Category talk:Wikipedians without red-linked categories on their user talkpage

Contested deletion

This page should not be speedily deleted because... it was created solely to remove yet another userpage entry from Special:WantedCategories. That list is a crucial tool for editors working category maintenance, but it is size-limited to 5,000 entries, and every deliberately-redlinked actegory such as this reduces the number of article-space categories which appear in the list.
Per WP:REDNOT, categories should never be redlinked; unlike articles, a redlinked category is always an error. There is no valid reason to retain a redlinked category indefinitely, and the aim of this deletion is restore a redlink, contrary to WP:REDNOT.
If editors are not prepared to remove this category from their userpages, then the category page should exist to prevent in cluttering up Special:WantedCategories and impeding the encyclopedic work of category maintenance.
If the editors who have placed their userpages in this category choose to remove themselves from it, then of course I would support its speedy deletion as empty per WP:C1.--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:32, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

PS Since this deletion has been contested, it clearly is controversial, so regardless of anyone's views on the merits of my arguments, it doesn't meet WP:G6. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:37, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

If there's anything that could be termed controversial, that is the creation of a category that is not meant to be created. Creating the category effectively destroys it, and as for the arguments for that, I'm finding it really difficult to imagine that the two obviously intentional redlinked category that exist on wikipedia could somehow clog up the 5,000 available spaces in the maintenance report. – Uanfala (talk) 17:27, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I've never worked in this maintenance area, but I reckon there ought to be a way to exclude some redlinked categories from appearing in the list. For example categories that have been deleted, but that still have links coming from historical areas of wikipedia. If there's a way, then it could be applied here as well? – Uanfala (talk) 13:18, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I see the category has now been emptied, so I've deleted it per WP:C1. However, I see that Uanfala has merely changed the category on their talk page to a different redlink category (Category:Wikipedians without red-linked categories on their talkpage) which seems to be missing the point (or perhaps making a WP:POINT). Anomie⚔ 13:29, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, if anything was missing the point, it was the creation of the category in the first place. – Uanfala (talk) 14:01, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

@Uanfala: I accept that the category was created as a joke, and that the joke was made in good faith without awareness that it had a disruptive effect.

However, now that you are aware of the disruptive effect, your use of another redlinked category which will disrupt in the same way is very WP:POINTy. I have created the category, to remove the redlink. Unless you actively intend to disrupt Wikipedia, I hope we can leave it at that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:08, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

BrownHairedGirl, is there really no way that redlinked categories can be marked as intentionally redlinked? If a single joke category can, ahem, disrupt Wikipedia, then there's something wrong not with the joke but with whatever it is you refer to as "Wikipedia". – Uanfala (talk) 12:43, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

@Uanfala: there is no way that I am aware of to mark a redlink as intentional. If you want to file a bug report with developers, then you could ask them to change that so that you can continue your joke ... but I really do struggle to think of any reason why they would respond other than by saying that there is no way they could possibly justify using the WMF's paid time to add extra code to MediWikia solely in order to facilitate editors whose idea of a joke is to create an intentional error. Maybe I am wrong in my judgemnet of their response, but that's how it looks to me, and in several discussions of the same suggestion nobody has offered any counter-argument. Maybe you will be the first.

And of course, the problem is not any single such redlinked category. Obviously, each of them is, on its own, a minor disruption. However, there were many many hundreds of them, and that did add up to a big problem of disruption. That's why the improvement comes through getting rid of as many as possible.

For the record, I had several redlinked categs on my userpage for many years. A few months ago I became aware of their disruptive effect, I promptly removed them. I am delighted that most other editors in the same situation have responded positively when they became aware of the unintended adverse consequences of their joke. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:35, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed explanation, BrownHairedGirl. What I understand is that there are some editors who insist on having red-linked categories, that there's community consensus for keeping such categories red-linked in particular instances (like Category:Wikipedians with red-linked categories on their user talk page), and that there must be cases when non-userspace categories need to remain red. Given all that, it seems reasonable that the maintainers of categories should find some way of either excluding the red-linked ones from their lists, or of ignoring them. The latter doesn't seem particularly difficult at least for the "wikipedians" categories as they should all appear clustered together in any alphabetical listing. – Uanfala (talk) 15:00, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm also wondering how many "disruptive" joke categories there can be. I'm struggling to imagine "hundreds" categories whose humour explicitly depends on them being red-linked. In fact, there are only two that I am aware of. – Uanfala (talk) 15:19, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

(ec) @Uanfala: sorry, but I'll be as terse and blunt, cos this taking up waay too much time.

1. There are no cases where non-userspace categories need to remain red, or should remain red
2. There is consensus to keep one or two red-linked user categories such as Category:Wikipedians with red-linked categories on their user talk page, but literally only one or two.
3. The rest of your case falls apart because the premise is mistaken
4. The suggestion that maintainers of categories should find some way of [..] excluding the red-linked ones from their lists is unfeasible. If you had bothered to take even one minute follow the link I have posted several times to Special:WantedCategories, you would see that is part of the WikiMedia software. Editors have zero control over how it is constructed; we have to use to use the tool as it exists. See my previous msg for about asking the WMF to change the software.
5. If you had bothered to take even one minute follow the link I have posted several times to Special:WantedCategories, you would see that the list is not alphabetical, and that editors have no way of making it so. Your comments about alphabetical listing are therefore irrelevant.
6. In my first post at the top of this page, I wrote that Special:WantedCategories is size-limited to 5,000 entries, and every deliberately-redlinked category such as this reduces the number of article-space categories which appear in the list. Ignoring the "joke" categories is not an option when they displace the list entries which are actually needed, as you would be aware if you had read what I wrote.
7. Finally, I really wonder about your priorities. The whimsy of that category is an ephemeral thing, something to give a flickering smile for a second to the tiny number of editors who will see it. In your zeal to keep it, you have made several suggestions that editors doing substantive encyclopedic maintenance should accept disruption to their workflow and/or modify the tools which they use.
   It seems to me that WP:NOTHERE may be relevant. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:01, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

This whole discussion we're having now, as well as the actions that led to it, are all WP:NOTHERE. I retract some of the specifics of my previous statement, although I still stand by my view that ignoring a total of two humorous categories isn't too much to ask for. I don't want to pursue this discussion any further given that there is, I realise, a relevant ongoing RfC, and I'll temporarily refrain from relinking to the this category. – Uanfala (talk) 20:07, 15 March 2017 (UTC)