Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2018 December 5

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December 5[edit]

Wikipedian sports fans[edit]

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. Timrollpickering (Talk) 18:13, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Note: for convenience, the discussion area is a separate section below: Discussion (sports fans)
(this listing section is huge, and there's no point in loading it into your edit box)
Propose renaming per the parent Category:Wikipedians by interest in a sport:
717 more
Nominator's rationale: to recast these categories per the parent Category:Wikipedians by interest in a sport as tools for encyclopedic collaboration, rather than as badges of loyalty and/or partisanship. This was done long ago been for hundreds of other partisan categories, e.g. WP:UCFD April 2007 renamed Category:Wikipedians who support the United Nations to Category:Wikipedians interested in the United Nations.
This goes to core policies of en.wp: WP:Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and WP:NOTSOCIALMEDIA.
The specific guideline at WP:UCAT is very clear: the purpose of user categories is to aid in facilitating coordination and collaboration between users for the improvement and development of the encyclopedia.
Categories which groups users by their stance on a topic have repeatedly been deleted. The archives of the now-discontinued WP:UCFD are full of such categories. See for example Wikipedians who like/dislike and "fans", with hundreds of deletions from Wikipedians who like individual TV shows through Wikipedians who listen to a particular musical group, along with dozens of miscellanies such as Wikipedians who play Nintendo 64 games, Wikipedians who are Jeremy Clarkson fans, and Wikipedians who play golf.
Wikipedia has extensive coverage of sports, so it makes great sense to have categories for editors interested in collaborating on maintaining and improving coverage of sports topics. However, they should be grouped by that interest in collaboration, rather than than by partisanship. Categories relating to Foo FC or the Bar State Booers team should not differentiate between those who like the club and those who are neutral and those who actively dislike it.
These categories are populated in part by a vast collection of user boxes which declare that the editor is a fan of a particular team. It may not be appropriate to simply change those userboxes to populate categories of editors interested in collaboration ... because an editor may choose to display a userbox without any intention of editing topics related to it. If so, then the solution is simply to remove categorisation from those userboxes, after notifying the editors involved that they may wish add themselves to the renamed and repurposed collaboration-focused categories. If that leads to some categories remaining empty, then so be it: they can be deleted in the usual way for empty cats (tho in this case I would recommend a delay time longer than the customary 7 days. A month after notifications seems about right). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion (sports fans)[edit]
add your support/oppose/comment here
  • Oppose - the way is is now is fine, I don't see any reason whatsoever to change it. SportsFan007 (talk) 04:36, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007[reply]
    • @SportsFan007: on what policy basis do you say the way is is now is fine, when it clearly contravenes both WP:NOTSOCIALMEDIA and WP:UCAT?
Unless you have some policy-based reason, that is just a WP:ILIKEIT response. -BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@BrownHairedGirl: All or most sports team's userboxes are listed as Sports Fandom, and all or most sports team's categories have userboxes on and/or linked to them. SportsFan007 (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007[reply]
Also, I don't see why both category versions can't coexsist. SportsFan007 (talk) 05:53, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007[reply]
@SportsFan007: that does not in any way address the policy issues. (you actually give an impression of being keen to completely ignore the policy issues).
If your concern is technical, then I think it is misplaced. I have examined a sample of the categories, and it would be a very quick (and reasonably simple) WP:AWB job to remove the fan labelling and the userboxes from these categories.
If your only argument is that this is all Sports Fandom, then please see the long-standing policy WP:NOTWEBHOST (aka WP:NOTSOCIALMEDIA). It says "Personal web pages. Wikipedians have individual user pages, but they should be used primarily to present information relevant to work on the encyclopedia. Limited autobiographical information is allowed, but user pages do not serve as personal webpages, blogs, or repositories for large amounts of material irrelevant to collaborating on Wikipedia.".
Nothing there permits the use of the category system for Sports Fandom. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:58, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I don't see why a catagory listing fans of a team is such a problem and some of the rules you are linking don't apply to userpages or usercategories. SportsFan007 (talk) 06:03, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007[reply]
Also, I think that this discussion is much more suitable for Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports. SportsFan007 (talk) 06:09, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007[reply]
One more, thing, on all or most usergategories it says: "This is a maintenance category. It is used for maintenance of the Wikipedia project and is not part of the encyclopedia. It contains pages that are not articles, or it groups articles by status rather than subject. Do not include this category in content categories." SportsFan007 (talk) 06:12, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007[reply]
No, it clearly is not more suitable for a WikiProject. WikiProjects do not own pages, and WP:CFD says clearly at the top "Categories for discussion (CfD) is the central venue for discussing specific proposals to delete, merge, rename or split categories and stub types in accordance with the guidelines for categorization, category naming and stub articles".
And if, as you now claim, these are encyclopedic maintenance categories, then it is utterly disgraceful for them to have partisan titles, and even worse for tem to have to have titles which explicitly say that they are for "supporters". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:17, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there should at least be a notice of this discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports. SportsFan007 (talk) 06:22, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007[reply]
@SportsFan007: Nogtification done[1].
I am very surprised by your claim above that some of the rules you are linking don't apply to userpages or usercategories. That seems a to be a bizarre counterfactual statement.
I have cited two policies: WP:UCAT and WP:NOTWEBHOST (aka WP:NOTSOCIALMEDIA).
Which of those two do you claim don't apply to userpages or usercategories?
User categories exist only because of entries on userpages, either by entering [[Category:Foo fans]] or by transcluding a userbox. In what way do you claim that is exempt from the policy that "user pages do not serve as [snip] repositories for large amounts of material irrelevant to collaborating on Wikipedia"? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:45, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Um, you lost me. SportsFan007 (talk) 06:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007[reply]
@SportsFan007:. I was afraid that I might lose you, and indeed it is so.
This discussion is about applying policy, and you have been keen to avoid that. So I won't query you any further on it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It’s ok, no worries!!! Let’s see what other users have to say about this. SportsFan007 (talk) 07:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC)SportsFan007|[reply]
  • Support- I agree that partisan titles for these categories is a poor idea. Besides which, I can imagine that a Man U supporter might be interested in Liverpool FC for instance, without being anything resembling a fan. Reyk YO! 08:30, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's the sort of thing I thought of, @Reyk. There are many such team rivalries in sports (e.g. Rangers.Celtic, Aresenal/Tottenham), and we'll get much better NPOV in articles if we don't corral the fans into partisan camps. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:53, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: the nominated rationale makes sense, it would bring this into policy conformance. - Ahunt (talk) 14:37, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom. Reasonable change that matches our policies/guidelines better for NPOV naming conventions. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:36, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete all (first choice); Rename all to "Category:Wikipedians interested in collaborating on (sports team) topics" (second choice); Rename all as nominated (third choice). My first choice is deletion due to my thought that a rename here may introduce miscategorization. We have had years of people adding themselves to these categories as "fans" and I don't think it's necessarily fair to suggest that all of these people are actually interested in collaborating - I worry about someone getting involuntarily moved to a collaboration-oriented category and then not be fully on board if/when approached to actually collaborate based on their membership in the category. I worry that a convoluted category may be off-putting to those who would otherwise use the category for productive purposes. In my book it may be smarter to start fresh by deleting these and allowing for creating of new, collaboration-oriented categories. My second choice is a rename that better reflects the collaboration goal of these topics. I am "interested" in plenty of things I don't really wish to collaborate on. Sure, that's a literal interpretation, but I think there are plenty of other people who interpret things fairly literally on here. While I fully admit that an "interested in" naming convention is far better than what is current, and falls in line with other areas of the encyclopedia, I worry that this does not go far enough to convey that this really should only be used for improvement of the encyclopedia and not to declare one's sports allegiances. A question to ponder when considering this option is, if someone were to create, say, Category:Wikipeidans interested in collaborating on A-League topics, and someone nominated that for a merge with Category:Wikipedians interested in A-League, what would the result of that nomination be? Would we really go with the "interested in" version even when it's less to the point and less collaboration oriented? Finally, as a third choice I would agree with the nomination as listed as a far better naming convention/system than what we currently have. VegaDark (talk) 18:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • @VegaDark: You raise some interesting points there. I think that it amounts to two issues:
  1. whether to delete or rename
  2. what the new name should be if we rename
On the delete/rename choice, I can see that from a purist perspective, it would be cleanest to start with a clean slate of new categories. However, that risks losing those editors currently in the "fans" categories who do want to be in the new categories, and it would also involve a huge lot of work creating the new categories. Please remember that what we are trying to do do here is to assist collaboration ... so it seems to me to be a bad idea to WP:TNT what we have already, when we could just clean it up.
I don't think that all the work the work of creating new categories is needed, because if we simply notify editors of the change, they can remove themselves if they wont to collaborate on the topic. Even if we don't notify them of the change, then simply including a std template templated headnote in each renamed category will resolve the surprise when someone is asked to collaborate, at which point they can decide whether or not to remove themselves from it.
As to the choice of new names, I can see your point about how it might be better to include the word "collaboration" in the category title. I'm not sure that the extra verbosity is needed; I think I'd prefer the shorter names with a templated hatnote in each such category to stress that they are about collaboration. I do agree that your case should be discussed ... but (big but) I don't why any such name should apply only to sports topics, but not to the 1065 other categories already named "Wikipedians interested in Foo" (I just used Petscan and AWB to count them). Why would we want to have Category:Wikipedians interested in rail transport, Category:Wikipedians interested in Buddhism and Category:Wikipedians interested in Egypt ... but then break the convention to have Category:Wikipedians in collaborating on the Australia national cricket team?
Consistency in titles is important, so it seems to me to be best to simply adopt the current standard, and then have a further discussion about whether to change it en masse, so that whatever the outcome retains consistency across all topics. If you find the prospect of a big group nomination daunting, I would be happy to do all the technical stuff of listing and tagging the ~1800 categories involved in a CFD on that idea. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:05, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that consistency in titles is important. But, in my experience, change in user categories must be made in baby steps before the community gets fully on board with a change. In my view I'd rather have 20% of the categories with my proposed rename than 0% of categories with that rename. The way I see it, a later nomination is more likely to succeed if you have the additional argument of "We already made this decision on this group of categories, why not go all the way?" At minimum it makes a new nomination also confront people with a "We have two different naming conventions here, so we need to decide on which one is best for the encyclopedia" proposition (much like this nomination does). It's kind of like when the SCOTUS has different opinions from different circuit courts, they are more likely to hear a case. I'd say a similar concept applies here, you are more likely to get people to think about the issue more critically rather than simply say screw it, we already have a naming convention that works and it and is reasonably enough related to collaboration. That being said your offer to do the technical part of a mass nomination would certainly make that prospect more appealing. I would suggest a joint nomination at that juncture. VegaDark (talk) 18:56, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support at first I thought this was a bit over the topic. However the nominator makes a convincing rationale that this helps focus our encyclopedia on editing (and in so doing comply with some WP guidelines). --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:59, 5 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom, Reyk, et al. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 07:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as proposed, though I would also support leaving the categories alone, per WP:FUN. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:59, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
But I also suggest some clue be applied in renaming the categories to grammatically-correct titles. There is a category on my user page being proposed to be renamed to Category:Wikipedians interested in Toronto Blue Jays - it bother me if missing "the" not included renamed category. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:21, 6 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Ivanvector: fair point. Unfortunately, it's hard to determine a consistent rule to decide exactly which teams need a definite article. I did it for the national sports teams, and per your comment I have added a "the" for the Toronto Blue Jays and some more[6]. Would you like to help by checking more of them?
In any case, it's not a huge deal if some are missed at this stage. They can easily be corrected afterwards by speedy reanaming per WP:C2A. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:27, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Of course; I didn't mean to suggest that this was about to be poorly executed or couldn't be corrected later, only that if the plan was to have a bot rename all "Wikipedian <variable> fans" to "Wikipedians interested in <variable>" that some of the results would be undesirable. I see that's not the case; I didn't see the list when I first commented. To be honest I'm not even really sure a human can evaluate this consistently, but I'll have a look. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:27, 7 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - Solution in desperate search for a problem. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:28, 8 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename you can be interested in something whether you like it or hate it (support it or cheer its opponents, in sports); to be a "fan" may be viewed as an advertisement of bias. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 01:29, 11 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Same as Beyond My Ken really. It is most definitely a solution in search of a problem. -DJSasso (talk) 16:53, 12 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Djsasso: the nomination sets out at some length why I believe it to be a problem, and why similar many many categories have been deleted or renamed. You and @Beyond My Ken are of course entitled to your views, but the closer is obliged to give little weight to !votes which offer no explanation and no foundation in policy. When a problem has already been described, an unexplained remark of solution in search of a problem is just WP:ILIKEIT. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Right and I think what you laid out was you searching for a problem, It was very much an WP:IDONTLIKEIT argument. -DJSasso (talk) 11:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Seemed like a petty issue at first, but it makes sense they would be uniform with other user categories and that personal opions wouldn't be given via categories. --Pudeo (talk) 18:30, 12 December 2018 (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.
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