The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:keep and repopulate, if needed. There's clear support for keeping the category. There did not seem to be universal support for adding a US disambiguator, but at the very least a hatnote should say these are about the US organization. So I'll add one. The international category can be created if desired.--Mike Selinker (talk) 15:36, 2 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale:Delete. (did I say that out loud - I LOVE categories!!) It is not part of any existing scheme, it is a case of over-categorisation and the contents are better served by the article itself. A template may also be an idea of some merit. Note that I had cleaned out articles that were related to the international organisation of which Planned Parenthood was an affiliate. It was a case of putting the cart before the horse, or in this case, shoehorning international articles into a category related to the US only. Do I detect a little geo-centrism here?? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:55, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
To re-instigate the articles that I removed would be ludicrous. They do not belong there. The category hierarcy on WP should reflect real life. How it was didn't. As mentioned on my talk page I would rather not have Category:International Planned Parenthood Federation because it becomes "category clutter" making categories less useful as a navigational tool. See Winston Churchill as an example. The footer templates over there are also too numerous. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 03:58, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
According to the old 2009 ranking (which is no longer updated), Winston Churchill is the WP articles that has the most categories. (I'm pretty sure he's not #1 anymore, as I know a page or two with more than 82 categories.) I doubt any of these organizations are in danger of receiving (in terms of numbers) anywhere close to the same number of categories. Good Ol’factory(talk)04:44, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
On the contrary, the fact that the category for the US organisation had filled up with articles related to the IPPF is a very clear indication that the current category title is ambiguous. Oh, and if you are going to post a link, wouldn't it be a good idea to check that it has some relevance? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 20:23, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
keep. I think there is more than enough to justify the category in this case. I think the people in the category who were CEOs etc. of the org. should probably be moved to a Category:Planned Parenthood people. I do think that some of the bio articles should be removed and not included—such as Edris Rice-Wray Carson, for instance, who seems to be in the category because she received an award from PP. Good Ol’factory(talk)03:22, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed re: Wray-Carson. A lot of people have received Sanger Awards (MLK, Hillary Clinton, Katharine Hepburn...) but it's not defining. How would you define inclusion in the people category? For example, Abby Johnson (activist) is in the main category - she is a person and relevant to PP, but a category based on leadership in the organization (or int'l affiliates) would obviously not include her. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:36, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If too many categories dedicated to people in particular organisations then we end up with the situation like the [[Winston Churcill article. Readers don't want to try and decipher the mass of categories at the end of an article. Admittedly, navigating from the category is made easier. It is the old WP:CLT issue. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:56, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that's necessarily true—especially if there are people who are primarily notable for their leadership of Planned Parenthood. We're not talking about categorizing people by mere membership or because they donated money to it. It would be to categorize people who were CEOs or presidents of the org. Winston Churchill's "category clutter" is not caused by categories for leadership in organizations—it is mostly composed of multiple UK MPs categories and awards. And you know, there is a guideline that discourages awards categories. There is not one that discourages categories for leadership of organizations. Good Ol’factory(talk)08:40, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Winston Churchill's category clutter is predominantly caused by his notable achievements in several spheres (literary, military and political) and by the extraordinary length of his career at the top of politics and his stature as a wartime leader. He was a Cabinet Minister in 1908, and quit as PM in 1955. That's the equivalent of Hilary Clinton or Timothy Geithner still being at the top of American politics in the year 2055, 47 years after their first cabinet jobs. As Good Ol'factory points out, Churchill is a very rare and extreme case of category clutter, and nothing remotely similar is likely to happen to the people in the categories we are discussing here. Dragging Churchill into this discussion is just a bright red herring. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 15:57, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Allows readers to navigate the large number of articles related to PP. It's disingenuous of the nom to cite geocentrism as a problem with the category since I suggested creating a category on the IPPF and he didn't like the idea. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 03:33, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep - Categories are the primary indexing mechanism for this encyclopedia. PP is a major organization, with a long history, and a category will help readers navigate to related articles. --Noleander (talk) 04:12, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I am unsure what you mean by "primary indexing mechanism". Categories are for navigating through articles relating to a topic. A close relationship to the subject is important. They work best when descriptive title are used for the category and for the article. It is often the case that bio articles are moved to their own category for these reasons. Note that categories are not used as often as articles. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 04:29, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I'm honestly a little confused by the nomination. Seems to be clearly defined, part of the larger established topic tree in Category:Categories named after organizations, at least 5 of the articles are clearly defined by category (didn't look at every bio) so it would aid navigation. OK with current title based on main article name; OK with creating additional cat for internation org if there are at least 5 articles. There are a lot of close calls on these discussions but this cat seems completely fine to me. RevelationDirect (talk) 05:00, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Rename, providing that the only thing needing to be changed is the name, and the categorization of those files will remain the same. Fortdj33 (talk) 20:34, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was:Rename all. Editorial discernment should be used in choosing which should have redirects. - jc3701:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale:Rename to a descriptive format to clarify the category's purpose for Wikipedia's general readership, to whom the current category names will be at best bewildering, and in some cases misleading. A category should do what it says on the tin, and interpreting what it says on the tin should not require specialist knowledge or guesswork. What you see should be what you get.
Categories exist as a navigational device, and obscure, ambiguous, or misleading category names are an obstacle to navigation. The title of a category appears without explanation at the bottom of each of the biographical articles to which is attached and in its parent categories list of sub-categories, and there is no possibility in either case of piping a category name to clarify its purpose; the page title is what's displayed. The only conceivable purpose for naming a category in this way is to teach the reader new terminology, an approach which is specifically deprecated by WP:JARGON. The alumni of the school can of course call themselves whatever they like, and their terminology should be explained in the head article and in a hatnote on the category itself. Renaming the categories to improve navigability will therefore cause no loss of information to the reader.
These new names will eliminate ambiguity, adopt plain English, avoid obscure WP:JARGON and fit the convention of Category:People educated by school in England. This incorporates the general principle of WP:NCCAT that category names should normally correspond to the name of a Wikipedia article (in this case, the article on the school).
Problems with these categories:
Some rely explicitly on a detailed knowledge of the school's history:
Some use a term whose relationship with the school is clear once you know it, but obscure unless the reader already has specialist knowledge. In these cases, the demonyms may be similar to those allegedly used for the town where the school is located, but the use of demonyms for people-by-place is specifically deprecated in Categorization of people guideline. That issue was settled at CfD back in July 2006 and has been incorporated in the guideline since at least August 2006. Simply stripping the suffix "-ian" doesn't clarify the category's purpose in the case of:
Category:Old Grovians (Woodhouse Grove School) presumably refers to "Grove School", but WGS is not listed in Grove School. Or maybe it refers to some variant of "Grove College"? A search of Wikipedia throws up lots of posibilities. (If the "Old Fooian" terms were logical and consistent, we might expect that these alumni would be called something like "Old Woodhousians", but they are not)
Some of the categories are ambiguous even for the reader who correctly guesses what the the "Foo" is in the "Old Fooian":
The "old fooians" format is used as inhouse jargon only by a small minority of schools in the UK. The nuances of it will be unfamiliar to the majority of UK citizens, whose schools did not use this format, and there is no reason to expect them to guess the meaning of these terms. Only 5.5% of Wikipedia's readership comes from the UK, and elsewhere the "old fooians" terminology is used only for a very small minority of schools (mostly those which were founded in the days of British Empire).
Similar renamings have been proposed several times before, and until mid-2011 such discussions mostly closed as "no consensus"; I have found no case where there was consensus to retain an unqualified "old Fooian" category. In mid-2011, since a new standardised format of "People educated at" has been adopted for all the non-"old Fooian" subcats of Category:People educated by school in the United Kingdom. That format has also been adopted at CfD for many "Old Fooian" categories which are obscure, ambiguous or misleading: see the list below, which is so long that I have collapsed it. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 18:10, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Rename as per all the arguments given. Categories are supposed to be an index - currently the pages will not/do not make a workable index for the vast majority of people. It should not be necessary to click a category to find out to what it refers. The traditional name can be supplied in header text at the category top if desired, and will of course already be present in the relavent articles - so no hindrance to a search.Mddkpp (talk) 19:59, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Rename all per nom, who sets out a very thorough analysis of the problems. I think it's fair to say that there has been consensus that we should generally avoid these types of category names because they are ambiguous, unclear to those without pre-existing background knowledge, and essentially jargon-based, or at least centric to the culture in which the nicknames developed. Good Ol’factory(talk)21:24, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Rename all per nom. Perhaps the exhaustive analysis + table could now be linked rather than trotted out each time (as one foresees a multitiude of further cfds with only 'Old Etonians' still standing by about 2016); and it is getting difficult to scroll down the edit pane. Oculi (talk) 21:34, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about the verbosity. These categories used to be v controversial, I was trying to cover all the points which left so many previous CfDs as a confused "no consensus". But we have now moved on from that gridlock, so if and when I nominate any more it will be terser. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 21:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Rename how the hell does Old Victorians get that? Does no one think of anything except their parochial school or something? Do elderly people in North London not exist? etc 70.24.251.71 (talk) 09:11, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
CommentDO NOT create category redirects' for any of the more ambiguous ones, like North London, or Victorian, or Ignatian, or Petriburgian, or Grovian or Queenian, etc. I'd prefer it if no category redirects are created for any of these. 70.24.251.71 (talk) 09:18, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that caution should be taken in creating category redirects, and they should not be created for terms which have another primary meaning. Apart from list given by the IP above, I would add a bar on any that use a demonym, such as Leodensians. However, Old Mid-Whitgiftians and Old Cholmeleians are unambiguous, so I would support redirects for those obscure but unique terms. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 10:06, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. In principle, like several other editors who have taken part in many similar discussions in the past, I support the use of the "Old Fooian" format where it is actually used, and we do not have a general policy in favour of stamping it out. With regard to suggestions of ambiguity, huge numbers of Wikipedia pages have names which include ambiguous terms. Where there is a real problem, an answer is found: often the primary meaning has the simple term for a name, while other meanings get a longer name, including some qualifier. "Old Victorian" could, if necessary, become "Old Victorians (Jersey)". In the case of categories, it seems unlikely that people are confused by supposedly ambiguous terms. If there is the beginning of a problem, it can be dealt with by a summary at the head of the category. Moonraker (talk) 12:28, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:NDESC, an alternative to parenthetical disambiguation is to use a descriptive format, as is proposed here. This is routinely done for categories, because it creates a simple and predictable format of category names. Due of the risk of miscategorisation (which is hard to monitor), there is a growing convention with categories to disambiguate many terms which are treated as primary topics in article space. Anyway, in what way do you think that "Old Victorians (Jersey)" is clearer than "People educated at Victoria College, Jersey"? Your preferred "Old Victorians (Jersey)" reads to me as meaning people from the Victorian era, in Jersey. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 17:58, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Rename with redirects maintained for people who are looking for "Old Fooian". Someone unfamiliar with the term would not click on the "Old Fooian" category at the bottom of a person's entry whereas if they were interested to find out who else went to his school they might be tempted to click the "people educated at" category. People who are familiar with the "Old Fooian" term would not be confused when faced with a "people educated at" category. I think that the potential for confusion is pretty unidirectional. Disclosure; I'm an Old Fooian myself. Still think the categories should have more generic names. Let each one explain its history and commonly used nomenclature on a per case basis. Dino246 (talk) 13:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Rename ALL - either an all or none approach needs to be taken, so I expect to see Old Etonians being removed alongside all other Old fooians. DiverScout (talk) 14:23, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately some editors seem to think that the issue here is the status of the school, but that is not the case.
The actual purpose of categories is to facilitate navigation (see WP:CAT#Overview), so the question is what category name is most likely to help navigation. The convention with schools is to use plain English descriptive terms, but that may not be the best option in all cases. "Old Etonians" is an interesting outlier case, with 4290 Google News hits, whereas the years for other prominent schools are much more rarely used (e.g. 97 Gnews hit for "Old Carthusian", and Charterhouse is a highly-regarded public school). Previous attempts to these categories rename en masse became very heated as some editors claims that some schools terminology were particularly well known, and the large group nom did not lend itself to examining those claims. Discussions of smaller groups of allow us to examine each case individually. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 15:47, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Rename all these. After so many similar categories have been renamed, it is surprising that some of the remaining ones, such as these, are really obscure. We should now aim for consistency as the principle of renaming them is now clear. --Bduke(Discussion)15:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Support rename of all such anachronistic listings. We need to use language that is clear and easy to understand. It is clear and obvious when you see a category named "People educated at Cardiff High School", but if you see a category named "Old Sheep Shaggers" you would have to click the category and look at the description to be able to understand what on earth it was talking about. --Bob Re-born (talk) 16:52, 26 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Rename all these: All on this list seem to fit in with the arguments for renaming, although the case is overstated with the sentence "The "old fooians" format is used as inhouse jargon only by a small minority of schools in the UK". I think that it is quite a large minority of schools in the UK which use this format as inhouse jargon, but some statistics would be useful to confirm whether this is correct. Furthermore, whether the minority is large or small is not relevant, because the rest of the analysis is applicable. On renaming the categories, the step "their terminology should be explained in the head article and in a hatnote on the category itself" needs to be dealt with so that the information about the relevant "old fooians" format is readily available to the reader. Coyets (talk) 09:55, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure how relevant that comment is. Moonraker notified people regardless of their opinion - and my was the polar opposite. If that is notification spamming then I heartily welcome it because it has given much greater visibility and resulted in a more thorough discussion. Thanks Moonraker, I appreciate and applaud your actions. --Bob Re-born (talk) 19:29, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also not too sure about the significance of the spamming. However, it is considered good practice to note at XfD of the fact that notices have been sent out, in the interests of transparency, so I posted the note. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 20:44, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Rename BHG has demonstrated the two main points 1- only a small percentage of users will recognize these category names 2- we have a precedent to not use denonyms for cities of a few million people, there is not reason to use them for much smaller locations. Beyond this, she persuasively points out we are supposed to link category name and article name. This makes it easy to determine if there is an article, easy to know what the category would be named, and easy to rename the category when the institution changes name or the article name is changed. The former is not as uncommon as some may thing and the later becomes crucial in disambiguation. The fact that several of these categories could easily be applied to multiple category names indicates that there is no consistent reason for these schools to be so designated.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:08, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose — there is no specific guidance on this under the WP:COP "By association" section, it is just a WP:POV of the proposer deciding what should be renamed from their point of view of what is "obscure". In addition, there are other standard ways to deal with disambiguation on Wikipedia. WP:MOS says "avoid unnecessarily complex wording", so why make the name more complex by lengthening them unnecessary in this way when there is already an existing term? Where do you draw the line in a way that is not arbitrary depending on your perception? In any case, the general issue of "Old ..." has been discussed a number of times before with no consensus reached. — Jonathan Bowen (talk) 13:16, 28 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Where there is no specific guidance, issues are decided by consensus, which is what we are trying to form in this discussion.
It is quite untrue to say that no consensus has been reached at previous discussions on these topics. That was the case until about a year ago, but since then dozens of such categories have been renamed (since you obviously read the nomination before commenting, you will know that there is a list of them above, at the end of the nomination). Also, there is no case in that I am aware of where a CFD reached a consensus in favour of keeping any Old Fooian category. We had a long period no consensus, but now lots of case of consensus to change.
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale: Suggesting Category:Norwegian State Railways (1996-). The relavent articles are Norwegian State Railways (1883–1996) and Norwegian State Railways, also the other relavent category is Category:Norwegian State Railways (1883–1996). To summarise - a state owned company was split in 1996 into several new companies, including a new company Norges Statsbaner AS with reduced scope but unfortunately the same name (excluding company type I think). I note that the main page is not named Norwegian State Railways (1996-) - I am not proposing this though it may be an option - the issue here is that having the category Category:Norwegian State Railways only for post 1996 is confusing. I would also suggest considering a parent category to contain both historical entities. Currently as far as I can tell "Category:Norwegian State Railways" only contains topics applicable post 1996. If an alternative namimg scheme can be found that readily distinuguishes the pre and post 1996 organisations that would be a good solution.Mddkpp (talk) 12:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note - It may be that some reorganisation of the categories would also work - maybe two (actually more than 2) dated sub-cats as children of an undated generic "Norwegian State Railways".Mddkpp (talk) 13:01, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
minor Note3 - there was a recent speedy renaming eg diff - though this doesn't appear to affect the current issue as is an english/norwegian naming convention issue.Currently we are using enlgish equivalents of the Norwegian name - using the original names doesn't solve the problem anyway.. Mddkpp (talk) 13:09, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Do not rename basically per Good Ol’factory, as the category should reflect the name of the article. I am well aware that some article will end up in two cats, but it is important to distinguish between the companies. The legal successor of the old NSB is the Norwegian National Rail Administration, while the new NSB is a spin-off company. Merging them or creating a super-category because they have the same name is OR. Tracing the old NSB into the current day would also result in most Norway-railway-related articles being categoriesed into this tree. For instance, CargoNet, Flytoget and the Norwegian Railway Inspectorate were also all once integral parts of the old NSB. Categories such as Category:Railway companies of Norway organizes the issues in a much better way. On a final matter, please also note that the proposed category should use an endash, not a hyphen. Arsenikk(talk)21:36, 22 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Furthermore, the adjective vegetarian can mean of or relating to vegetarianism or vegetarians, not just consisting solely of vegetables. Tim! (talk) 21:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:Our Gang Hal Roach short films and Category:Our Gang MGM short films
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
That there's only two other non-Our Gang films in that category is not grounds for keeping this overcategorization. It IS grounds, however, for properly tagging whatever Laurel and Hardy or Charley Chase shorts that are on this site (I personally don't think we need articles on all 200 Our Gangs, since virtually all of them are poor and most plagiarized from other sites, but that's another discussion for another place). It makes sense to keep all the Our Gang shorts in their own category and categorize the Roach and MGM entries separately for the Roach and MGM categories.--FuriousFreddy (talk) 03:13, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete/Dual upmerge per Lugnuts suggestion. I don't see what value separating these by studio has nor do I see the poing in having one cat for Hal Roach shorts while leaving out Hal Roach's full length General Spanky. (What a delight that must be to sit through, BTW.) If there is some compelling cinematically about the distinction from a film buff, I'm open to reconsidering. RevelationDirect (talk) 05:11, 27 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Category:Nicaragua Seleccion Nacional Leyendas del Diriangen
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
