that don't comply with a WP naming guideline set out by a WikiProject (e.g., WP:FOOTY) do not qualify for speedy renaming based on that non-compliance? I agree that the instructions are fairly clear that only ones that meet the 6 criteria set out may be speedied, but it seems to be a recurring theme that editors submit speedy renames based on non-compliance with WikiProject naming guidelines, so perhaps it needs to be spelled out somehow. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:54, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to add something to this effect to the instructions since this comment didn't generate any discussion. I'm willing to revisit it again if anyone objects to what I add. Good Ol’factory (talk) 20:15, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Windows-only_games_by_year

Recently the consensus was to delete the category Category:2001 Windows-only games. As there are identical categories:

under the Category:Windows-only_games_by_year is there a preferred method to {cfd} these other than creating 12 separate requests, and another for the parent category? MrMarmite (talk) 09:59, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Subst cfd|CfdSectionName in the first category. There are some bugs with using the templates in multiple mode. So what I have been doing is coping the generated text into the additional articles and adding a line in the nomination for each. For a deletion, you may not need to change anything. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:25, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
Cheers. When you say "the first category" do you mean the parent or the first child? MrMarmite (talk) 20:00, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
The first category you nominate. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:17, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Consolidate Category:Ships by navy entries?

I nominated three subcategories of Category:Ships by navy yesterday for renaming (here, here, and here), but have discovered some ten or eleven more that should be renamed. I will list the newer ones as a single entry, but should I do anything to the previously nominated ones since all are the same type of nomination? (Category:Foo Navy ships → Category:Ships of the Foo Navy) Or should I just put a notice in each of the previous three to see the new one also? Or not worry about it? — Bellhalla (talk) 20:59, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd just add the new ones to one of the old ones and then combine the other two into the one you decide to keep. If there are comments, then you may not be able to combine the existing ones, but could still add new ones. Just add a comment into the discussion to indicate when the additional categories were added. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:16, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Or, alternatively, just wait until the first batch are changed, and then you can cite the first CfD in nominating the second batch. Of course, this takes more time, though. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:17, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
OK. Since all already have comments, I'll just add the new ones to the final one I nominated yesterday + a note that they were added and when. As far as waiting, I'm not too concerned about any objections; I successfully nominated a whole batch of similar sub-cats back in April. Thanks for the feedback. — Bellhalla (talk) 22:40, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Overkill category listings.

Take a look at the categories in DeVry_University. How is this list useful. I suggest that we treat schools like this the same as restaurants where we only categorize them in the state that they are based in. If there is an article for a branch in a specific state, then that article would be listed in the appropriate state category. Not all schools abuse the category system like this, University of Phoenix is an example that probably should be the model for changing DeVry. Any objections to pulling all of the 'extra' categories? Vegaswikian (talk) 21:38, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps this would be better taken up at Talk:DeVry University. Those who might object would probably be more likely to be watching that page than this one. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:04, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

HELP!

I'm trying to list a whole bunch of categories under one rationale, but in the preview it's showing that they're all listed seperately. How do I consolidate them into an "umbrella" entry, eventhough not all subcategories of the affected need to be moved? Respond ASAP. --Pwnage8 (talk) 23:33, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

moving sub category up from its parent

The category Category:Internet_Explorer_shells is a child of Category:Windows-only_software. The contents of the category run on a range of platforms. How does one request its movement up a level? Thanks MrMarmite (talk) 19:32, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

eponymous categories are disfunctional

I've seen a lot of categorization by a topics that are associated with the article, but do not really include it. That creates strange effects, e.g. somebody put John the Fearless in category:Joan of Arc because there is a historic connection, what of course makes him am member of category:Women.

Now if I want to look up e.g. all women musicians wikipedia knows of by using catscan, I can't do that, because, for the reason above, there's quite a lot of men mixed in.

In general, I think an encyclopedia should have a working taxonomy (as far as this is possible), that is: an hierarchically ordered category tree, not some wild, self-contradictory category mesh that is functionally useless.

It seems to me that the only solution to resolve this would be the deletion of all categories that could not possibly have any members in a taxonomy sense, that is: categories of "single entities" that can be member of categories, but not parents: that is, for a start, all and every eponymous categories.

Unfortunately, this was rejected [3] last November. Many users voted against it, but as far as I see, the basic rationale of Wikipedias category system is in jeopardy, and the deletion request has not been discussed under this point of view, so it could be renewed. -- 790 ♫ 11:58, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Something certainly needs to be done about eponymous categories (as has been suggested before, including by me). The main problem is that it's considered OK (while logically it shouldn't be) to make an eponymous category a subcategory of any category to which the main article does or could belong (with inconsistency as to whether the main article is put in that category as well). So (in your example) someone might put Category:Joan of Arc into Category:Women, which is wrong - it should be the article Joan of Arc that is so categorized. If we are to sort out the mess that is Wikipedia categories, I think an excellent place to start would be to change the policy that encourages this kind of mis-categorization. I don't see a need to actually abandon eponymous categories, though, if they can be used correctly.--Kotniski (talk) 14:14, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Would that approach imply that eponymous categories should be disallowed to be a subcategory of anything (except the category:eponymous categories)? Then what about such a warning:
This is an eponymous category. Please do not make it member of any category other than category:eponymous categories. The rationale behind this is that the category system is supposed to be a hierachical taxonomy, while eponymous categories are based on association. Thus, categorizing them would lead to undesired loops in the category tree.
-- 790 ♫ 23:04, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, this is the kind of approach I would favour (except that category:eponymous categories could still have a subcategory hierarchy below it). --Kotniski (talk) 00:21, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

help tagging sub-categories?

I've just tagged the following categories with a cfd:Unqualified "Terrorism"

Category:Terrorism by country‎ Category:Terrorism by genre‎ Category:Terrorist incidents‎ Category:Terrorism victims‎ Category:Terrorists‎ Category:Terrorism handbooks and manuals‎ Category:Funding of terrorism‎ Category:Counter-terrorism‎

Is there a way someone can auto-tag all the sub-categories? Thanks. TheMightyQuill (talk) 04:55, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Category question

(cross posted from WP:SONGS)

Recently I nominated two songwriter categories for deletion at CfD because I felt they were underpopulated: Category:Songs written by Anthony Smith and Category:Songs written by Leslie Satcher. The former contained only two songs, and the latter only one; yet somehow, Satcher's category survived CfD (link) on the basis that similar "Category:X songs" and "Category:Songs written by X" categories are acceptable even when only one song fits the criteria. Looking at Leslie Satcher's contributions, I can verify that there is almost no hope of expansion for her category. (She's written a #8 country hit, a #12, one song that's currently charting in the Top 20, and three or four mid-thirties, that's about it. The #8 might warrant a page, but I doubt you'll find anything on the other songs.) Because of this, I would like to establish a separate guideline for songwriter categories. It's been my experience that songwriters don't get nearly as much coverage as the artists who record the songs, so I would think that a writer would have to have a larger repertoire before warranting a category. Furthermore, some acts only seem to songwrite on the side; Keith Stegall, for instance, has only a couple credits as a songwriter, but much, much more as a record producer. Also, there're plenty of songwriters who never, but never, write on their own, so is it really right to categorize as "songs written by X" when X co-wrote it with Y and Z? This is why I think the whole Category:Songs by songwriter tree needs examination. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • (Broken clamshells• Otter chirps • HELP!) 01:44, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Category rename due to caps error

*Category:United States ambassadors to Poland to Category:United States Ambassadors to Poland — Funandtrvl (talk) 20:56, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Proposal for multiiple nominations

Is there any support for changing the way large multiple rename nominations are handled? I believe that in the past we only required the nomination of the top level and if it passed all sub cats where then also changed. Now, if you want to make the suggestion, you need to nominate everything.

Would it be possible to nominate only the top level category for a full CfD and if it passes then speedy the sub categories. This allows time for a full discussion and then notice for all of the sub categories so that if there is an objection to one, it can be addressed at that time. This would make editors more willing to do the work on some of the larger category structures.

If there is no support for this, then could we use a bot to do the mass adds?

I will also note that for closing admins, having to deal with a large nomination that failed is a royal pain that takes a lot of time. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:39, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

  • Comment. Won't this cause problems for those who watch only certain categories that are lower than top-level? For instance, an editor might only care about the relevant category in the tree for a particular country or city. They might oppose the overall change, but they won't know about the proposal until it's essentially too late, because the top-level proposal has passed and they only find out about it when the category that they watch is nominated for a speedy change based on the original decision at the top level. I can imagine this causing some degree of upset, and it seems to take away from the standard notification requirements, which currently are quite low anyways (i.e., all you have to do is tag an affected category). Good Ol’factory (talk) 11:24, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

What to do with a complaint?

Recently, I nominated a category for deletion, notified the creator, and after the appropriate time it was deleted. There wasn't much discussion. Now the creator (a young person) is complaining to me about the category's deletion. He was notified of the CfD, but he didn't participate in it (perhaps because he wasn't on-Wikipedia very much when the discussion was open). This category isn't a candidate for deletion review (the deletion was perfectly orderly), but the creator claims that he's got media sources using the term. What's the protocol for re-opening discussion in a case like this? Is the creator just SOL, or is there any venue in which he can challenge the deletion? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 01:37, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Merge UCFD

These two processes were split a few years back. The main concerns were that having user categries on the /Working page was (quote) "breaking bots" (endquote). (It should be noted that this was following the many rather lengthy - though obviously necessary - noms for conventions that User:Mike Selinker was doing at the time.)

As there is now a separate working page for user categories (which happens to be a subpage of CFD, not UCFD), this shouldn't be an issue, as long as there are clear instructions, similar to the instructions for manual/nobots listings.

On the converse, there have been innumerable complaints about the "seeming" number (or lack thereof) of commenters at UCFD, and whether this constitutes "consensus". While this is a strawman argument (which is also fairly easily disproven), and also that the "appearance" or belief of such is nearly always the comment of the IWANTMINE, the repeated "appearance" of such may be enough to question whether re-integration might be worthwhile even for "appearance"/superficial reasons.

In addition, the page/process has been rather slow of late. On one hand, this is likely due to the typically unlauded work of those who watch recent changes, and other special pages, who are active on this page and others, and everyone else who has helped work towards a consistancy in naming conventions.

After 2 years of which we now have 2 related guidelines: WP:UC (originally split from WP:UBX) and WP:OC/U.

There's also the Topical index which has helped establish a bit of precedent, and has also helped reduce a bit of WP:BITE for newbies. (Among other things, by helping to clarify that their category isn't being arbitrarily targeted by the unfeeling hordes.)

Even should the two be merged, the index could continue to be maintained.

And finally (the last straw for me), there have been several noms listed here at CFD (several quite recently), despite the various templated disclaimers. The last of which is rather lengthy and has had no one actually question the location/venue.

I think it's time these were re-integrated, for ease, simplicity, and even "appearance".

Anyway, that's a bit of the history, and the rationale.

What does everyone else think? - jc37 05:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

(Update) - Separate logs sound interesting, though I'll note that there are quite a few noms at CFD before UCFD, so we'll still need to note that.
Miscellaneous categories for discussion (MCFD), also sounds interesting. Though I might suggest creating it as a new process, and then after that suggesting to merge UCFD there.
Due to the above (MCFD), and Black Falcon's comments concerning housekeeping (which I obviously agree with, since I said something similar at WT:UCFD), perhaps this should be postponed for a bit then? - jc37 21:52, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I was actually thinking maybe we should expand/change uCfD to handle all non article content categories. Just to throw it out there. I do agree with a lot of what you're saying, though. As long as there is an easy way for people to filter out user category discussions (and/or non-content cat discussions, if people like my suggestion), then I would probably be happy. I'm interested in seeing how the setup might look. -- Ned Scott 07:30, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Makes sense to me, although I dispute the idea that the notion that UCFD sometimes has small participants is a strawman and easily disproved. I think that view itself is easily disproved. Merging would be a good step in doing all we can to ensure UCFD isn't a forum with limited input. Hiding T 11:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
    Just showing I'm paying attention; I have no objection to Ned's idea of separate section and Black Falcon's grasp of the mechanics, timescale and solutions to such. Hiding T 17:22, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
  • As a CFD closer, I have no problem with the merge. --Kbdank71 12:52, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
  • No objection here. VegaDark (talk) 19:14, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I also support this proposal. The main drawback is that this will complicate the process of updating the topical index: under the current system, one can find all UCFD discussions in the monthly archives; however, if UCFD is merged into CFD, one will need to search through CFD daily logs to identify user category discussions. This does not require much effort on a day-to-day basis, but it will be more time-consuming to play "catch-up" should the archive ever fall behind substantially. Of course, none of this applies if non-content category discussions are given a separate section in the daily logs, as Ned has suggested.
    Also, I think we ought to consider postponing any merge until some of the currently-planned 'housekeeping' (e.g. renaming the programming language categories to fix capitalisation or get rid of the Babel format) is performed. After all, it wouldn't do to perform the merge only to encounter the same complaints that necessitated the creation of UCFD in the first place. –Black Falcon (Talk) 21:09, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
  • User categories and regular categories have very different guidelines that govern them so I think they should stay in separate places; it is much easier to say "on this page we use guideline X while on this page we use guideline Y". Although I think making 'user categories for discussion' into 'Miscellaneous categories for discussion' would not be such a bad idea. - Icewedge (talk) 21:38, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Works for me I always did wonder why they were separate to begin with. Whispering 09:14, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Contested speedies

I'd like to add the following in the speedy nomination section.

Contested requests can be removed from this list after 48 hours. If the nominator wants to continue the process they need to submit the request as a regular CfD using the instructions above.

Currently it is unclear what to do with these contested requests. Anyone can delete the request since nothing really says this action is prohibited. This change also makes it clear that admins do not have an obligation to list the request for a full CfD. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:28, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Makes sense to me on both counts. Support. - jc37 01:03, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
Support as good idea to clarity confusion that usually exists about these. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:11, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
Done. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:36, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Two notification templates

Why do we have both {{cfd-article}} and {{cfdnotice}}? __meco (talk) 06:48, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

The first redirects to the second. __meco (talk) 19:11, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Closing renames and deletes

To all the helpful admins who close out category renames and deletes: Please check (a) the new category in the case of a rename, and (b) links to the old category in both cases, for soft redirects. In case (a), there have been several incidents when a category has been renamed (from, say, Category:Old title to Category:New title), where Category:New title already existed and was a soft-redirect to Category:Old title. User:RussBot performs a daily task of cleaning out the contents of any category that contains a soft redirect, which results in pages ping-ponging back and forth between the two titles until the redirect is removed. In case (b), if Category:Old title is deleted or renamed, any other categories that redirect to it (like Category:Even older title) need to be retargeted. Category redirects can be detected by looking for {{Category redirect}} or one of the several synonyms that redirect to it on the category description page. --Russ (talk) 12:42, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

New multi-target-with-categories listing tool

{{Catfd3}} is your new friend. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:19, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Finaly! - Icewedge (talk) 23:59, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

request help tagging athletics cats

I have taken care of tagging category:athletics and its top-level subcats; would like some help with the lower levels. --Trovatore (talk) 09:24, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Would this need to be applied to all nationality categories as well i.e British Athletes becomes British track and field athletes, French Athletes becomes etc ? - X201 (talk) 10:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Hmm — not so clear in the case of British, given that the word apparently (though I didn't know this until very recently!) refers unambiguously to track and field in British English. But for consistency's sake, yes, I think we should go for track and field athletics as the fixed formula for all these cats (including any that may now be called just track and field). --Trovatore (talk) 19:16, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
You've almost fully explained my reason for asking. It's my personal experience that the phrase "track and field athletics" actually causes a degree of confusion in the UK with the usual reply being "do you mean athletics?". - X201 (talk) 21:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I see. It strikes me, though, that at least they guess right. On the other hand an American will think he knows what you mean when you say "athletics", but if you mean "track and field", he'll be wrong. There doesn't seem to be any perfect solution to this; it's similar to the football and hockey wars. In those cases the unmodified term has been given its most general sense. --Trovatore (talk) 22:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

When speedy should not be used

I propose deleting criterion 2, when two or more changes need to be made that alone would each qualify as speediable. What is the point of this? If there's, say, a cap fix and a plural fix that both need to be made, why put the category through the CFD process when the outcome is pretty much inevitable? Otto4711 (talk) 00:40, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I support this proposal; I've seen a couple examples in recent days, including Category:Companies based in Siskiyou county (needed capitalization and disambiguation) and Category:Naval Guided Missile Launch System of the United States (needed plural and decapitalization). Stepheng3 (talk) 00:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
But experience shows there are hardly any cases of disambiguation that meet the "no chance in heck of failing" standard, as GO puts it. Johnbod (talk) 22:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Personally, I don't think there's a very big problem with categories that need obvious changes being forced into full CfD. It happens from time to time, but not to the point of it being an issue, I don't think. If anything, editors trying to use the speedy procedure in situations in which it should not be used is more of a problem. If this is the case, what would be the rationale for eliminating restrictions on the use of the speedy procedure? That said, there will indeed be cases like the ones Stepheng3 refers to, where two obvious changes need to be made. I think the "by the book" solution would be to just do two speedy changes right after each other; however, the more practical solution as I see it would be to just propose it in speedy and hope it slides through without any objections from sticklers. Any editor that is using common sense will probably let it slide. To me, this seems like a preferable solution than deleting a restriction to the criteria. (Just to be clear, I'm neutral on the proposal and am not objecting to or supporting the deletion of the "when not to use" criterion #2. I'm just throwing out some thoughts to be considered.) Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:17, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
  • I think WP:SNOW may apply in these cases. If there's no chance in heck that either of the changes would fail CfD separately, then there's no chance in heck of them failing in combination. That being the case, there's no need to run a full CfD. Stepheng3 (talk) 19:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
    • Of course. The problem is, it's not uncommon for categories to be nominated under speedy that are asking for only one change, but they don't meet the "no chance in heck of failing" standard. Eliminating the one-change-only requirement could result in more of these. It certainly wouldn't result in less, I don't think. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Faint support though sharing GO's concerns. Johnbod (talk) 22:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

request for help tagging infectious disease categories

Could someone help tagging all the subcategories of Category:Infectious disease deaths by country, including Category:Infectious disease deaths in the United States? The centralized discussion is at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 September 22#Infectious diseases. RJC TalkContribs 18:54, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

User:Koavf

As this user has been active attempting to help at CFD (of which there have been issues in the past), I thought that CFD frequenters should be informed of the discussion to ban this user. - jc37 22:34, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Help needed for fixing Cfd template

I was stupid enough to put a Cfd template on Category_talk:Theories rather than Category:Theories. I tried copying the result of the substitution to right place, but apparently there is some magic going on behind the scenes so that it doesn't work that way. How can I fix this? If I just stick a new Cfd template on the category, do we get in trouble with the proposal date (which was yesterday)? --Hans Adler (talk) 09:53, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Apparently this wasn't a good place to ask this question. But it seems to be fixed now. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:53, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Bad close

I just noticed that I closed this discussion but I had participated in it. I need another admin to look at this and reclose it. Thanks. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Done. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

backlog - Help needed

Can someone look at this discussion delist all of the categories? A simple script should be able to get the job done. Right now it is creating a mess in the September log category making cleanup impossible. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:08, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Vegaswikian. How did all these categories get tagged in the first place? Whatever script or bot did that should be able to easily do the reverse. A quick check shows that user Koavf did the original tagging using AWB. Truthanado (talk) 15:49, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Category:Former buildings and structures of the United States

I would like to ask for some opinions on Category:Former buildings and structures of the United States and the various sub categories. Are Category:Demolished buildings and structures in the United States really notable for the way the ceased to exist? Category:Collapsed buildings in the United States may be notable for most of those structures, but how about for Category:Buildings destroyed by fire in the United States which may be the next to appear? I'm not convinced that this level of breakout is a good thing, but I'm not convinced that it is wrong. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:04, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree, "collapsed", and "demolished" should both be deleted. I'm having a hard time even justifying listification. (The "how" of being "former" doesn't seem to be a good way to categorise.) "Former" would seem to make the inclusion clear, without getting into the circumstances of why it's a "former" building.
And "abandoned" is really bad. For one thing, an abandoned building is still a building. Not sure about "defunct". Though I'm wondering if, for these, a list would be better. Then the time period of activity and the time period of being "abandoned" or "defunct" can be noted, as well as giving "real world" reasons why this may have happened (according to verifiable reliable sources, of course). - jc37 23:24, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
I think this diffusion scheme is reasoned and there's a clear analogy to people by cause of death. __meco (talk) 07:43, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

Preserve America Communities

I see that Category:Preserve America Communities was speedied to Category:Preserve America communities after Vegaswikian wrote "Found doing cleanup. Appears to be an incomplete nomination." Actually, it was a complete nomination, it was discussed, and it was withdrawn. See this diff. Odd as it may seem, it turns out that "Preserve America Community" is a proper name. --Orlady (talk) 01:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll reverse this since I made the change. Thanks for your notice on this. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:22, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Decade categories: is there a bot for this?

A series of article moves took place recently, namely 1900s was moved to 1900–1909, 1800s to 1800–1809, etc., because the real-world meaning of 1800s and similar is a century, not a decade, so it was misleading to have these titles used for decade articles (see the discussion at Talk:1800–1809).

Now the question arises of how to bring the category names into line with the articles (and with real-world usage). We have, for example, Category:1800s and its various subcategories. These ought to be renamed by replacing "1800s" by "1800–1809" in their names. And similarly for 1900s, 1700s, etc. back to 100s (2000s is staying where it is for now), and then the corresponding BC decades. Other decades - the '10s, '20s, '30s and so on - are not affected - it's only the hundreds decades that are the problem.

So - question - how can this be done with minimum effort and disruption? Is there a bot that could handle a large group of moves like this? Should they be proposed at CfD? If it's done manually (i.e. by "redirecting" each category manually), does it matter if we do them all at once, or should a parent category be renamed before/after its subcategories?

Advice gratefully received.--Kotniski (talk) 19:53, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

CfD sorting

If CfDs were transcluded, would it be possible to create CfD sorting? Sorting discussions may increase the number of people participating in them. Andjam (talk) 02:26, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Scope of discussions

Where would be the best place to discuss potential categories - i.e. creating them rather than getting rid of them. Richard001 (talk) 06:46, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've seen people post nominations for recreations of categories at CfD.
So, I see little reason why a new category structure shouldn't/couldn't be discussed in advance at Categories for discussion. - jc37 09:11, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Well some of us get confused by creations being posted there. I have discussion issues here in the past and I think this could be the best forum for questions. So I would say just expand on the opening post and let us know what you want to do. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:00, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, I'm guessing that discussions should be made on this talk page and not on the main page, as everything gets removed from there and an outcome slapped on it. However, I'm not sure that posts on this talk page will receive as much attention (especially somewhat dated ones).
One possibility I was thinking about was categories for people's birthday. We have births categorized by year, but not by date. Date is notable because it defines a person's birthday, and viewers can then see who has/had a birthday on any particular date. This would entail the creation of a category 'births by date', and that in turn would have the parent category 'births', currently redirecting to 'births by year'. Richard001 (talk) 07:52, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
You may wish to speak with User:Carcharoth. He's in the midst of meta-data categorisation discussions, and might be the one to talk with about this. - jc37 08:33, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Bot request: Need help tagging multiple categories for renaming

I am proposing the rename of a large number of "Registered Historic Places in..." categories to "National Register of Historic Places in..." (see this CFD section), but I have not yet tagged all of the affected categories. Is there a bot available to do this? The template needing to be added is in the form {{subst:cfr|National Register of Historic Places in [jurisdiction name]|Category:Registered Historic Places in Alabama}} and the categories needing to be tagged are the subcategories with names in the form "Category:Registered Historic Places in..." in Category:Registered Historic Places in Florida, Category:Registered Historic Places in Illinois, Category:Registered Historic Places in Indiana, Category:Registered Historic Places in Kentucky, and Category:Registered Historic Places in Oregon. --Orlady (talk) 16:23, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

No longer needed, but bot help would have been nice. --Orlady (talk) 16:23, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Ask on the bot request page in future. Rich Farmbrough, 15:06 27 October 2008 (UTC).

Clarify procedure instructions

Could you please clarify the procedure instructions for: "Edit the category.Add one of the following tags at the top of the category text of every category to be deleted or renamed."

Suggested additional clarification: "Do not place this tag on the talk page; edit the main page." (please adjust official wording as needed)

Reason: since the procedure for renaming most other pages in WP requires that the template be placed on the talk page; being a new WP user, I was unsure where the template should be placed correctly and what "category text" refers to. Thank you! Funandtrvl (talk) 17:56, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I've edited the instructions in an attempt to clarify this issue. - Stepheng3 (talk) 17:16, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Soft redirect cleanup

Is it reasonable to add to the working section:

Soft redirects with content to be moved

as task that the bots can cleanup? My other though would be to add this as a speedy reason to allow some review before it is turned over to the bots to do the work. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:01, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I've read this several times and still can't quite tell what you're asking. Would you further clarify? - jc37 07:08, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Right now, it looks like the bots are not doing any soft redirect moves. So I see two options. One is to simply allow these to be added to the working subpage and let the bots do their thing. Since the redirect is there this should not be a problem. However current policy is to have a discussion on anything that is added for the bots to do, so allowing this could be unacceptable. The other option would be to allow these moves to be nominated as a speedy. This would allow some minimal level of review so that if there is an issue with the move it can be brought up and then discussed. This would require a change in what can be a done as a speedy. Does that help? Vegaswikian (talk) 07:14, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
I just know that I'm going to feel foolish once you explain it, but...
What's a "soft redirect move"? - jc37 07:26, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The dash in category names

Your thoughts and insight would be welcome. - jc37 12:11, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Big set of categories to be renamed - one big nomination, or several smaller ones?

Over at User:Htonl/South Africa provincial category renaming we've been discussing the renaming of a whole bunch of categories related to the provinces of South Africa. The categories relating to the Western Cape were already renamed; see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Western Cape Province. Now I'm wondering: once we settle on exactly how the categories ought to be renamed, should we submit them to CfD as one big nomination, or as one for each province giving eight smaller nominations? The reasoning behind the renaming is the same for all the provinces, but I get the feeling that as one big nom they might be overwhelmingly large. Thoughts? - htonl (talk) 16:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

CfD can handle the nomination of 8 categories at once, especially if a single reasoning underlies them all. I recently nominated fifty at once. - Stepheng3 (talk) 01:26, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
P.S.: But remember to tag every category affected! - Stepheng3 (talk) 01:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Ah yes, I know about the tagging. But it's not 8 categories at once, it's actually about 50 categories as once, which could potentially be broken up into 8 separate groups. But if you've done nominations for 50 at once, then I suppose I can do the same. - htonl (talk) 01:31, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
I would generally keep the nominations for each province separate, though in each province nomination you could have multiple categories. This will prevent confusion in case there is a concern with only one of the proposed provincial names. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:36, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Category histories for moved categories?

Another user is asking (here) for category histories to be retained after a move. Is this possible? --Orlady (talk) 16:21, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

If you mean the history of a category's membership, then it would be nice to have such histories retained at all. But AFAIK they aren't.--Kotniski (talk) 16:35, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I believe you are correct regarding category membership. However, I think he's looking for the history of who first created the category, when it was created, etc. --Orlady (talk) 17:39, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Isn't that preserved in the same way as for other page moves?--Kotniski (talk) 17:48, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
No, it isn't. When a category is moved, a new category is created and the old one is deleted. For example, see the history for Category:National Register of Historic Places in Alabama. This category was created a couple of days ago as the result of a move, and there's no hint of the history prior to the move. --Orlady (talk) 19:42, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I see what you mean. Looks like it's just the bots being lazy - instead of moving a page, it deletes one category and creates another. Something to take up with the bot owners, I suppose.--Kotniski (talk) 07:03, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
You can not move a category the way you move articles. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:11, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes, looks like you're right. Anyone know why? (Problem with the residual redirect not working properly, I suppose.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:54, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
You can't move it because there is no "move" tab. This means that the programmers haven't put this feature in their code. I don't know why that is. If they are going to improve the programming of categories. I wish they would add a simple way to move categories, complete histories of category membership, and the ability to revert the membership. If this were to happen, I'd go back to working on populating them. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 08:38, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
I have a vague recollection that at one time, once a category was completely depopulated, it could be "moved". Then at a later time, that ability was reverted. I personally think that that would be great to have again. - jc37 08:44, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
It seems to me that it ought to be possible to save a record of the history of a category (even if only as a flat text copy of the history page) when the category is moved. However, I'm not clear on why that history would need to be kept, except as a log of the contributors' work. (I don't think Wikipedia would ever need to prove the history of a category for copyright purposes...) --Orlady (talk) 15:36, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
Well technically anyone who's contributed anything copyrightable to the category page (such as descriptive text) has the right to have their contribution recorded in the history. In most cases there probably won't be any such material there; but then the history probably won't be of much interest. What would be far more useful is what Sam suggests - a record of the history of the membership of a category.--Kotniski (talk) 09:29, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Recreation of Category:Falsettos

Someone just recreated Category:Falsettos which was recently deleted in a CFD. I nominated it for a speedy delete.Nrswanson (talk) 15:27, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. - Stepheng3 (talk) 23:03, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Transcluding Discussions

There have been many discussions about transluding discussions (1, 2, 3, 4), all of which have just died out without a decision. I'm going to be bold and go ahead and translude all of the current discussions, and update the templates and whatnot for nominating categories. No one has really given a good reason not to translude discussions, but if someone has something to say, I will wait for 3 days before beginning. The new proposed procedure is here. MrKIA11 (talk) 18:14, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I didn't see this post til now, but I'm rather opposed to this change. this makes it more difficult rather than easier to comment. - jc37 05:22, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
How is it more difficult? You click the same edit button. MrKIA11 (talk) 03:37, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
More steps, more diffusion of the nominations, more diffcult to watchlist, and these are just a few of the more obvious problems. And looking at the confusion on this page, disruptive as well. - jc37 03:50, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Transcluding the discussion makes nominations more difficult in that at least one step is added. It also makes it more difficult to use a non-standard nomination, which I think is the way you do things. While there are some advantages, I'm not convinced that we need them here at this time. Also a change like this should have been publicized better before implementing. However changing back involves undoing a few template changes. Another question is will this affect the process of creating discussion archives and indexes? Vegaswikian (talk) 06:00, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Could you give an example of a non-standard nominatoin that would pose a problem? When would be a good time? How else could it have been publicized. I tried all the places I could think of. MrKIA11 (talk) 03:37, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
One other concern I have with this implementation is when I go over the 4 links noted, it seems to me that most were opposed to it except for the VP discussion in which most were "meh, just don't do this to DRV".
The first 3 conversations were short and ended without a response. The forth was all supports. The opposes were to DRV. MrKIA11 (talk) 03:37, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I'd also like to hear Good Olfactory's opinion since he gave a "strong support" at the VP discussion.
As for changing this back, I think it should happen immediately in order to have less of a disruption, and because otherwise we'll be chasing edit histories over several pages. - jc37 06:19, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
  • OMG - I thought I was losing my mind. (No rude comments, please!) Not knowing of this change, I inadvertently "cleaned up" the transclusion links when I posted a new CFD section using the old cfd template. I eventually figured out why part of the page had disappeared, and restored the links. But I still had no idea WTF was going on until I checked here and saw this bit of discussion. A change this substantial really should have been noticed at the top of each day's CFD discussions to make sure that everybody knew it was being discussed and/or in the works. Cgingold (talk) 13:03, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
PS - Is there any reason I should bother with setting up the (missing) sub-page for the section I created? Cgingold (talk) 13:30, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
The new templates are not working very smoothly for me. The instructions are confusing and misleading, and I've been having trouble editing a discussion once I start it. Try using them and you'll see what I mean. - Stepheng3 (talk) 21:51, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
I tried to improve the instructions. Which ones in particular were confusing? MrKIA11 (talk) 03:37, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, it's looking like there isn't consensus appearing for this change. So per WP:BRD, I think the next step is to revert. And if further discussion generates a consensus then we can go from there. - jc37 03:01, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
One simple question: What is the motivation behind the change to the process? - jc37 03:50, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
2 main reasons: 1) To make a uniform way of doing deletion discussions. I was planning on trying to change TfD next. 2) So that the conversations can be transluded on other pages. MrKIA11 (talk) 03:55, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
While I'm a fairly big fan of standardisation, it's been pretty much established that different XfD discussions have different "needs", especially due to the quantity of nominations. And we should only transclude every discussion when there is an overwhelming "need". And CfD (and TfD) are nowhere near the same amount of discussions as AfD. There simply isn't the "need". When any particular discussion becomes "too long", someone can always make it a subpage of the log page and link to the sub page from the log page. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. - jc37 04:06, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
But why would it hurt to have separate subpages? It may not be needed, but why not welcome? MrKIA11 (talk) 04:23, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
As I noted above: "More steps, more diffusion of the nominations, more diffcult to watchlist, and these are just a few of the more obvious problems. And looking at the confusion on this page, disruptive as well." - jc37 04:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
1 more step, not 10. The nominations are still all in one place, but also in other places. How are they harder to watchlist? The only way I can think is if you comment on every nomination, and want to see the responses, in which case you should be looking at the log page constantly. But if more likely you are only commenting on a few, this allows you to see if there is a change only to that discussion, instead of others that you're not interested in. The only disruption was for a few hours, maybe a day, since those that are used to the old system weren't sure what was up, but I couldn't think of any other way to publicize it. At least half of the nominations on the 24th were done the new way, with apparently no problems. MrKIA11 (talk) 13:07, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
As for transclusion, each log page can be transcluded. And if the goal is to provide a sort of "portal" for certain types of CfD discussions, that can be done with a simple link, there is no need for complete transclusion. Convienience to actively discuss trumps convenience in filtering out some discussions so that they may be read (and not necessarily discussed). - jc37 04:06, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
There is already AfD sorting, and this way CfDs could be sorted in the same way. This way those that specialize in a certain topic can see all the discussions related to that topic in one place. Doing this would also increase the number of eyes that see each discussion, which I would assume would increase the amount of discussion. The more places, the more eyes, the more discussion. I'm not saying the conversations should be moved to topic sections, just that they can be included there also. MrKIA11 (talk) 04:23, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
That can be done with links which target specific sections. And again, I'll note that different XfDs have different "needs". Many of the "sorting" processes for AfD are simply due to the vast quantity of AfD nominations. There's just no need to spread this to the other XfD pages. - jc37 04:33, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Actually it can't. A link to a section will often be overlooked. Just because it's not needed, doesn't mean it's not better. I'm still waiting to hear a reason why it's bad, not why it's not needed, but why it's bad. MrKIA11 (talk) 13:07, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
And this is a further problem in that by having the discussions grouped on a page, it's more likely that people who might not have commented in a discussion, might. We should attempt to be as inclusive as possible, not to arbitrarily separate by topic merely for aesthetics. - jc37 04:06, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I've reverted the edits as I noted above.
I didn't (yet) revert the splitting of October 24 and 25, per Vegaswikian's comments above. I'm not sure which would cause more "disruption". I'm going to post a note on each page that these were a "test" (which is essentially what they were). So as to hopefully not confuse everyone for those two days at least. - jc37 04:58, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for waiting until there was a consensus, oh wait, you didn't. I see that apparently since you think the old way is better, that overrules my opinion that the new way is better. None of the other people that commented in this section have responded to the questions I asked, and once again it looks like it is just going to die out because of hard headed people. MrKIA11 (talk) 13:07, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
Ah, sarcasm. I actually enjoy sarcasm as an art, though it's usually better if the irony involved was based upon an understanding of the topic. For example, As the person who declined your CSD requests at each CFD template talk page had noted, there is apparently no consensus for your modification. So, per WP:BRD, you were bold, I reverted, and here's the discussion. (Noting that I did wait for you to present your case before the reversion.)
All that aside, calling someone "hard-headed" probably doesn't help support your position of good faith. - jc37 06:07, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in responding to this. While I admit, this would be useful for transcluding to other pages, I too don't see the need. You can just as easily link to the discussion instead of transcluding it, and I agree that CFD isn't busy enough to necessitate the added steps. To answer "why it's bad", it's not bad to transclude each discussion, but then again, it's not bad to leave it as is. --Kbdank71 15:26, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Linking a discussion is nothing like transluding it, and there would only be 1 added step. If there are more pros to translude, then why not do it? MrKIA11 (talk) 15:37, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Didn't say it was the same, I said you could just as easily do either. Nor did I say there were more pros to transclude, I said it would be useful. But that doesn't overcome the need to do it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. --Kbdank71 15:45, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
That's a perfect analogy, but even though it's not broke, why not improve it? MrKIA11 (talk) 16:07, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Because there is no need to. CFD works fine, IMO, and I haven't heard from anyone saying otherwise. I think you have a solution and you're in search of a problem. That's not a reason to make the change. --Kbdank71 16:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
The point of my changes is so that CfDs can be seen easier in more places, not to change the way CfDs are handled. I just want to be able to show all things being deleted on Wikipedia related to a WikiProject in one place, but that's not possible with links. MrKIA11 (talk) 17:08, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
The "point of the changes" is so that you can more easily format these discussions to Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Deletion and its subpages. Let's not attempt to doubletalk the situation.
And I am empathetic. But since this particular change doesn't appear to have consensus, perhaps it would be better looking for other alternatives?
For example, I note that the archives of the pages only show links Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Deletion/September 2008. So the "need" for full transclusion may not be as "dire" as you indicate.
Anyway, as another option, perhaps you may wish to check out User talk:B. Wolterding/Article alerts. - jc37 06:07, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
I wasn't trying to doubletalk the situation, but some people change their thinking when they find out it is related to WP:VG. I don't care as much about the archives as the actual deletion page, which is what matters because that has the discussions before they are closed; and the whole discussion, not just a link. A closed discussion doesn't matter that much. MrKIA11 (talk) 14:57, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

(←) Actually, there is another slight benefit to the transclusion method. Once a link to a debate is established, it stays established, even if the debate is relisted. This might be particularly important for related AfD / CfD / MfD / TfD debates. That being said, I don't see the need at this time. As for WP:VG, a carefully written assisted bot could still link to the permanent address of the subpage section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Arthur Rubin (talk • contribs) 16:20, November 7, 2008 (UTC)

I have notified WikiProject Deletion sorting about this discussion. It can appear as if the people who have been discussing this subject thus far aren't fully aware of this WikiProject. I strongly support implementing transclusion of CfD discussions so that these can be transcluded onto the topical notification pages and thus attract more people to the CfDs. It has been generally acknowledged that community interest in these discussions is inadequate and that many discussions are closed without sufficient input. Therefore, the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" argument presented above seems unfounded. The CfD process at present does not work satisfactorily. __meco (talk) 12:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I think it's more a case of: "If it's not broken, let's not break it".
And as I noted above, someone is working on a better system right now. It's actually "done", and it's now merely a case of tweaking. - jc37 17:01, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

speedy delete policy - 4 days or 72 hours?

What's the correct answer?

-Stephen

I always thought it was 4 days, but having said that I hadn't noticed the 72 hour statement in Wikipedia:Category deletion policy#Speedy delete policy before, and I would imagine that would take precedence? Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:51, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
I'd bet a change happened along the way and not every place that mentioned it was changed. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:56, 5 November 2008 (UTC)


I'm more comfortable with the longer time, 4 days. IMHO there's no real rush on these, and 4 days give a little more time for objections/population, which IMHO should be the real reason for the delay. That all said, this might become moot at some point, as I've seen discussions about standardizing the delays in the various CSD reasons. Not sure if that discussion is currently active, but if it runs to completion, it would likely include standardizing this one as well. - TexasAndroid (talk) 14:04, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Three days, four days, four minutes? It doesn't really matter because there is no way to determine how long a category has been empty. Whoever decides whether or not to press the delete button generally has to take your word for it regardless. — CharlotteWebb 16:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually, there is a way to be relatively sure, and as an admin I can usually have a good idea who's taken the care to make sure and who has not. When you find an empty category, don't immediately nominate it for deletion. Wait the x amount of time. Then, once that time period has elapsed, nominate it if it's still empty. You can also use Special:UnusedCategories to assist. It's not foolproof, obviously, but it certainly increases the chances of not deleting a category outside of the time period. It's generally not hard to tell who has done this and who has not. Those who don't wait the time period have often manually emptied the category immediately before nominating it, so it's usually not too hard to "catch" these. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:43, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
User:Stepheng3 has a very useful way of assisting in showing that the categories have indeed been empty for the needed time. He blanks the category when he first finds it empty. This 1) serves as a notice to the eventual closing admin that it was empty on that date, 2) lets it show up in watchlists if anyone wants to fix the emptiness situation, and 3) puts an entry in his own contributions list that he can use four days later to check again if it is still empty before CSDing it. - TexasAndroid (talk) 19:21, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
That's a great method. Good Ol’factory (talk) 20:27, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

If there's no timely objection, I plan to be WP:BOLD and make things consistent by changing WP:Category deletion policy to say 4 days. - Stepheng3 (talk) 17:50, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I personally don't oppose making them consistent (in other words, as far as I'm concerned, feel free to make the edit). - jc37 07:04, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Tagging notice

In looking over the page, and the discussions which led to the "rule" of 4 days (24 hours to 72 hours to 4 days), it merely notes that the category should be empty for four days before speedy deletion. Not that it should be empty for four days before being tagged for deletion.

My understanding has been that we tag the category, and then those who assess the tag, are to wait the prescribed time until deletion. It's how WP:PROD works, and for that matter how every other XfD discussion works.

(It also has the added benefit of indicating exactly when the category was empty.)

That said, I also note that in my experience, "common practice" on this has been varied. Personally, I think the confusion is because this is a CSD with time constraints, and most who deal with CSD have a wont to immediately assess and delete upon seeing a tag. (And based upon that, perhaps this shouldn't be called a "CSD" criteria? It might help reduce confusion.)

I suggest that we clarify this on Template:db-c1. - jc37 06:04, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

If we want a wait after tagging, I suggest a new, intermediate, tag. The other things that wait, like images, are given a tag that specifically warns that they may be deleted after the time is up. It's not a CSD tag, and does not get an actual CSD tag until the time is up and the images are actually ready to be deleted.
A new tag, worded to specifically show that the cat is in a waiting period, might help a lot of this. A new tag could put the entry into a new category, which could be easily watched by anyone interested for entries that have passed the 4 day window, not just the initial tagger. Admins could C1 directly out of the new cat, or the tag could be replaced with the existing CSD tag by non-admins. And tagging accomplishes all the useful purposes currently accomplished by blanking the cat, and the cat no longer needs to be actually blanked, removing what was IMHO the one drawback of that process.
If nothing else, I think that waiting cats should not be cluttering up Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, which is where the existing CSD C1 tags put things. Things in CAT:CSD are ready to be deleted, not in a waiting time. A new tag solves this issue as well. - TexasAndroid (talk) 13:49, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
A couple thoughts. First, moving this to a separate cat may cause it to be less likely to be patrolled. Also, categories are automatically in their own section at CSD, so they aren't "cluttering" it up. And it's not as if there is ever a large number of categories up for CSD. All one has to do is click on each one individually in order to tell when the 4 days is up. Why add another level of WP:BURO? - jc37 02:38, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
If I see an empty category which looks like it was probably unpopulated for a while, I just C1 it on the spot. If I think it may have been populated recently, I use the {{delayed}} template to have it deleted later - this doesn't confirm that the category hasn't been populated and later de-populated, but it does give some feedback. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 17:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:Sweet breads

I found this category as the result of pursuing a disambiguation from sweet bread, which was linked in Mexican cuisine; in clarification there I added pan dulce but had to link the category in-text as it's how the disambiguation page is written, i.e. I didn't know what else to do. I'm very uncomfortable with teh category name; "sweetbread" in English is rarely spoken of as meaning anything else than sliced, diced and sauteed thymus as a "delicacy"...."pastries" is the more normal English usage, "cakes", whatever.....the only name I can think of that might work as an alternate similar to the current category would be Category:Sweetened breads which is far preferable ot the current. I didn't want to propose this as a namechange directly and I guess am here looking for options.....Skookum1 (talk) 15:59, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Use of non-English but still roman-script diacriticals

I've been concerned for a while now about complications and ease-of-use issues related to certain First Nations categories which use unusual diacriticals that are hard to read, for one thing, and which are not the most common usage; thought they ARE the "most politically correct" usage (and therefore somewhat POV). I didn't see anything on the naming conventions page so will raise the specific categories here, and their desired (by me) simplified forms.

  • Category:Sťáťimc -> Category:St'at'imc
    • comment Even "St'at'imc" - which doesn't use the special apostrophe t' of the existing catname is a bad compromise, but it's current in regional media now; even though it is 'properly pronounced "Stlatliumh", which is also an older historical spelling now branded "incorrect" by latter-day political-correctors. The /t'/ formation in reformed Lillooet language (St'at'imcets) is a /tl/ sound and so also is not an English character, albeit it is a roman script one; the 'c' is silent or more like an aspirant /h/. Another once-politically-correct spelling is Stl'atl'imx, which is still used by some organizations that don't use the St'at'imc spelling. Other than those technicalities, the problem is ease-of-use because of the special t-apostrophe and the accent-a (which is not an ordinary accent-a either....).
      • comment The category is arguably misspelled: it uses "ť". which is lowercase "Ť", a Czech letter. Even pedantically, it should probably be "tʼ", lowercase t followed by modifier letter apostrophe. Neither of these is very useful as a category name.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:31, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
I think you misunderstood - the characters in question are used in "official St'at'imcets"; they may have originated in Czech, but they're now part of St'at'imcets; your capitalized version as noted looks like the way WSANEC and SENCOTEM look when properly diacriticalzed (in that language, not in ours....).Skookum1 (talk) 03:19, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
How strange! I guess that's the dark underbelly of Unicode—all those characters are out there, many are finding their way into fonts, so might as well use 'em.--Curtis Clark (talk) 06:09, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Are Czech diacriticals used in Czech-related category names, i.e. in English Wikipedia?Skookum1 (talk) 15:18, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
They certainly shouldn't be used to misspell St'at'imc language words under any circumstances. I suspect it was a hypercorrection; certainly the uppercase SŤÁŤIMC wouldn't seem correct to anyone. (I generally lean toward using diacritics and other strange characters in article names if they are falling into common English use—after all, names such as La Cañada, Año Nuevo, and Ȣendat are now even on highway signs—but I certainly support category names that can be typed on an en-us keyboard.)--Curtis Clark (talk) 17:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
or en-can or whatever it's called for the canadian keyboard :-) (what's "Ȣendat" - Wendat?) Thing is the ñ has been standard in English for a long time; even "cañon" was the usual 19th Century spelling for what we now write as canyon; and in areas such as California or Canada where there's a bilingual heritage a mixture of spellings is common; e.g. in Canadian English, Quebec has no accent, while Montreal does (but I've been too lazy to ever figure out the keyboard shortcuts for accent-e's). Also the slash- from Scandinavian and the various umlauts are familiar (though often dropped in many cases, such as from Finnish names commonly once anglicized) but those are all used by more than one language, and one language with long exposure to English and vice-versa. But when the characters are very obscure and particular to one language, and part of a special spelling system for that language, it's questionable whether they should so freely "become part of English just like the umlaut and slash-o", as the argument might go. Thing is we have alternatives for the slash-o and the umlauts (add 'e' to the other character, e.g. Roethenburg), which is like using /tl/ for /t'/ - and in this one particular language, /t'/ very expressly does NOT (and intentionally not, kind of a political thing I think) represent what it does in neighbouring languages, specifically the Thompson and Shuswap languages (old enmities run deep...). Nlakapamuctsin (Thompson) for "white man" is t'sama (plosive/ejective-type t and a "sh" sound), but if that were St'at'imcets would be [tlshama]. Sorry for the digression; part of my point here is that such characters don't have anything near the same meaning across languages; some do, many particular ones don't; in "proper Halqemeylem the colon in Sto:lo is two inverted triangles followed by a space; at one time the mainstream print media in BC, very briefly, tried to put it in print as "Sto: lo" but in sentences it looked odd as a punctuation followed by a .... Spanish objective pronoun. So "simplification" of such characters is obviously easiest; the colon and the /7/ (glottal stop) are conventions in current English in the region affected and "on the keyboard"; the other characters are not. There are also variable spelling systems for the same language, in parallel and competing use, so which alternate character, or spelling is to be used, becomes a matter of subjective opinion, i.e. it's POV. I know I just said what you said all over again but wanted to stress why.Skookum1 (talk) 18:31, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
"Ȣendat" is a Ȣendat spelling of Wendat. In the original proposal for encoding "Ȣ" there was a photo of a highway sign in Québec (or is that Quebec?) that was spelled "8endat" and another that used the correct form of the glyph.--Curtis Clark (talk) 06:09, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Is /Ȣ/ a different sound than /w/? Otherwise the change is just what I call a "political affectation" (but then so is "Ca'clip" vs "Xa'xlip" (both names for a place otherwise known as Fountain). And for the record, in Canadian English, it's "Quebec" without an accent - for the province; I'm not sure if that may vary for the city - why "we" use the accent for "Montréal" when we don't use it for "Quebec" is kinda mysterious; given that Montreal was until the 1970s the largest English-speaking city in Canada and was always spelled without the /é/. What I've learned in the course of my life, though, is that political correctness is rarely consistent, and even more rarely logical. More like it is always" "consistently irrational".Skookum1 (talk) 15:19, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Alas for your theory, it was originally a ligature of "ou" used by French missionaries to the Wendat/Ȣendat, "w" at the time being even less used in French than it is today.--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:18, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
Ah, so it's actually a way of not having "English" on road signs....very much a "political affectatin", and oh-so-Quebecois...I wonder if they'll get around to fixing roadsigns in Hull to point to its better half as "OttaȢa".Skookum1 (talk) 17:22, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
You seem to have an agenda, and I suspect I would disagree with most of it save the need for category names that can be entered with standard keyboards, so perhaps we should agree to agree on that, see if anyone disagrees, and then make the changes.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:29, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

[undent]No, it's not me that has the agenda, it's the agenda of those demanding that these spellings become part of normal English that is the agenda, a POV-tained agenda, that I'm trying to stop the spread of. Surely South African and American and Australian English speakers can't be expected to contend with the special meaning of the /t'/ in St'at'imcets vs the use of similar-looking characters for Chinookan and Nlaka'pamux, which mean something different? If characters were being introduced into English with consistent meanings, as is the case with teh umlauts and the a/e accents and c-cedilla and so on, then fine; but when there's no consistency even within spelling systems for any one of those languages, then how can there be a consistency in English, if the source language itself is not consistent, and also if the new "loan-characters" do not have a consistent meaning/usage - the Skwxwu7mesh /kw/ is different from teh Kwak'wala /kw/ for instance; but in teh case of the diacriticals used on Sto:lo and St'at'imc they're unique for those languages and do not have any other use in English; and again different organizations within that culturel/language group may have different spelligns and/or different character-sets. That is my agenda, if anything; wanting English to retain its customary 26 letters and assorted doo-dads, and to not wind up with an eighty-character alphabet; at least within Hungarian or Czech of Polish there is a relative consistency; this can't be said of nearly any native language; one reason I chose Ninstints as the name of that article, other than it remains the most widely-googled, is that there are diffeernet Haida spellings, and different Haida variations on the name Skungwai/SGang Gwaay etc...btw there's also another issue if you'll see the bottom of Talk:Skwxwu7mesh (or rather where that redirects to) about the underscore-x in that name, when fully diaritical, not displaying in a certain version of IE....Skookum1 (talk) 23:23, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Meant to add that Saanich language - but not North Straits Salish as a whole, uses an all-caps alphabet; WSANEC is what hte name of hte language looks like, or SENCOTEM but I can't do the diacriticals to do them properly; so the standard anglicization "Saanich" is obviously the most conventional, and not all that "ethnographically incorrect" either; "Songish" and "Songhees" are likewise standard derivations of whatever the proper North STraits Salish spelling is; I don't see why it can't be the same for other languages that similar do have different alphabets, and there's no good reason to foist them onto English as if English should have them, when they're one-language-specific....anyway don't mean to gripe it's just examples abound....though nb any Saanich category, ethno category that is, would have to be Category:Saanich people because of the use of that name as that of a municipality as well....Skookum1 (talk) 19:07, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
  • Category:Stó:lō -> Category:Sto:lo
    • comment Sto:lo is, for starters, an ethnonym used to include a number of groups within what it's intended to describe who don't use the term for themselves and view it as a political creation; the historical term was Fraser River Salish or Fraser River Indians - the Fraser River reference meaning only the last 100 miles of the river, not its entire course by the way. The same issue with ease-of-use applies here, but there are also variant diacriticals that can/have been used - a circumflex-o on the final character, a weird double-triangle colon instead of the "normal" one represented here. Now it just so happens that the diacritical spelling is not widely used in English-language texts, not even those published by at least one of the tribal councils using the name the diacriticals are, in fact, associated with one tribal council only. The main media usage in BC now is "Sto:lo", without accents on the o's but still using the colon; the /o:/ actually is supposed to be pronounced /ah/ as in "Stahlo", which is reflected in another "incorrect" historical spelling - Staulo - and the meaning is actually the name of the river. "Most common usage" and "ease of use" in this case like St'at'imc ;is the semi-diacritical form "Sto:lo" and it's one heck of a lot easier to type and there's no debate on which accent-o/overstrike-o/circumflex-o to use.
  • Category:Sḵwx̱wú7mesh -> Category:Skwxwu7mesh
  • comment Much the same argument as above for St'at'imc (especially) and here to note that as with Sto:lo the inclusion of a non-English character is de rigeur in currnet media/most-comomn-use; the usual English name for this group is "Squamish people" but as you'll see in Category:First Nations in British Columbia indigenous names are the standard (Secwepemc for Shuswap, Syilx for Okanagan, Tshilqot'in for Chilcotin, Dakelh for Carrier etc). The /7/ is a glottal stop and is seen in regular English-language media. The underscroe-k, underscore-x are awkward to render, and the w's are actually supposed to be superscript w's....this category has a name-change where one politically-correct version was replaced by the current one; neither of them readily usable by ordinary editors other than by copy-paste (which is what I've done here).
  • Category:Nuxálk -> Category:Nuxalk.
    • commentThis is a much simpler one, obviously, but it was also "the thing edge of the wedge" that engendered the other "correct" indigenous-category names above. The accent-a is never used in English media, although publications such as anthro/linguistics reports or publications of the people themselves (and not even then all that consistently). The main issue here is "typability" and ease-of-use, and the precedent that if this one has that diacritical it opens the door for use in the other ones....

Summarizing, I don't understand procedure well; if the above changes are together enough to belong on the main CFD page, please move them; I don't get all the stuff to do with placing of templates and so on, and I don't know if there's naming guidelines that dictate/suggest what is to be done in these cases....are there other extreme cases of non-English characters used in category names? I can't imagine there would be.....Skookum1 (talk) 16:03, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I would say for finding articles, the non-diacritic forms would be preferred, with redirects either to or from the page with the diacritics (such as Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation redirects to Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation (though it can easily go the other way instead)), but in the article body itself or the Category, the diacritics should be just fine... anyway, it isn't just a casual reader who generally looks at what comes under the Category, though this is one of the ways that makes Wiki a very handy tool... and it would typically those very familiar with the article subject that would be assigning a narrowing Category. CJLippert (talk) 17:03, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
What do you mean by "assigning a narrowing Category"?? And yes, ordinary readers don't look at hte categories much, and it doesnt' matter to them how the category is spelled. What I'm talking about is ease-of-use for edtiros - the only way to use the St'at'imc and Skwxu7kmesh caetegories is by endless copy-pasting. they're also, and I reapt once again, NOT used in standard English adaptations of these names. "Most common usage" is supposed to be the Wiki guideline not "as politically correct as possible". Whether it's St'atimc or Sto:lo, the diacriticalized forms and the non-diacriticalized forms aren't pronounceable anyway ,as explaiend above, not unless you know the details of hte language and are already aware the spellings aren't "in English". Is the category for China written in Hanzi? Is the category for Russia written in cyrillic? "Sto:lo" and "St'at'imc" - un-diacriticalized - are standard English adaptations and so "are in English" (even though they're misleading phonetically); the heavily-diacriticalized forms are not seen in English otehr than in very specific usages. AND there's no consistency in which diacriticals are used. Which is why the Skwxwju7mesh category got switched around from one kind of underline-X to another; the SPA who did that claimed it was the "correct underline x", as if that matters at all in English, and it's a POV opinion as to which underline-x is the correct one or not....Similarly there are other ways of making those apostrophe-t's, and also some versions fthat don't put an accent on the /a/, or which put another type of accent on the a/. Simplicity, most common usage, and facility of use, based on most common usage; this strikes me as far more important than promulgating one choice of fancy diacriticals overr a different set of fancy diacriticals. The same applies to article titles; Sto:lo, or where that direts, has seen a number of replacement titles based on whomever claims their "spelling" is the right one. And that happens to be also connected with one tribal council, not with both.Skookum1 (talk) 15:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Lowercase category names

I happened to notice Category:​µ-ziq albums. The title isn't how it first appears—it is not Category:µ-ziq albums—as the first character is actually [invisible] (U+200B ZERO WIDTH SPACE), which is being used so that the second character µ (U+03BC GREEK SMALL LETTER MU) isn't automatically capitalized as Μ (U+039C GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU) which looks just like M (U+004D LATIN CAPITAL LETTER M).

I'm undecided whether this a brilliant solution which should be more widely used (Category:IPod comes to mind), or an ugly hack which should be gotten rid of. — CharlotteWebb 16:59, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

It should be got rid of once we have a better way of doing it. Doesn't the {{lowercase}} method work on categories (as used at iPod)? No, it doesn't (I've just checked), so that's another in the long list of category-related things we ought to be asking the developers to fix. In the meantime, I guess the 0-width space solution is as good as any. Although it doesn't display correctly in my copy of IE6 (I see a square instead of nothing). --Kotniski (talk) 17:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

The DISPLAYTITLE/lowercase feature only changes how the title appears on the category page, not how the links to it appear when the category is used. I can put: 

[[Category:iPod]]

at the bottom of an article but it will still show up as: 

<a href="/wiki/Category:IPod" title="Category:IPod">IPod</a>

after I save it. Maybe we can get a software change that checks for DISPLAYTITLE on each category when rendering the links… — CharlotteWebb 19:34, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I'm not endorsing the use of this hack but still you should consider upgrading to IE7. — CharlotteWebb 19:37, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I think I'm going to go with "ugly hack". It appears to work when viewing, but your casual editor (and apparently those with older browsers) will find it difficult to categorize articles. --Kbdank71 19:50, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the older browser makes it easier, since you can see the extra character. In any case you can copy and paste the category from another article or from the title of the category page, which is what I assume most people will do. I think we can conclude it's an ugly but ingenious solution to a problem resulting from imperfections in the software. I wouldn't necessarily want it used for Category:IPod, which is at least comprehensible with the initial capital, but in the case mentioned the category would be quite incomprehensible with a capitalized mu, so use of the fix is justified.--Kotniski (talk) 08:28, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Incidentally I filed a feature request for this at Bugzilla, [4], which people can vote for if they're interested (and if they think that has the slightest effect).--Kotniski (talk) 10:39, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Albums by genre per year?

Recently created are categories Category:Hip hop albums by year and many subcategories, such as Category:Hip hop albums in 2008. I know there are many "Albums by genre" categories and "Albums by year" categories, but I have never seen what basically amounts to an "Album by genre by year" category. I would like to nominate these for CfD, but I am not sure if a deletion or rename is more in order. The rename would be to something along the lines of Category:2008 hip hop albums or Category:Hip hop albums of 2008. Looking for some feedback prior to a CfD. Thanks. --Wolfer68 (talk) 17:56, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:Mass media - possible huge task ahead...

At some time, it looks like Category:Media was moved to Category:Mass media - a good move IMO: as an artist I use media like paint and charcoal, and understand how ambiguous the term may be. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Category:Mass media's subtypes still use Category:X media or Category:Media of X. That's about 300 subtypes, including over 180 "by country" categories. I'm on dial-up, so the idea of proposing close to 300 categories for renaming is daunting, to say the least. Do you think it's worth listing/changing these all, and if so, is there an easier way of doing it than manually adding the CFD templates etc (is a bot availablee, for instance?) Grutness...wha? 06:08, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Several of us have discussed this off and on for literally several years.
And there's also the "media based on media"/"media adapted from/to media", among several others.
(And of course media/medium, as well.)
The easiest plan may be to change the parent cat naming from "media/medium" to "works" (creative works, literary works) singular or plural depending on consensus.
This way we avoid most of the problems, and return to clarity in naming.
Category:Creative works and all it's subcats. (Especially the subcats of Category:Works by source).
Most of these media subcats can just be upmerged or renamed to fit the already existing scheme.
Further thoughts welcome. - jc37 10:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

city, state and city categories

Over the years there has been a move to rename all of these to be of the form Category:City, State. I have generally take the position that this was not correct since the categories tend to include more then items in the city. Others have stated that is not a concern. As was pointed out in this discussion, LA is a good example of a vague term and without a restriction of these categories to the actual city borders, the categories become ambiguous. Using the LA discussion, it is clear that the city is well defined. And the city is included in several other logical groupings.

Is it necessary to separate the cities categories from these other areas and allow for these broader areas to contain the cites as included entities or do we make keep this as a mishmash of stuff? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:16, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

This is probably more something within the scope of Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (settlements) than here, I would have thought. Once there's a hard and fast rule there, it gets applied here, not the other way round. BTW, I'd amend what you've written above to there has been a move to rename all articles about American cities to be of the form... There certainly doesn't seem to be a similar move for other countries. Grutness...wha? 23:07, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Category:Monte Carlo Masters

Hi. My question isn't about the above category per se, but about the large number of sub-categories which are arranged by year. Surely this is an example of over-categorisation, since each yearly sub-category is unlikely (I presume) to ever have more than one or two entries ? Surely an article such as 1996 Monte Carlo Open - Singles would be better categorised under Category:1996 ATP Tour and Category:Monte Carlo Masters, rather than having its own category ? CultureDrone (talk) 16:13, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Re-evaluate C1 time period

The C1 time period began as 24 hours, then became 72 (3 days), and now is 4 days.

When the latter was implemented, CFD was 7 days. Now it's 5. So if the 4 days was half the length of CFD rounded up, then perhaps this should be 3 days (half of 5 rounded up). - jc37 02:42, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I think that one thing worth noting here is that a category deleted per C1 does not fall under G4. So a category deleted with a C1 rationale could be re-created at any time. - jc37 14:26, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) It would certainly seem more helpful to define a time (maybe a shorter one) between tagging and deletion than between emptying and deletion, unless someone has a workable method of checking how long a category's been empty. Perhaps one day after tagging/blanking? It's not a huge issue if a wanted category gets deleted while it's empty, after all, it can always be created again.--Kotniski (talk) 12:36, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

  • Given the difficulties in determining how long it was empty, is there a good reason for any time limit? If the category is deleted in error, it can be recreated. This problem is with a category being emptied and that can be a problem to fix. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:53, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
  • The only problem with having no time limit is that it would pseudo-legitimise the action of emptying a category manually and then immediately nominating it for deletion. I think that's probably the main action that the time limit discourages. If there's a time period that has to lapse, it often provides a chance for those who watch the category to note that it's been depopulated. If it can be immediately deleted—sure, it can be re-created, but then we probably increase the chances of edit-warring occurring over the category's contents and existence. I think there should at least be a nominal time delay required, even if it's only 24 or 48 hours. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:04, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
    But you agree that it should be a delay after tagging, not after emptying? The only problem might be that it becomes annoying for those who do speedy deletes (who expect to be able to do them straight away). In fact, on reflection, why don't we abandon this criterion altogether, and simply WP:PROD empty categories? If the only problem with them is that they're empty, then it doesn't really matter if they sit around for a few more days.--Kotniski (talk) 11:21, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
    Because a really big deal was made about PROD being only to be used in mainspace. Adding any other namespace would likely be contentious. Plus, We'd have to make it clear that PROD could only be used for empty categories. Let's not confuse people any more than we already are : ) - jc37 12:57, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
And I agree that a duration of some kind should exist. No less than 24 hours/1 day. (Though WP:IAR applies, of course.)
(Though I don't think it should be longer than 72 hours/3 days.) - jc37 12:57, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
But again, are you talking about a duration since emptying, or since tagging? --Kotniski (talk) 13:40, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
Since someone noted that it was empty.
Categories aren't always empty due to someone intentionally depopulating. Sometimes they're typoes that someone merely left behind, and sometimes, over time, they become disused, sometimes because the pages it held were deleted, or even merely redirected, or because someone may have dabbed the cat to another cat (for various reasons).
So it's easier to say "since someone noted it being empty", than to say "since it's been empty". For one thing, as noted above, it can be far easier to determine when someone noted it empty. (Through tagging/blanking/null edit/whatever.)
Does that clarify? - jc37 13:49, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
So if I notice that a category's empty, should I wait n hours/days before tagging it for deletion, or should I tag it immediately and expect the deleters to wait n hours/days before acting on it? (The first option is annoying to me, and I will probably just forget about it; the second option is - I would imagine - annoying to those that do speedy deletions.)--Kotniski (talk) 14:09, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
That's actually a fairly good question. My understanding is that it works like any other XfD tag. Tag, and x length of time later, it will be assessed.
However, it seems that there may be some confusion on that point, since the tags auto-lists the cat in the CSD category. And so it might be deleted immediately by those who either perhaps aren't aware of the time frame (thinking that if it's in the category, it must be ready for deletion), or those who feel that the tagging should only happen after the four days, and presume that is the convention.
Currently, it seems that everyone is operating under their own pre-suppositions.
That said, I can see the "annoyance" of those speedily deleting, since categorisation doesn't note "time". So that means that those who do CSD would have to look at cats over and over again during that 4 day period. (Which is definitely a support for 24 hours/1 day being the duration.) So I can see why they would prefer that whatever is in the cat only be something which is immediately to be assessed.
That said, there typically are not very many cats in the speedy cat, so it really isn't a huge issue, though the length of the duration of the waiting period would compund the issue (and the amount of categories to repeatedly look through), of course. - jc37 14:23, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
In view of the confusion you refer to, maybe falling back on PROD wouldn't be a bad idea? At least propose it to see if anyone objects. It has the advantage that the time delay is already built in exactly how we want it.--Kotniski (talk) 15:06, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
Feel free to propose it, but I doubful of support. (I might oppose it myself for various reasons.)
That aside, PROD faces a similar problem in that the length of time of AFD is also 5 days (reduced from 7), but PROD is still 4. It also could probably benefit by a reduction to 72 hours/3 days, for the same reasons I noted at the top. (Noting that it's much easier to restore a page deleted through a PROD than it is to restore a category and its contents.) - jc37 15:30, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not clear now exactly what your favoured soultion is. Nor do I understand the "problem" with PROD. It doesn't seem very important to me exactly what the time period is; we just want to have a mechanism for enforcing that time period without inconvenience or extra bureaucracy. Unless we want to abandon the time delay altogether and just say that empty categories (except those that are expected to be empty) can be deleted at any time (and normally recreated if found to be necessary again).--Kotniski (talk) 13:13, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
(de-dent) - PROD is focused for one thing, and to try to fold other precesses into it could be disruptive, and cause more problems than it solves. (Part of why I would oppose merging the two processes.)
As for what I prefer, my initial proposal lays it out, though this discussion now has me leaning towards 24 hours/1 day (mostly due to CSD assessers' concerns), and leave the rest of the process "as-is". This seems the least disruptive, and gives the best benefits. Though if we do reduce it to 24 hours (and not just to 72, as I initially proposed), we should definitely re-affirm clearly that being empty does not preclude re-creation. And after such re-creation, CfD is that way... - jc37 12:56, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
So can we make this clear: you're saying that anyone should be able to tag any empty category as a speedy delete, and that admins should refrain from acting on such a tag within 24 hours of its being placed?--Kotniski (talk) 17:58, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
Anyone can tag a category as empty. But yes, to the latter. (Though change "within" to "for".)
Though of course, discussion on the duration length is still welcome. - jc37 18:01, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Speedy criterion #6 revisited

An editor has pointed out that criterion #6 appears from its wording to only apply to category renames and not to category merges. It was my impression that all 6 criteria in the speedy section apply to both renames and merges. Am I wrong about this? Is there any reason not to reword #6 so that it can clearly state that it applies to both types? Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:30, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

A merge is simply a rename into an existing category. So I see no reason that the case being discussed would not be acceptable. When the change was proposed, I don't believe anyone pointed this out as a problem or a need to word the criteria any differently. I see no problem in doing the rename above as a speedy. If taken to deletion review, I don't see the action being overturned since it falls within the intent of the rule. If we need to add merge to the rule to avoid any confusion then I would support that. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:57, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
I'll add the words "and merges" to the criterion number. If anyone objects they can raise the issue here, but I don't think it will be an issue. Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:33, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Deletion of list articles is much more like deletion of categories: proposed fixes

In light of the discussion at WP:CLN it is apparent that lists and categories complement each other on Wikipedia, and are often used to do many of the same things. There is much overlap and duplication between them, and that's good. It is not good when deletion discussions involving them are not handled by the same people. Which is occuring now.

When somebody has a problem with a category they don't like, they come here, because the criteria are not the the same as for articles (we also have separate deletion discussion boards, eight in all, for other things, as you see in WP:XFD). However, when people want to delete a list article (List of ships, List of trees, List of birds), which is essentialy the same thing as a category, but in list-form, they go to the article deletion discussion page, WP:AFD. That's not good, because the criteria for notable articles are not the same as those for list-articles. The latter only need a header paragraph to explain themselves (see WP:LIST), and then elements which are individually notable. As in List of birds. But other kinds of wiki-articles normally put up for deletion have more stringent notability requirements, and their verifiability methods are not of the same type (a list article many only have hyperlinked elements and nothing else).

All this produces very WP:LAME edit wars, as you see on the WP:DRV page. For example, List of bow tie wearers has been up for deletion 4 times, and has only survived by now having many, many in-article cites, which makes it look very much unlike List of birds. All that because nay-sayers demanded article criteria for what is essentially a category in list-form. You can see much the same type of problem with List of notable people who wore the bowler hat, which is now up for deletion review on WP:DRV on the grounds that some people are arguing that the existence of the list itself needs defending as a point of WP:V, when in fact, this is really a "what categories are natural?" discussion.

  • I propose that a separte page be created for proposed deletions of list-articles.

Comments? I'm going to repost this around on the several TALK pages which deal with this matter. SBHarris 01:25, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

You may or may not be right, but I think the main thing to appreciate is that deleting lists by voting/closing as "categorize" is almost always going to be wrong (perhaps absolutely always - I'm not sure), as the threshold for acceptable categories is far higher than for list-articles. Johnbod (talk) 01:49, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

CfD template changed

Anyone happen to notice this discussion which is changing the need to subst the template? I reverted the change since it is broken. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:35, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:DASH redux

There has been a lot of discussion regarding using hyphens instead of dashes in category names here and here (and probably elsewhere). The village pump discussion seemed to have a rough consensus to prefer hyphens instead of dashes in category names, and yet the discussion died.

I'm not suggesting we take on the merits of WP:DASH altogether, just how it pertains to categories. I would like to move forward with the proposal at the village pump. I'm not sure what the options are at this point, which is why I'm bringing this here. I hate to use the term "just a guideline", but seeing as that's all the WP:MOS is, and since the editor responsible for WP:DASH [5] states that the central aim of MOS is to guide style (not to dictate it, not to force it, not arbitrarily to constrain it) [6], it would appear that we should be able to fix the usability issues of using dashes in category names.

Any ideas? --Kbdank71 16:06, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Why is it always dashes that people want to talk about? Is it that common a problem? The same usability issues arise with all non-ASCII characters; in fact there's a general issue with category redirects (even within ASCII there are many potential alternative names for the same category). We should try and work out (probably with developer involvement) a good solution to the whole issue. Until that's done (or not) there doesn't seem much point in arguing any more about dashes.--Kotniski (talk) 16:20, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
Because dashes are the most prevalent non-ASCII character used in categories. It is easily fixed without developer intervention (which may never happen). I understand you don't believe this is a problem, that's fine. And it's obvious that you aren't going to be convinced that it is. How about stepping aside, then, and letting the ones who see it to be a problem come up with a solution? --Kbdank71 18:32, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
Not sure you're right about dashes being most prevalent - in any case many other non-ASCII characters are used (I've created dozens of categories with Polish diacritics, for example, and no-one's ever complained about those causing "problems"). I'm not saying it isn't a problem, but I don't agree that your "easy fix" (presumably you mean banning non-ASCII chars from category names) is a satisfactory solution. For me, the solution of using bot-maintained redirects is a preferable solution to that one; a permanent solution based on the introduction of software-handled redirects would be even better.--Kotniski (talk) 09:04, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
Kotniski, this is changing now, at least for me. I used to primarily find categories by browsing. Now, since I'm using WP:HOTCAT, I enter names with the keyboard. I have always argued for keeping articles with the correct diacritics, and I also believe that it is desirable for category names to be the same as article names. So this is conceivably a real conflict for me. However, I have not come across any such category yet. Kbdank71, you might have more luck in convincing people that this is a problem if you provided a list of category names where the problem occurs. — Sebastian 20:38, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Please remember that merging also includes merging the cat pages

I just came here because I realized that even some conscientious editors sometimes merge categories by moving the articles, but forget to actually look at the deleted category page and salvage information from there to the merge target. Just a reminder. — Sebastian 20:38, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the bots do this. In fact do we want them doing this? It is not trivial to automate. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
I know my bot doesn't do it. It will copy the category text on a rename, but as Vegaswikian said, you can't automate a merge. --Kbdank71 20:58, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
Ah, that explains why it doesn't get done! Everybody thinks it's the bot's responsibility. I'm not familiar with your workflow, but there has to be some human intervention at some point - couldn't it be part of the responsibility of that editor? — Sebastian 01:22, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
If that is wanted, it should be said in the debate - but I don't know if the bots will pick it up from there or the close. Johnbod (talk) 01:44, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
Not sure who your passive voice refers to; I thought I was clear in stating what I want. So, herewith, I formally state that I want that in every category merge there be one person responsible for actually merging the category page. — Sebastian 16:40, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
And who would that be? You? The nominator? The closing admin? The closing admin is not a great choice since they don't know when the bot will run. Also, did you notice the backlog of discussions awaiting closure? Adding more work to the admins may hurt in other areas. I'll also add that if any user needs to do something, will result in the admin dropping a note on the editors talk page so that they can takes action. If I closed a discussion like that, I'd hold the bot back for a day to allow whatever actions another editor needs to take. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
First things first. "Who" is a secondary question. The first question is: Is merging cat pages part of a cat merge?
If we don't agree on this, then we don't need to worry about who does it. If we do agree, then we can easily decide on the "who" question. You know, comparing two cat pages is really no big deal - it takes about 2 person-minutes. That's nothing in comparison to the more than 60 person-minutes the average CfD nomination takes (see below). And yes, of course, I will do the merge when I'm the nominator, as I've always done in the past. — Sebastian 02:38, 14 December 2008 (UTC)
That's great that you'll do it as nominator. Who does it for the drive-by nominations? And who decides what text is to be merged? Is the merge to remove a duplicate category, or is it actually just a delete, but the target was close enough that it was a merge so as not to lose the information? In the second example, there might be nothing to be merged. Whether to merge and if so, what, is pretty much a case-by-case decision. So now we're back to who does it. Again, the nominator seems the best choice, but who does it when the nominator isn't around? I'm wondering if the solution to this may just be too complex for an already complex process. --Kbdank71 05:09, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Does this already happen for the parent categories? Cases where there are important notes etc that need merging are relitively few, I would say, but parent categories often need merging. Johnbod (talk) 14:14, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this discussion back on topic! - I unindented it.
Yes, it does! An example for this would be Category:Wind energy, which only contained the following:
  
[[Category:Renewable energy]]

[[de:Kategorie:Windenergie]]
Category:Wind power, to which it was merged, did not contain the same parent category, so I merged it[7]. This is why I came here. — Sebastian 19:04, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

How many person-minutes time does the average CfD nomination take?

In the above discussion, I assumed that the average CfD nomination takes more than a person-hour already, based on the following assumptions:

task number of people avg time per person (min) total time (personmin)
nominating 1 5 5
watching 500 0.02 10
noticing alert 100 0.02 5
finding entry 20 0.02 0
reading entry 10 0.5 5
researching 3 1 3
voting 3 1 3
closing 1 2 2
article change 5,000 0.01 50
merging cat pages 1 2 2
total     85

Explanation:

"watching" refers to people who have either CfD or the affected categories on their watchlist, and the cost connected with that (reading the entry in the watchlist itself, getting distracted from other changes in the watchlist, etc.)
"noticing alert": The cost to people who look at the category, see the alert, and decide if this is something they should care about.
"finding entry": Cost for clicking on the link and for navigating back.
"researching": Time varies. I assume that 80% of all categories need no research before one can make an informed vote, and 20% take on average 5 minutes.
"article change": Cost to community due to the article change performed by bot. (Added entry in watchlist and history, which affects everybody who ever put any article (or subcategory) in the merged category on their watchlist or who looks at that article's history.)

Please let me know if you have any corrections or better estimates. — Sebastian 02:38, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Merge discussion, redux.

I am planning to merge UCfD over to CfD effective at the end of December 2008, to allow for their archival cycle to finish, barring any objections. This is due to the inactivity in general on that end in terms of people adding to the discussion and creating nominations (Few besides User:VegaDark are even noticable there). Hopefully this transition will go smoothly, as it should also allow for smoother CfD archiving, as UCfD does not use the day logs that other XfDs do. Wizardman 01:39, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Category redirects

(Headline inserted because of topic change. Below post was a reply to post of 20:38, 12 December 2008.)

Let's remember, though, that WP is written for readers rather than editors. If we have a conflict between what works with editor tools like HOTCAT and what provides the best experience to readers, then it's the tools that ought to be improved. Here there is a real problem for readers only in the case that they enter Category:xxx in the search box and hit Go. But this is not solved by making either the ASCII or non-ASCII version a redlink (some readers will enter one; some the other). In fact it's a far wider problem than this; readers might think up alternative names for categories (like Category:US singers, Category:American singers, Category:Singers from the USA, etc.) and we would want to redirect them to the category that is actually defined. So if we want to support this type of reader behaviour satisfactorily, we must get category redirects to work. And with the help of a bot, they already pretty much do (though not 100% satisfactorily). The way forward, AFAICS, is for us to unite in badgering the developers to make a few simple improvements to the software so that these redirects really do work automatically, i.e. members of redirected categories appear at the target category (of course redirecting categories would then have to require some level of privilege, to stop vandals abusing it).--Kotniski (talk) 10:53, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

You are absolutely right. Cat redir is a much more important issue, and it would at least mitigate the problem discussed here. I will support you pushing it. Remind me how to do that, please. But that should be discussed in a different section. — Sebastian 16:37, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
There's a request active at bugzilla (bug 3311). I would encourage people to vote for that or to use any other means they know of of making the developers do anything about anything (unfortunately I've yet to find an effective method of doing that, though perhaps if we all vote for it on bugzilla something will happen...)--Kotniski (talk) 17:25, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
OK, I'm posting a message there. I am also inserting a headline above so that I can link to this discussion from there. — Sebastian 21:41, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
After reading the reply I got there, I realized I confused the issue with an issue that has long been solved. Kotniski, why would bug 710 not solve your problem? — Sebastian 01:34, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

speedy rename criterion #6 again

Why should we allow speedy renames to add a qualifier but not to remove one? Seems to me both should be equally speedy-able. This came up recently in regards to renaming Category:Soccer players from Washington (state) to Category:Soccer players from Washington. - Stepheng3 (talk) 04:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it seems counterintuitive to me too. Can anyone think of any situations where it might be controversial and therefore we should not allow it to be extended? Good Ol’factory (talk) 06:20, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Well for one, the example above. Washington is ambiguous based on past discussions. Given that no harm is done by keeping a disambiguated category name, allowing a speedy rename could in fact create a problem. Are there any soccer players from Washington State? Vegaswikian (talk) 00:11, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
To me, adding "(state)" adds to the confusion, rather than helping with disambiguation, exactly because of the university called Washington State. But when all other categories that refer to the geographical U.S. state do not disambiguate, why in the world should this one? The discrepancy could suggest to a reader that this is somehow referring to some entity that is different than the other categories that do not disambiguate. The fact that we're debating it is probably reason enough to answer the question of why it's not permitted, though. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:48, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Let me ask this, is this a good example for the discussion? Is this one the exception or the rule? Vegaswikian (talk) 03:52, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
Good question. I would guess it's probably exceptional, due to the existence of Washington State University. In general, I think you are probably right that it shouldn't be permitted speedily because usually taking away disambiguation creates ambiguity and does not reduce it. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:55, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

If we can go back to criterion 6, the current wording is "Renames or merges to match a disambiguated parent category such as Category:Georgia (country) or Category:Georgia (U.S. state) from an unqualified name" (my emphasis). It only applies in cases where the name of the parent category is already established, not just any time someone wants to add a qualification. So it seems to me that if the name of the parent category is established without a qualifier, then it is just as uncontroversial to remove a qualifier from a subcategory name. In fact we could probably generalize this rule even more, to allow any renames which (in some obvious way) make a subcategory name consistent with a parent category. --Kotniski (talk) 10:45, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm against this (both, actually). I don't think we should make adding ambiguity speediable. To remove (State) from the example above, if desired, should be discussed at a full CFD. If there is concern that "Soccer players from Washington (State)" could be confused with the university, we can create "Soccer players from Washington State University" and add appropriate hatnotes in both categories. As for Kotniski's suggestion, I think that will allow fly-by speedies that are unwanted. For example, if someone decides to create a tree called "foo of Georgia", they can move any "subfoo of Georgia (US State)" into it and immediately speedy them to remove (US State). This could create bad edit wars. And remember, that the category structure is not a tree. Subcategories of Category A can also be subcategories of Category B. What do you do if A and B don't match? One speedy change can ripple across all related categories basically without discussion. I think we should keep the "to match a disambiguated parent category" as is. --Kbdank71 15:29, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
But don't your objections apply equally to that case? If we're concerned about this sort of possible behaviour, then we shouldn't allow even what we currently allow. To take a nonsense example, if there were a category called "Albums by X", someone could create a category called "X (moron)", put the first category into it, and claim a speedy rename to "Albums by X (moron)". That would be noticed of course, but more subtle cases would probably get through. (I don't see any possible way "Washington (state)" could be confused with "Washington State University", by the way, but that's beside the point.) --Kotniski (talk) 16:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Century categories

While doing some work on a rename request, I noticed Category:16th century Spanish people and Category:16th-century explorers. Which is correct, with or without the '-'? I suspect another mass rename is on the way. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:36, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I believe that when used as an adjective, it is hyphenated. If used as a noun, it is not hyphenated. So the explorers category is correct. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I believe GO is correct. Adjective - hyphenated; noun - not. <fireinthehole!>or is that a dash?</fireinthehole!> --Kbdank71 15:33, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Need help tagging daughter categories of en:Category:Theatres in the United States the for rename request.

Hello! I need some help tagging daughter categories of en:Category:Theatres in the United States the for rename request. Thank you! :) WhisperToMe (talk) 05:36, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Canoers and canoeists

Hi - sorry to dump this here, but it's a massive and confusing piece of work and - being on dial-up - would take me probably a couple of solid days to get through. I notice that we have Category:Canoers, and that all it's by-nation subtypes also use this term. Unfortunately, the word is unknown in British English, and also in quite a number of other countries. The UK, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa are four that I know of which use the term "canoeist", and - judging by google, which has seven times as many hits for canoeist as canoer - they're unlikely to be the only ones. A quick scan through the google pages suggests that when the term is in translation "canoeist" is the favoured term (there are .cn, .ru, .hr and other sites using it), and that it is used on American and Canadian pages as well, suggesting that it is the term in most use worldwide. I'd like to suggest that the main category, plus quite a number of the other categories, should change from canoer to canoeist - the problem is, I'm not sure exactly which ones should change, and which, if any, should stay as canoer. Also, as I pointed out, being on dial-up makes the sifting and tagging task a veryu slow one. If anyone could offer any advice or other help on this, it'd be appreciated! Grutness...wha? 21:55, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

One option is to only nominate the top level category to get a feel for what other editors think. Then the lower level categories could be nominated in groups based on local usage. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:14, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
OK - thanks. I've listed the main one as you suggest. We'll see how it goes from there. Grutness...wha? 04:33, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
I'm at this page about something else, but spotted your issue above, Grutness; just to comment quickly that since canoes and canoeng are "a Canadian invention", and we say canoeist, of course everybody else followed suit (this is almost a joke, but half-serious); I'm unaware of any common usage of 'canoer" although in combination forms in relation to war canoeing I've seen/heard "he's a war canoer". It was either Pierre Berton or Pierre Trudeau, who quipped that Canadians are the only people who know how to make love in a canoe. Well, that used to be true, not any more. "Are you a canoer?" I can't say I've ever heard, and I was raised around the things; if it's a sport reference I'd go whatever Adam van Koeverden uses LOL...the rest of your problem is a wiki technicality beyond me, but just commenting because I'm a canoer myself, er, a canoeist....LOL. Not sure about in other dialects, but in my parts "canoer" would rhyme with "manure", by the way....Skookum1 (talk) 02:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
Looking at the content of Category:Canadian canoers, it seems pretty clear that "canoer" seems to be a competitive-sport usage only, i.e. as far as common usage goes; there's a distinction from canoeists, which would include all kinds of people by default - Trudeau and Berton again, La Verendrye, Simon Fraser, Emily Carr, Grey Owl; all known for in-canoe images and travel/recreation, which is why I point it out. Could it be that "canoer" be reserved for sport canoeists and "canoeist" the parent category, including noted users of the canoe; that is a huge list, in Canada anyway, even only notable users. I'm wondering - is the CBC or CP styleguide online; User:Keefer4 used to be around, he'd been a CP stringer once-upon-a-time and still had his CP handbook around....Skookum1 (talk) 02:10, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
The debate is finished but the old redirect notice at Category:Canoeists needs to reversed or removed I suppose. Johnbod (talk) 21:31, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Q: Ol'Factory re Category:Russian colony of Alaska

I saw your edit comment, but don't see anything here or on the project page. What'd I miss?Skookum1 (talk) 02:11, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

PS on the subject of "as to why", see the resolved rename discussion/decision at Talk:Russian America.Skookum1 (talk) 02:12, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

You can see the discussion I deleted from the speedy page here. (Sorry if I was too quick to take it off before you saw it.) Good Ol’factory (talk) 02:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Enquiry about probable limited discussion leading to inappropriate closure and action

Should categories that have been nominated for some change have their nominations mentioned on the most relevant places (e.g., a specific Country project or noticeboard) to allow for a wider participation thus allowing the final decision to be potentially informed by a greater number of people, some of whom may have more informed opinions about the matter? The reason I ask is that a CfD for parishes seems to have recently closed and affected many categories in England without, as far as I can see, any specific warning about this proposed change happening on any England-related boards or projects (neither WP:UKGEO nor WP:ENGLAND), this leading to a change on what I think is a very limited number of views all together with respect to parishes in England?  DDStretch  (talk) 02:08, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:AUS encountered the same problem a few months back. Notifications are placed on the categories, but these are ineffective because categories are viewed or watched by only a small proportion of editors. It is frustrating to see these changes implemented when you were unaware of the discussion, but I don't believe the solution is to place a heavier notification burden on nominators. In the Australian case, I solved the problem by creating (and maintaining) a complete list of Australian categories, and using Special:RecentChangesLinked to keep an eye on edits to them—e.g. Special:RecentChangesLinked/User:Hesperian/Services/Category changes/Australia. If a CfD or CfR comes up, I notify my project. It only takes me a minute a day to check, and maybe five minutes per month to run a script to update the list. This is much better than arguing about whose responsibility it is to notify, don't you think? Hesperian 02:44, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it seems so, and thanks for the tip. It was frustrating because I was about to propose a specific taskforce as part of WP:UKGEO which would overhaul all aspects of writing and categorizing civil parishes in England. It still needs doing, but these changes have pre-empted certain things (but by no means means all) that such a taskforce would consider. O well...  DDStretch  (talk) 02:58, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
While I like Hesperian's solution, you also might want to consider marking those categories talk pages as being part of a particular project or board. It is impossible to know a) exactly what projects exist, and b) what categories those projects are interested in. For example, I had no idea WP:UKGEO existed. If I'm nominating something, I'm certainly not going to search all of wikipedia to see who would want to comment. I'll check the talk page, such as Category talk:Parishes of Ireland or Category talk:Parishes of Portugal. Those are clearly labeled as belonging to WP:IE and WP:PORTUGAL. I checked a few of the English ones, and they weren't tagged. Granted, not every nominator is going to take the time to look (hence following Hesperian's suggestion), but it'll help for the ones that do. --Kbdank71 17:19, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
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