Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Archive 8

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Archive 5

Archive 6

Archive 7

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Protected category after consensus to delete

Would there be consensus to allow a bot to automatically scan Category:Protected deleted categories and update articles to remove any entries for these categories? See Category:Socialist Wikipedians for an example of what happens today. Vegaswikian 08:13, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Fine with me. --Kbdank71 10:25, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. (Though that category may not be the best example, since it was deleted by fiat and there are categories for just about every other political viewpoint.) - EurekaLott 10:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Well right now there are only 4 so not many examples. The other one with entries is Category:Anti-heroes. So how can we make this happen? Does this have to be adopted as a guideline or can it just follow the bot process? Vegaswikian 18:59, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I just put in a request at Wikipedia talk:Bots. We'll see what happens. - EurekaLott 02:58, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Creating sub categories for cleanup

Does anyone have a problem with creating a date based Category:CfD yyyy-mm to aid in cleanup? Right now we get a lot of incomplete nominations and there is no easy way to find them. They just sit in the category forever. By having the template add a second category for the the month listed, we would have a list about the 10th of each following month of listings that were not properly made. For this to work, I believe that we would have to subst the template. The extra work of adding and deleting the categories would be less then the searching now being done. Also, these categories can be speedy deleted when empty and can be created a few months early. Vegaswikian 18:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that's an excellent idea. I used to go through the categories on a daily basis to find ones that were tagged and not nominated, but it's gotten to the point where it's almost impossible. Why do you think the template would need to be subst'ed? I think it should work without doing that. (Don't forget the CFM and CFR dated cats also) --Kbdank71 19:22, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I thought if you do not subst, the date used in the category would get calculated every time. I guess I could just add it for deletes right now and see what happens. In looking at the template it appears that the most damage could be adding multiple category entries. Vegaswikian 19:37, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I see where you're going. I'm not sure what would happen, to be honest. --Kbdank71 19:40, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I modified {{Cfd}} so we will see after the next deletion nomination. Vegaswikian 19:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I forced the new template into Category:Fairtrade settlements which was nominated today. As of now it looks OK. Time will tell. Vegaswikian 20:03, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I've modified {{cfm}} and {{cfr}} in the same way. TimBentley (talk) 16:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking about this today. Is there a reason we couldn't just subst the currentyear and currentmonth variables? That way they should be set and not change (even if people don't subst the cfd/r/m templates themselves). The reason I bring this up is because I think all of those imposter categories I've been working on have jumped to 2006-09 from 2006-08. Any ideas? Just make the change and see what happens? --Kbdank71 16:25, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I've been looking at the way this works, and I think I can say this: it's not. I think User:Vegaswikian is right, it's going to have to be subst'ed to work. Problem is, so many people are used to just typing {{cfd}}, even though the instructions on CFD say to subst it. Is there a way we can force a subst, without the user having to type it? Like maybe have a cfd template that only has "subst:cfd1"? Although I'm not sure that'll work either. I'm at a loss here. Anyone know how we can do this? --Kbdank71 16:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

{{afd}} and {{Prod}} use Template:Error:not substituted. Is there a reason that can't be adapted for cfd? - EurekaLott 17:01, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

No idea, but it sounds good. I'll give it a shot. Thanks! --Kbdank71 17:14, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, here's what I did: I added the Template:Error:not substituted to both {{cfd}} and {{cfd1}}. So you can no longer use the templates without subst'ing them. Now, the dated categories (Category:CfD 2006-09, for example) work correctly. Problem is, the cfd1 template loads the cfd template with the correct date. But since it loads it without subst'ing it, if you simply look at {{cfd1}}, you get the "not substituted" error message. It does work, however, when placed into a category (I did lots of testing). So I'm not sure if this is a true problem or not. Can someone look at this to make sure I did this right? If so, I'll go ahead and fix the cfr and cfm templates next week. Thanks. --Kbdank71 20:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

This seems to be working ok. Only one problem with the cfd template, because I missed a transclusion. This morning I fixed the cfm and cfm1 templates, and now I'm in the middle of substing cfr. --Kbdank71 16:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Boldly moving on in the face of no opposition, I'm almost done. cfd, cfd1, cfm, cfm1, cfr, cfr1, cfdu and cfru have all been fixed. You get an error message if they aren't subst'ed. All cats are now added to Category:CfD yyyy-mm, so we can track what categories were tagged but not listed at WP:CFD. To do: I need to fix cfr-speedy. Also, since cfr1 and cfd1 handle umbrella nominations, I'll probably go ahead and add some sort of depreciated tag to cfdu and cfru to get people to use the right templates. Then we can nominate those two for deletion. --Kbdank71 20:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. I did not realize how much extra work this would lead to. Vegaswikian 21:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Shoo, me either. I think it'll be worth it in the end, though. At least now we'll be able to track what gets tagged. Turns out you were right in the end, about having to subst the templates, good call. --Kbdank71 02:22, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Ack! I just found out about this, unfortunately, only after Kbdank went around and implemented it in a bunch of places. Substituting CFD templates is not only unnecessary, it breaks bots. I've been using a functionality I added to pyWikipediaBot that automatically resolves these templates after the category text is moved from the deleted name to the new name. Keep in mind, pyWikipediaBot handles the majority of WP:CFDW moves. But if these templates are substituted then they won't work with the bot. I still have a bit more rollbacking to do ... ugh ... Cyde Weys 15:12, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget to rollback the cfd1, cfr1, and cfm1 templates. Oh, and if you could add functionality to pywikipediabot to check Category:Categories for deletion for categories tagged but not added to WP:CFD, that'd be great. Thanks! --Kbdank71 15:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Note: additional useful conversation has taken place here. --Cyde Weys 17:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest putting the Category:Cfd-yyyy-mm back in (i.e. the version that won't break bots): it was working without needing to be substed. The category will say it's in the current month's category, while actually being in the correct category. (From the 2006-08 category, I found one that had been missed among renames/merges in a nomination, a couple that hadn't been deleted after the discussion was closed, and a few I wasn't sure how to deal with.) TimBentley (talk) 04:49, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

It only works correctly when subst'ed. Without it, yes, the category will be put in, say 2006-09, but on October 1, if that category is edited for any reason, when it's saved it'll change to 2006-10. --Kbdank71 10:43, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

The only other solution I can think of at this point would be to have the base template, be updated every month to include the new month. Even if this gets missed for a few days or done early, it would be better then nothing. If the change is needed in more then one template, then we could include a template just to add the category so we only need to update one place. Vegaswikian 18:19, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Not sure that would work either. As soon as you edit {{cfd}} with, say 2006-10, every category that has the template transcluded on it will update, pulling them all forward to the next month. The only way I can think of that will work without substing things is to use two different templates, like cfd_a and cfd_b, hardcode a date in each, when the next month arrives, change the cfd1 template to load the other (a or b). For example, a is 2006-08 and b is 2006-09. At the end of August, change cfd1 to load cfdb. Everything from August will continue to be in 2006-08, while the new stuff will go into 2006-09. After August's stuff is completed and the stragglers taken care of, change cfda to hardcode 2006-10. The only problem with that is it's an incredibly manual process, one that I'll certainly forget to do on a monthly basis.

I still think this will work (substing the templates) if we can find someone to modify the bot. If we have a specific string denoting the beginning and end of the subst'ed template, I don't see why the bot can't recognize those strings, and when creating the new category on a merge or rename, skip everything between the two strings. A pure delete shouldn't matter if it's subst'ed or not. Anyone want to tackle that? --Kbdank71 19:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Is the cleanup cat modified by a bot? If so, maybe we can have the same done here. Vegaswikian

Category cruft: "Citations" categories

Recently, these categories were created:

Category:Chronicles of Oklahoma citations
Category:Kappler's Indian Affairs citations

Superficially, these look like other entries in Category:Wikipedia sources, except the other entries are usually categories which collect articles originally copied from certain public domain sources. These new categories are just articles which happen to cite, however briefly, a certain source. That's a recipe for creating dozens of large but essentially useless categories. How about Category:Webster's Dictionary citations, or mabye Category:Wikipedia articles which mention the Bible? Stop the madness now! • Kevin (complaints?) 06:18, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

These these two categories are a part of Category:Digital libraries linked through Category:Oklahoma State University Library Electronic Publishing Center. If you want to clarify the use of Category:Wikipedia sources, maybe you could write the main article for Wikipedia sources or at least add something to Category talk:Wikipedia sources. See also Category:Handbook of Texas citations. DeepFork 15:14, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Category:Words which have got new meanings by people misunderstanding unexplained usage

Longest category title ever? :) --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 19:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

PROPOSAL: WP:WCFD

Note: I took the liberty of transferring this discussion from the log now that it has moved off the main page. I have gone ahead and split the working list, but don't want to "close" this discussion because we need to decide if we want any other changes. the wub "?!" 22:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm nearly done with posting nominations for the "Wikipedians" categories, but some users (notably Cyde) believe that it would be better to have a separate page for Wikipedian categories ("Wikipedian categories for discussion," say). I support this. I don't think everyone here is concerned about the non-encyclopedic content, and I see no reason for them to feel like they should have to participate in it. So let's see what people think: The options are:

( A ) Leave everything here;

( B ) Move to a new page after we get through the current renaming process, plus:

( C ) Move all the Wikipedian stuff to a new page right now.

( D ) "[S]eparate the Working page into "Mainspace" and "Wikipedian" as Mike" suggests below. [the wub]

( E ) Move all "Wikipedian"-type categories to a separate but interlinked wiki. [David Kernow]

Register an opinion, please.--Mike Selinker 15:45, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

My vote is B, by the way. I think it's a complex process that involves setting up new templates and administrative categories and the like, and I don't want to stop the current run of changes. But I'd like to see it done soon after the current run.--Mike Selinker 15:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

A: While I don't participate, putting it on a new page would limit the number of times an average browser of this page would see them - they'd have to look for the other page. I think it should stay here. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 15:48, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- What you describe as an oppose reason actually seems like a good idea to me. I don't want to see these user categories. I think that they are utterly insignificant and are getting in the way of the real business of CFD, categorizing the encyclopedic content. Ten years from now nobody is going to give a damn what name a few people named their category, but what we named an encyclopedic category in the largest freely redistributable encyclopedia will matter. So, bury it away in a corner where we don't have to see it if we don't want to, please. --Cyde Weys 15:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Move all of the non-encyclopedic stuff to a new page, please. I'm not interested in dealing with user categories at all, but there's been this negative trend in the past few weeks where CFD has been utterly overwhelmed with them. Thus, I've stayed entirely away from CFD, and CFD has lost the valuable services of Cydebot, the fastest CFD bot in the west. --Cyde Weys 15:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

A, If they are so unimportant, it doesn't make sense why users would take their time creating an entire new section dedicated to them. If anything, that gives them even more importance and promotes the creation of more Wikipedian categories. I think a good portion of the Wikipedian cats are useless, but I don't see a problem in having them discussed here. If somebody does not want to participate in the discussions, they can simply skip over those sections. Also, almost all the recent Wikipedian category discussions have been mass nominations which makes them easy to scroll past. It would be an unnecessary nuisance to split CFD. --musicpvm 16:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Cydebot doesn't have the option of skipping past them when they get onto WP:CFDW, and he can't do them either (he got blocked over it because he was breaking a bunch of userpages). --Cyde Weys 16:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
  - Well, we could easily separate the Working page into "Mainspace" and "Wikipedian" so that doesn't happen. There's no reason not to do that if there are good technical reasons.--Mike Selinker 16:43, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

A simpler solution, which would avoid people having to nominate them altogether, and would get them off this page without starting another, would be to create a new WP:CSD to cover them. That's a painless way of getting to the result without clogging up deletion processes. Let's start thinking about how we word it. --Doc 16:34, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Let's not. There are thousands of users who would disagree with this plan. --Mike Selinker 16:41, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
  - I highly doubt it. --Cyde Weys 16:51, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Question - Cyde, is it the mass renames that are causing a problem, or will even a single user category nomination prevent your bot from working? I think that the mass renames are going to be over soon once all the user categories get "Wikipedian" in the name in accordance with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories). After that, I expect (and hope) that user category nominations will be a rare thing, happening every now and then but not a daily occurrance (and only one or a few at at time instead of the mass renames). If your bot can handle that, I'd say stick with A. Otherwise, I'm with Mike on B (but wouldn't have a problem with C). —Cswrye 18:06, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- Now that D has become an option, I think that's the best solution for the short term. For the long term, I would prefer A, but I will qualify that by saying that if even a single user category could potentially cause a problem for Cyde's bot, we should stick with D. I'm still okay with B and C. I really don't like E, but if that's what the consensus is (although I doubt it will be), I can live with it. For anyone interested in a proposal on user categories, I have one at Wikipedia:Guidelines for user categories. Feel free to discuss it there. --Cswrye 07:26, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

D - separate the Working page into "Mainspace" and "Wikipedian" as Mike suggested above. Presumably this will be ok with you Cyde, and not cause any technical problems for Cydebot? I also couldn't care less about fixing the user categories, not when we have such backlogs of categories that readers might actually see. It seems pointless to split CFD completely, not least because it will take a lot of effort and extra maintenance (yes, I'm lazy). It really isn't too much hassle to scroll past debates you aren't interested in, and hopefully the whole user categorisation will be more under control soon. the wub "?!" 21:27, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

In order of preference, E, otherwise B/C then D. David Kernow 01:17, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Separating out the working page will also work for me to some degree (at least it will let me continue to use Cydebot). At the very minimum this one needs to be done. Heck, we could even separate out the working page into two sections, non-encyclopedic categories and encyclopedic categories, though it might just be easier to take it onto two pages. --Cyde Weys 14:02, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Really, I think we can just do that right now. It's not an architectural change like my proposal. Why don't you separate them and see how it looks?--Mike Selinker 16:08, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Better solution: Create a new page that doesn't list Wikipedian categories, and let people like Cyde use that one. Everyone else can continue to use the current page. This also avoids the problem of giving even more attention to User categories by giving them their own CFD page. — Dark Shikari ^talk/_contribs 22:55, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
- Ummm, that makes no sense. Why should the current page, which is the most important one, be the one that lists the unencyclopedic categories and then have to make a new page for the most important stuff? Let the unencyclopedic stuff go elsewhere. --Cyde Weys 23:29, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
  - I would think that it resolves the complaint of "giving a page to uncyclopedic categories." How about have a single main page, and two sub-pages (and the main page references everything from the subpages)? — Dark Shikari ^talk/_contribs 01:51, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

No matter which is chosen, I think D needs to happen in some way, at least on the short term, while the standardization renames are underway. Besides that, I favour A. - Jc37 02:33, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
Let's try the wub's idea (D), and if that isn't enough, we can revisit the issue later. - EurekaLott 03:22, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I like the Wikipedia: Non-encyclopedic categories for discussion, to go along with the Wikipedia:Non-main namespace pages for deletion, but we should keep media/image categories here. 132.205.44.134 04:49, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
I strongly oppose the suggestion of creating a seperate page for those categories - we don't need more bureacracy and more pages to monitor. Seperating the worklist would be absolutely fine though. Also, Cyde, couldn't you program the bot to simply skip category jobs which took user pages? Or fix it so that it doesn't harm the formatting? I don't know if your bot is standalone or AWB, but if it's AWB you can now write a plugin to handle things like this. --kingboyk 07:01, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
We need some new templetes ... the current cfd, cfr, cfm generate incorrect links. Its important to make a nomination correctly link to the relevent discussion. See Category:WFD2008 for an example of a broken nomination, all of the cfd links are now incorrect. I've maually added a link at the top, but we certainly don't want to do this every time. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 14:52, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Informing the creators is being ignored

This was crossposted to many pages. Please discuss at [[Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_policy/Archive_23#Informing_the_creators_is_being_ignored ]]. Please do not spam such complaints across multiple pages. --Kbdank71 19:01, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

two working pages

Isn't it slightly confusing to have two pages listing closures in progress: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/User and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working as it means closers have to update two pages as they go through the daily CFDs? Tim! 16:31, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe it was so the bots can go through the "normal" cfd's without choking on the user categories. I personally think it's a good idea. The user cats are such a PITA with all of the unknown templates and subst'ing going on, I'd rather just dump them at /user and forget about it. --Kbdank71 16:58, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Would it make sense to transclude working/user into the working page? That way we should be able to avoid the duplicate overhead issues and still address the bot problem. - EurekaLott 17:15, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

It may be a moot point now, as Radiant has moved the discussions themselves to Wikipedia:User categories for discussion. As such, I suppose we can treat the user cats as just another xFD process (UCFD?). --Kbdank71 17:25, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, I was just about to put up a big warning for that :) I think the user categories should be in a separate process because frankly encyclopedia building has a higher priority than pointing out that Wikipedian editors like apples. I would recommend to the bot owners to employ similar priorities. >Radiant< 17:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
- Wait a minute. I proposed that very thing and got anything but consensus around it (see above). I don't think we gave the compromise split of the Working pages a long enough trial period. Oh well, let's see what happens.--Mike Selinker 18:03, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
No templates for the new process have been created (or the old templates modified), so they link to the main process. TimBentley (talk) 04:15, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Notice

Proposal:CSD C1

I have always had an issue with using CSD C1 in that I see a category that is empty and am tempted to tag it with {{db-catempty}}. Of course, I don't know if it was empty 4 days ago, and there is no history in the category to see if it was previously populated. I could always just make a note about it and then go back and check it 4 days later, but that seems too difficult for me to remember, so it ultimately remains unresolved. I would like to propose that we remove this from the Criteria for speedy deletion and instead, use a procedure similar to PROD. Specifically, a template could be created like {{prod}} which would tag the category for deletion and place a date on it. It would then be automatically put into a category similar to Category:Category empty as of XX Month YEAR. The categories could then be patrolled by the admins at a later date, who could zap everything, based on 1) the category is still tagged 2) the category is still empty and 3) the category is not being discussed on WP:CFD. Note that I assume that this may need to be discussed somewhere beyond CFD, but figured that I should start here to see if there was consensus within this area of the community and also because I wasn't sure of where else to go with it. Any thoughts? --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 17:25, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The one thing I don't like about that is The categories could then be patrolled by the admins at a later date. Couldn't we just have the categories listed at CFD as usual, and if any admins want to delete it after being listed for 4 days, fine, and if not, it'll get deleted after seven. I'm all for deleting empties, but you're right, there isn't any way I'm aware of that tells if it was ever populated. So we probably could get rid of CSD C1 if a suitable alternative is found.

Why not just add a heading after the speedy deletes for empty cats? Then they don't clog up the regular discussion area. Track by date like we do for the speedy canidates. Vegaswikian 17:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

One thing I liked about my idea was that it allowed the user to just place a single tag, like they do now when they CSD, without having to make a 2nd post to a CfD page, but you are both admins and I want to be considerate of your time as well. It is more important to me to have some change to deal with the 4 day thing, so I am willing to sacrifice the one vs. two step approach to accomplish that. You both have more experience than I, so I will defer to your judgment, or we can see if someone else comments. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 00:47, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Being completely lazy, I fully understand wanting to change it from two steps to one step. Problem is, I don't do a lot of tagging categories, so I'm thinking from a closer's perspective, which would be two places to check instead of one. If it's already on CFD, regular or in the speedy section, that's just one place for me to check. That all said, I wonder if I could just add the speedy empties to the Category:CFD yyyy-mm categories like the {{cfd}} templates now do. That way, if someone just happened to tag an empty and not list it, we'd catch it come end of month. It wouldn't solve the four day problem, but it would keep things from falling through the cracks. --Kbdank71 02:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Cydebot's actions

Can anyone please help me understand what happened here? The correct way to do it will be to replace Category:Cities and towns in Lakshadweep with Category:Cities and towns in India, the reason being the sub-category is small. But why remove the category itself and make the article an orphan? The category help us out for moving these sandbox articles into the mainspace as explained here. Thanks, Ganeshk (talk) 16:48, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Let me explain what has happened Category:Cities and towns in Lakshadweep is a category that was never created and is a red link category. Cydebot was just empting categories that do no exist. pease feel free to create the category and populate it. Category:Cities and towns in Lakshadweep was emptied because the category doesnt exist, that might happen for several reasons but they should not exist they either should be created or emptied, Cydebot was just taking care of this task. But that does not mean you cant recreate the cat and populate it. if you have any questions feel free to leave me a message on my talk page. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 17:54, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

A category being red does not mean it does not exist. It still acts as a grouping function for the articles that are part of it. The red simply signifies it does not have header text added to it (to explain what that category is). I cannot accept this unilateral deletion without informing the parties involved. I know I could recreate, but why? Why does this bot do these actions and expect others to fix them? - Ganeshk (talk) 18:12, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Bots need to assist us in building articles, not undoing the constructive work that was already done. Ganeshk (talk) 18:16, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

However, from a wikipedia standpoint it does mean it doesn't exist. He could ask the same of you: why do you categorize articles with redlinked categories and expect others to fill in the "header information"? Syrthiss 18:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Who decides the Wikipedia standpoint? If so, why does it show the articles when you click the red link. I don't expect anyone to fill the header information, I will fill it myself when I get a chance. Meanwhile, the bot does not have to go around and delete these categories from the article pages. - Ganeshk (talk) 19:20, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

All I expected from the bot, is to let me know that this category needs a header. Or may be the bot could have added a header itself with the text, "This category needs a header." Instead it erased the category from all article pages. Now I would have go back all articles that were using category (I have no way to find this now...would you suggest how I do this?) and put back the category line. I hope you understand my problem. - Ganeshk (talk)

the Bot does NOT need to notify anyone or create anything. the categories that the bots have removed DO NOT EXIST,any user can add category:Foo to an article that does NOT create the category. red linked categories dont exist. Non-existant categories can be populated even if the category page does not exist. If a user or users want to use a category they should create the category page. If redlinked categories should exits go ahead and create them. and revert the edits. But other categories are ones that are typos of a proper category, or categories that were deleted but not properly emptied prior to deletion. the bot was correct in removing them. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 19:58, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

What you are saying is, If I populate a category with articles and have not added a header yet, it will be deleted. Can you please direct me to a policy that says so? - Ganeshk (talk) 20:09, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

You're not populating a category, for one does not exist. You are adding redlinks to articles, and the bot is removing them. It's common sense. --Kbdank71 20:15, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

A red link category acts every bit as a category except that it does not have a header. If anyone can prove otherwise, I am all ears. - Ganeshk (talk) 20:19, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Go to Category:Cities and towns in Lakshadweep. Read the first few lines, specifically: Wikipedia does not have a category with this exact name. and To start a page called Category:Cities and towns in Lakshadweep, type in the box below. When you are done, add an edit summary and select Save page. It may act like a category, but it is not a category. --Kbdank71 20:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm merely saying that you are both working in ways that you feel benefit the encyclopedia. While it is easy to say "the bot is not functioning properly!", its equally easy to say that when you placed the first category link and realized the category was non-existant you should have edited the category page and finished the job. As to Wikipedia's standpoint, I misspoke. Let me say perhaps that from a technical standpoint the category doesn't exist. We are writing an encyclopedia not just to write an encyclopedia, as a goal in itself, but to produce an encyclopedia that others can read. A reader should be our ultimate target, and a reader...after reading a fine article on a town in Lakshadweep that you have contributed to...might look at the categories for the article, see a redlink, and not click on it. After all, pages that are redlinked inside of articles have no text...so why would they expect that a redlinked category would have links to other articles in it? For a further analogy, what if you wished to put a picture of a town in Lakshadweep into an article there. Would you place it in the article before uploading it? It would also only show up as a redlink. So my advice is this: it would be very nice if Cyde or Betacommand could provide some added abilities for their bots and perhaps they will do that, and it would be very nice if you would create category headers when you sort articles into redlinked categories and perhaps you will decide to do that. Syrthiss 20:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

After edit conflict I saw yours and betacommand's replies. I am not sure how the bot could notify you, though its possible that the bots could be configured to place a template on the redlinked category page. As to finding the pages, don't you have them in your contributions list? Or in Cydebot's edit list? There can't be too many articles from a day or two ago whose names look like places in India that Cydebot touched that you couldn't revert, can there? I'll go take a look in a bit. Syrthiss 20:24, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest if this is going to happen it be the redlinked category talkpage. Putting it on the category itself would create the page and make the link blue. Just a thought. --Kbdank71 20:30, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

A note on the redlinked cat's talk page seems like a decent solution, though then it will probably get G8'ed. *shrug* -- nae'blis 22:16, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

FWIW I reverted Cydebot's edits around 20:04 Sep 19 on the categories under Ganeshbot's userspace. I then created categories for them (hence the bluelinked one above). Does that solve your current concern Ganeshk? Syrthiss 20:44, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Syrthiss, Thanks for your detailed response. I really appreciate it. I am just frustrated that there is no feedback mechanism for this process. If that category had a thousand articles populated in it, reverting it will be a lot of manual work. Thanks for putting back the articles and creating the category. In the future, I will make sure to add headers to all categories I create. - Ganeshk (talk) 20:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

To handle Ganeshk's concern the cats that are empty there is not a categoty with 1000 pages in it that doesnt exist. Like i said above most are typo's and other mistakes. But if by some freak mistake a large cat that is populated but doent exist gets emptied I can have my bot add them back, all you need is to leave me a message and ill gladly repopulate the cat. But like i have said before +95% of the cats that are red should not exist, and for the ones that should exist it lets the editors of a page know that the cat page should be created. if you have any questions about this ill galdly answer them. Betacommand ^{(talk • contribs • Bot)} 22:02, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Taking care of redlinked categories certainly used to be done by looking at the intent and either creating the category (and linking it into the category structure) or fixing the reference so it goes to an already existing category. category:orphaned categories was the central clearing house for this activity, generally based on lists user:Beland created by analyzing offline dumps of the database. Simply deleting "non-existent" categories strikes me as a tremendously rude thing to be doing. Sure, you and I both know that "the job is only half done" after you add [[category:whatever]] to an article, but 9 out of 10 new users don't have a clue about this. Red linked categories don't hurt anyone, so I really fail to see the point of deleting these references. It takes an immense amount of time to manually look at all of them and to figure out what might have been meant, but automatically deleting them is an evil thing to be doing. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

"Evil" seems like an unnecessarily harsh word to be using here, unless you mean it in a frivolous, just-kidding way, which is not apparent to anyone reading this. ♥ Her Pegship♥ 03:32, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'd already used "rude". Perhaps "impolite", "irresponsible", "wrong headed"? I'm willing to believe there's no malice involved, but I think it's simply inexcusable for someone sophisticated enough to be running a bot not to understand that doing this is likely biting a whole slew of new users. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, this may sound a bit out there, but I tend to be a little out of the box, so here goes. I would actually like to see this bot run more frequently, perhaps daily. It could zap everything from each red category that it finds and as it does so, could it be smart enough to go to the talk page of the user who placed the link and notify them, so that they can try again with any spelling corrections, etc that may be necessary? This keeps Cyde and Beta from having to "guess" what the user intended, but gets it back to the user while it is still fresh. I don't know if the bot can get this info from the diff, but if it could.... or course if it can't then my idea is kind of moot. If done it should be programmed to ignore anything that was just changed within the last 60 minutes, so that it didn't catch someone in the middle of making changes. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 15:46, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Here's how we can handle CFD template substitution

I thought long and hard about this and I think I have come up with a solution. Obviously there's significant support for having the CFD templates substituted, and I guess I can see the reasoning behind it. It's consistent with the other parts of the process and it allows categories to be made on a per-montly basis that make it easy to notice and clear up orphaned, unresolved, or forgotten nominations. I had originally opposed this because it broke the behavior of pyWikipediaBot, but I have come up with a solution that should not be too hard to implement on the bot end that will allow us to substitute the CFD templates. Barring any objections, I suggest that we implement this as quickly as possible.

Identify all of the CFD templates. As far as I am aware we have the following six templates: 'cfd', 'cfr', 'cfru', 'cfr-speedy', 'cfm', and 'cfdu'. We also have three templates with a "1" after them that are designed to be substituted. These should be deleted as they will no longer be necessary, since the substitution behavior will be merged into the versions of the templates without the 1 tacked on the end.
Modify all of the CFD templates such that the first line that they insert upon substitution (not necessarily in the template code itself) is  and the last line upon substitution is .
I will modify pyWikipediaBot such that it snips all of the text between these two comments (including the comments itself) when moving over category text, rather than merely removing the unsubsted {{cfd}} or whatever.
All of the CFD templates should be modified to include code that requires their substitution and adds in a per-month CFD category (this was already done before, so it will be as simple as reverting to them, I think).
I will go through and substitute all of the CFD templates.

And that should be it. Are there any objections? If not, I'd like to get started as soon as possible. Thank you. --Cyde Weys 17:25, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Works for me. However, I'm wondering if we need the cfru and cfdu templates. The cfr1 and cfd1 have umbrella functionality built into them. We should look into seeing if we can do that with the cfr and cfd templates also. That'll reduce the number of templates to four. Granted, that's something that can be implemented at a later date, if we want to get up and running fast. --Kbdank71 17:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

That sounds fine. I'm not convinced that six are necessary anyway, and the smaller we get the number down to the better (and the easier the explanation of the process on CFD is). The number doesn't even particularly matter to me; as long as all of their substitutions begin and end with the comments I have suggested, they should work automagically. --Cyde Weys 17:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

FYI, I was starting some work towards developing a new template which would be 'cfd-speedy' per Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion#Proposal:CSD C1. I was early in the process and I put it on hold when the issue of substitution possibly being a problem was raised. Once this is done, I'll get back to that and model it on whatever changes are made to 'cfd' and 'cfr-speedy'. I'm still new with templates, so I will probably look for some help or at least error checking. Also, I imagine that the discussion may still need to be had to officially modify CSD C1 (or can this just be done boldly?). --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 18:06, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Cyde, a brilliant solution—run with it, and thanks for your work on this.—Chidom ^talk 19:22, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

What happened? Are we stalled out? It's been nearly two weeks since I suggested the change to these templates and nothing has been done. --Cyde Weys 14:42, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, totally forgot about this. I'll start working on it today. Would you be able to contact via talk page, the owners of the bots listed at CFD/W, and let them know about this discussion? I don't know who else would need to modify their bots in order for this to work. (good to see you back, btw) --Kbdank71 15:12, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, cfr-speedy and cfd are complete. You have to subst them, they both have the "BEGIN/END CFD TEMPLATE" as noted above, and all categories that were tagged with cfd have been subst'ed. Also, cfdu has been redirected to cfd, since it isn't needed any longer, and all cats that were tagged with cfdu have been substed with cfd. So far so good. I'll continue with the remainder as I can. --Kbdank71 18:56, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

cfm is done. Starting on cfr and cfru. --Kbdank71 20:33, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, All done. all templates need to be substed, everything is being dumped into CFD (year)-(month) correctly, all templates on currently tagged categories have been substed (so Cyde's bot, at least, can begin work again; All other bots may need to be modified, see Cyde for details). Any questions ask here, anything you found that I missed, tell me on my talk page. Thanks. --Kbdank71 16:35, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

FYI. I cleaned out the September queue last night by deleting the old categories that were moved and not delteted due to the problems. I think there was only 1 category left after the cleanup and that one was taken care of. Vegaswikian 01:51, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've made the necessary modifications to pyWikipediaBot. Anyone else using pyWiki to do CFD just needs to synchronize and pull down the latest version and it will be able to handle substituted CFD templates. Thanks to everyone for pulling together and getting this working! --Cyde Weys 06:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Subcategory procedure

Whether here or elsewhere, the policy regarding deleting subcategories of nominated categories needs to be specifically spelled out. What is listed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Procedure III. is not clear enough; it says to list the subcategories (though even that is not really clear); nowhere is it stated that all subcategories need the {{cfd}} tag added on their pages as well. My personal opinion is that requiring the {{cfd}} tag to be placed on every subcategory page will discourage or preclude categories with massive numbers of subcats from being nominated for deletion. (Again, see Category:Fauna by country and its discussion page.) I added the tag on 133 subcategory pages. Since I don't know how to write bots, this was largely done by hand. I do have the advantage of a macro program that helped somewhat, but it was still an onerous manual task. I have posted this comment on the talk page for Wikipedia:Category deletion policy as well.—Chidom ^talk 19:17, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Done. See Section 2 [1] under umbrella nomination. --Kbdank71 19:23, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

As for precluding massive numbers of categories from being nominated, I honestly don't think that's as important as keeping people informed. There are many people who don't visit CFD regularly. Those people would never know of hundreds of categories that were about to be deleted. --Kbdank71 19:34, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I've read that section and it's still unclear. What is the difference between a "related category" and a subcategory? That isn't obvious and needs to be explained further.—Chidom ^talk 19:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Look at it this way: Tag every category you want to nominate. It's that simple. --Kbdank71 19:47, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Or this way, if we were having a discussion about deleting your own user and talk pages, wouldn't you want to know, so you could make your opinion known? And what if we let you know by placing a notice on MY talk page that we're going to delete yours. Would you consider that as an adequate warning? We have to tag every category nominated because we don't know who is regularly looking at what. --Kbdank71 19:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to clarify the text - does this help? -- Rick Block (talk) 00:13, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

the effect of the CFDU move

Radiant unilterally moved the user discussions to CFDU. At the time (even though I'd proposed it) I thought it was a bad idea to just swap discussions to a new page without all the template architecture, but Radiant acted boldly, and he's an administrator, and so on. Well, now, after a lot of manual work to delete all the food template category tags, someone has relisted the debate on Wikipedia:Deletion_review on the very basis that the templates were not updated. And so now I know Radiant's unilateral move was a bad idea. Just my opinion.--Mike Selinker 14:38, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see what me being an admin has to do with anything. Also, how can you call it unilateral if you were part of the discussion on ANI leading to it? >Radiant< 15:47, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:CFDS

Am I the only one working this page these days? — xaosflux ^Talk 03:56, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Possibly. Move them to WP:CFD/W and let the bots do them, if you want. --Kbdank71 13:10, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Not quite, but I've been busy! --RobertG ♬ talk 16:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Permission

Please may I delete some {{category redirect}}s that we would obviously delete if they came up for speedy renaming at CFDS? I mean ones like Category:Amusement Parks, Category:Anime Conventions, Category:Assyrian Settlements, Category:Blue Cheeses? You get the idea… Also, what is the feeling about category redirects that are unlikely to be typed in (such as Category:Articles whose titles are initialed a lowercase letter and Category:Coastal bassins of the Gulf of Lion). The number of such redirects is growing (partly because I keep finding #redirects in the category namespace) and unlike #redirects they are not cheap, so I am trying to cut down on the number of egregiously useless categories my bot has to trawl through! --RobertG ♬ talk 16:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

You won't get an argument from me. I've often thought that we use cat redirects far too often. I'll try to keep this in mind when closing CFD's in the future. --Kbdank71 16:54, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, too. However, I do think it's important to keep the category redirects to names that can't be typed in standard English, like Category:Maori. - EurekaLott 17:34, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree; I also think differences between US and commonwealth spellings are appropriate, but not typos or spelling errors. I am also pragmatic: if a category often has articles inadvertantly put into it (as Category:Living People does) then it can stay! --RobertG ♬ talk 10:52, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if this will help at all, but when NekoDaemon handled category redirects, for security reasons, it would honor only the templates placed by administrators. Would that make the load a little lighter? - EurekaLott 21:32, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it would lighten the load, but I'm not sure it would be appropriate. I see no reason why any user should not create a valid category redirect, and I don't intend to go through all the existing cat redirects not created by admins and do a null edit on every one just to make them work! If it sets your mind at rest, I have minimised the potential for mischief by making the bot ignore for one run any new cat redirects that it didn't encounter last time; this will give us a chance to investigate any that look odd before the robot implements them. It will log them at its exceptions log. --RobertG ♬ talk 10:48, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not aware of what led to NekoDaemon's security policy, but I expect it was to prevent malicious category redirects. The exceptions log should have a similar impact. I'll try to keep an eye on it and help out when I can. How often do you run the bot? - EurekaLott 19:33, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I can't really be more specific than "every so often"! If I run it during the day I tend to check its log before I run it again. Currently about once a week or less I do let it run unattended overnight; if you see its log change about 1 am then it was an unattended run. If you do check up on new cat redirects and find they are ok, can you please remove them from the bot's log with an edit summary saying what you've done, to avoid duplicated effort?! Thanks for the offer of help. Regards, RobertG ♬ talk 09:16, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Long instructions

The instructions for this process are needlessly long and complex. Someone who is familiar with CfD please fix them. —Centrx→talk • 21:12, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Old maps vs. history maps

We currently have Category:History maps, with a slew of per-country categories, and Category:Old maps by country, also with a slew of per-country categories. It seems to me that these should be merged (personally I would prefer "Historical maps by country") and logical subcategories also merged (e.g. Category:Maps of the history of the United States and Category:Old maps of the United States). I don't really have time at the moment to do the requisite umbrella merge tagging, and I thought maybe it would be a good idea to discuss it a bit before someone goes to all the trouble. -- Beland 17:03, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Maps of X

Old maps of X

Maps of the history of X

Old maps of the history of X

...where "old" means made more than seventy or so years ago.

Regards, David Kernow (talk) 20:13, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

PS I guess all those maps qualifying as "old" could reside on the Commons...

Rename vs delete

If someone nominates a category for renaming ('cat a' rename to 'cat b'), what happens when many editors instead say 'delete cat a'? Since the original proposal was 'rename' and many editors may not have taken the opportunity comment and/or think about the subject except in the context of 'renmaing', can/should the result be 'delete'? It seens to me that such a result would be a hijack of the 'categories for discussion' process. Thanks Hmains 17:02, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

There are certainly cases where a proposal to rename results in a decision to delete. Fortunately, the admins who close these discussions almost all tend to work this page regularly, and they do not use simple vote counts, but look at the merit of the arguments and consensus that forms, so they usually do the right thing. Also, there are generally enough people watching the pages that inappropriate delete comments will generally be met with sufficient reasons to keep with the rename. If the admin feels it is appropriate, they can also choose to either close with no consensus or to relist. Or course, if all else fails, you can contact the admin on their talk page and there is always the DRV process to fall back on. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 18:41, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Midnight's right. However, he fails to mention that deletion as the result of renaming request isn't always unjust. BTW, don't say "Thanks" in advance...kinda annoying. Anyway, voting-esq methods are a last resort used only in extreme cases (which usually require at least some admin help). The object is to come an acceptable decision based on the the feeling or spirit of the majority. It is not against any policy I know of to choose an option which was not given. If it is believed that a category, page or anything else would be better off deleted than renamed, and a good argument is made, the decision should be honored. What would be unfair is ignoring users who make a good point when stating that something should be deleted. "Voting outside the box" is relative. I'm sorry if your category was deleted, but it's a bit unrealistic to feel wronged if the reasons for deletion were sound. I mean, in cases like that, it was bound to be deleted one way or another. That's no hijacking, it's just...something that happens. And as for making a comment, that's not a requirement. All it takes is one good argument. Everyone can just agree and vote "delete per". ACS (Wikipedian); Talk to the Ace. See what I've edited. 18:54, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Businesspeople vs Business people

Hi, what's the correct spelling of Businesspeople? One word or two words. See Category:Businesspeople by nationality where it's sometimes one and sometimes two words. Or is it one of those American vs British language differences? I'd like to know before when or if I put them up for renaming. Garion96 (talk) 12:36, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

The correct spelling would be one word; it's the genderless alternative to "businessmen" which is likewise one word. Dugwiki 15:04, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Probably either, but I'd go with "businesspeople" as "businessman" and "businesswoman" already in use (without as well as within Wikipedia). Thought before internet search: I wonder if anyone studied the history of what seems to be this inevitable melding of words... (e.g. "business man" → "business(-)man" → "businessman"; "south east" → "south-east" → "southeast"; etc. I imagine the internet is probably accelerating the process...?) Regards, David Kernow (talk) 15:06, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for checking. I put them up for renaming here. Garion96 (talk) 21:47, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Image cats

Is it Category:Foo images or Category:Images of foo? Vegaswikian 07:49, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

If I were to guess, I'd say Category:Images of foo. --Kbdank71 14:07, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Seconded, as more difficulties with adjectivals etc avoided. Regards, David Kernow (talk) 16:35, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

If this is a policy or guideline proposal, I support "Images of [F|f]oo" 132.205.44.134 00:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

what does 'no consensus' mean?

'Delete', 'rename', or 'keep' are actions to be taken as a result of a discussion. 'No consensus', on the other hand is not an action, but a discussion result. Instead, should a 'no consensus' discussion result in a 'keep' decision? Some editors/admins seem to take 'no consensus' to mean they can do anything they want on their own, like effectively delete the category by removing all links to it. Hmains 17:06, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Basically from what i can gather, "no consensus" means that no agreement is reached. Therefore the article should be kept until nominated and some agreement on what to do with the article is reached. Simply south 17:13, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

There is not going to be a simple answer here. As a general rule, no consensus would result in a keep. If there are only a few votes and recomendations the closer can choose to vote by selecting one of the options as proposed. In effect casting the deciding vote. Also the closer could choose to select the proposal that follows the MoS or another guideline. If a category is deleted and an editor does not believe that was the correct action, they can take it to deletion review. If it was a rename or a merge, the result can be brought up here again. The process is not perfect and changes have been reversed after everyone has seen the result. Vegaswikian 21:22, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
- Or they can be relisted. Some discussions simply never get enough attention to reach a consensus, or could benefit from a more in depth debate (especially here on CFD).the wub "?!" 22:26, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

No consensus means do nothing, which while it has the same outcome as a keep, it's not the same as a keep. It doesn't mean that editors can take that to mean they can do what they want. (although being bold and ignoring all rules kind of means they can, but there should be a good reason for it. As Vegaswikian said, it's not perfect. It works most of the time.) --Kbdank71 19:15, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Recreation of deleted category

I believe Category:World cities is a recent recreation of a deleted category. I don't know much about how that works; especially, I don't know where the old discussion would be found. Would someone who is more up on this please look into this? Thanks. - Jmabel | Talk 00:25, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_June_21#Category:World_Cities_to_Category:World_cities. Yes, it was previously deleted. SchmuckyTheCat 05:04, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
As a recreation, it'll most likely be deleted again. --Kbdank71 19:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization in countries [of "t/The Gambia"]

I was just looking through Category:The Gambia and noticing that half of the subs are in the form of xx The Gambia while the other half are in the form of xx the Gambia. While convention tells me that "The" should be lowercase, the fact that half of the articles are in Proper Case makes me think twice.

I'd nominate them for speedy rename, but I don't know which direction I should go (making it impossible to tag). What do you guys think? thadius856_talk 05:50, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

There were a couple of "...t/The Gambia" articles on WP:RM not so long ago and the consensus was "The Gambia" (i.e. capital case); I think the reason is that "The Gambia" not "Gambia" is the actual (English) name of the country. Regards, David Kernow (talk) 05:55, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm with David. The name of the country is "The Gambia", so it should be capitalized. --Kbdank71 12:18, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

PS I'd catalog/ue it as "Gambia, The". David (talk) 14:18, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Nationality Conflict people

Anyone else reckon categories such as Category:German World War II people – i.e. categories using the format above – might better be described using the format Category:Nationality people of Conflict (as in Category:German people of World War II)...? My thinking is that description by nationality seems more fundamental (more generally applicable) than description by conflict... Thanks in advance for any thoughts, David Kernow (talk) 07:57, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Speedy rename

Given the prevalence of such categories, I think it may be useful to add a speedy renaming criterion for any category named "famous <foo>", "notable <bar>", "important <thing>" and any such other terms that have only ambiguous and subjective inclusion criteria. The trick is, of course, in wording it properly. Comments please? >Radiant< 11:12, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a great! For the wording (thats the question, right?), I'd go with some more along the lines of "subjective or relative adjective", but that still doesn't sound right. Used pejoratively? :\ thadius856_talk 16:46, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm all in favor. I also support the move to get rid of actors by performance and the like. The speedy criteria should be expanded whenever we can come up with a good definition of a class of categories. The process could be:

Nominate individual categories for CFD.
Nominate similar categories and note the pattern to other categories that were deleted.
Propose a new speedy criteria on this page citing previous deletions and discuss. Publicize the discussion and result.

--Samuel Wantman 05:46, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I support the concept but need to see how we allow a new name to be selected. One option would be to allow the editor to choose and then depend on those that follow the listings to object if there is an issue. Vegaswikian 06:05, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

One sticking point may be category:Famous animals and its subcategories. There might be a better name for those, but regardless, they can't just dump into, say, category:Animals.--Mike Selinker 13:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Well in the mean time, how about if someone creates an essay listing some of these? After the discussion about performers by performance, I am now hesitant to suggest that they be speedy. But I do think that as "perennial (re)creations", it would be helpful to have some kind of reference to point to when suggesting delete. - jc37 06:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

HELP ME

Re Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/...

Some time ago I think these pages briefly became "Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/..." before this path reverted to the former "for deletion" format. Can this inconsistency now be addressed more successfully...? Regards, David Kernow (talk) 04:04, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd want to find out why they reverted back to "deletion" first. --Kbdank71 13:25, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Anyone with more insight...? David (talk) 10:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

They still are (though sometimes I get the odd redirect). Anyone ever find out what was going on? - jc37 06:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

See my proposal to fix this, come January 1. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 15:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposals for new csd criteria for categories

These proposals were initially made at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 16 but have been moved here as conducive to further discussion. Hiding Talk 14:42, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I restored them to the CfD discussion. As suggested by some commentors, a modified proposal will likely be soon forthcoming either here or at the Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). - jc37 11:59, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Oopsie.

I wanted to propose a category for deletion and thought it went in the Miscellany for Deletion area... Having already created the discussion page, added it to the log, etc. there, is there a way I can fix it to be in CFD? ~ ONUnicorn (Talk / Contribs) 20:53, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd delete it / strike it out from the Miscellany for Deletion area (as proposer, probably leaving a brief explanation) then nominate it here. Hope that wouldn't contravene protocol. Regards, David Kernow (talk) 10:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Polymaths

Looking at the nomination, the subcats weren't nominated. --Kbdank71 20:22, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

So, now what will be done? Sooner or later someone will see all the subcats and want to (re)-create the 'generic' category, right? [see redirects discussion below] --RCEberwein | Talk 15:58, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Why are categories deleted after a rename?

Why do we insist on deleting categories after a rename? It's much more useful just to turn them into a redirect, using {{categoryredirect}}.

The name was obviously plausible to some people, so future people might type it in or add articles to it, or might remember the old category and not realize it's been renamed. Also, there might be off-wiki links pointing to the old category. If we just delete the category, this confuses a lot of people, and only admins can easilly see if a category has been deleted. A regular user, confronted with a nonexistant category, would have to check the deletion log manually to see where the category went, and that's even assuming the deleting admin explained where the category was renamed to (which doesn't always happen).

So basically, by deleting instead of just adding a redirect, we create a totally unnecessary chore, possibly forcing people to spend several minutes tracking down the new category, and not everyone even knows how to do that. So why not just create a redirect and save everyone time? I know people like the finality of a deletion, but it just makes Wikipedia more disorgnized and complicated.

At the very least, people shouldn't be deleting category redirects just because the category was renamed at CFD. --W.marsh 19:56, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I can only imagine the problems that would cause. There is nothing to stop people from adding a redirected category to an article, and if they don't check the cat to see it's been redirected, the article ends up in the wrong category. If it's deleted, they immediately know that it's not there when they see the red link. I personally think there are too many redirects out there as it is. I think there is only one bot patrolling redirected cats, and even then only occasionally. But why the suggestion? Are we having alot of confused people all of a sudden? --Kbdank71 20:20, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It's annoying to have to type in exact syntax to get the right category... or fish around through deletion logs and old CFDs to figure out where a category went. We should be making Wikipedia easier to use... not adding more annoying "oops you didn't guess the exact syntax" stuff at every turn. If the bots aren't doing a good enough job of recatting articles in redirect categories, that's still not a good reason to make Wikipedia more difficult to use, we should just improve the bots.

Anyway if you want an example, there's a category on WP:DRV right now that was renamed, the old one deleted, and the person didn't realize this so they took it to DRV. I recreated the category as a redirect to the new category, since obviously it was confusing people, and someone promptly deleted that category as a repost of deleted material. --W.marsh 20:43, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not a question of poorly written bots, it's a question of which human has the time to run them. And with the sheer number of redirects this would create, whoever took on the task would spend all day simply checking redirects. As for making it harder/easier to use, take Category:Pirates by religion for an example. Click on that link, then click on "What links here". What will remain is the CFD log that anyone can view to see what it was renamed to.

Besides, the redirect solution wouldn't really work, anyway. If a category is "missing", you wouldn't know if it was renamed and deleted or just deleted. So what to do with the categories that were just deleted? Don't delete them, but leave a note saying "This category has been deleted, please don't use it."? We'd wind up keeping every category around because of the few times someone didn't know what happened. Honestly, I don't see that this is a big enough problem that the current procedure needs to change. --Kbdank71 20:58, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Most people aren't going to know to click "what links here" or deletion logs or whatever, my point is that this is forcing a non-intuitive process on people, so it's making Wikipedia harder to use. We should always avoid making Wikipedia more complicated, even if some people think it's just a minor inconvenience. If nothing else we shouldn't be deleting redirects where there clearly is confusion.

As for the bots, the whole thing could be (and was at one point) done fully automatically, so after it got going it would only need minimal human work. We accept that article redirects are cheap and useful, why should we try to force exact syntax on anyone who wants to use a category? It leads to categories being used less frequently... if my guess at the exact syntax isn't right the first time, I get frustrated. --W.marsh 21:06, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I am not entirely convinced by W.marsh's argument. Categories are primarily for browsing, and for categorising articles.

Posit: user adds category Y to article Z. Category Y doesn't exist so preview/save shows it as a red link. User thinks, "that category must exist," finds it and adds the article to the correct category.

Posit: user adds category Y to article Z. Category Y is a #redirect. Preview/save shows it as a blue link. User thinks, "that's all right then." Result: split category.

That said, I have no deep-seated objection to the existence of category #redirects. They are a reasonably good idea; in fact RobotG is gathering data so that I can convert the least-used {{category redirect}}s into #redirects because, as Kbdank71 rightly points out, the sheer numbers of {{category redirect}}s are becoming unmanageable! - there are in the region of 2000 of them. It's just that when category #redirects get populated with articles, the category is in effect split: and there is nothing currently available (except people) that knows to move the articles. So, {{category redirect}}s need their numbers to be kept down please to make it practical (and desirable) for a bot to patrol them.

I am going to apply for a toolserver account so that I can try to query the database directly for populated category #redirects. If anyone out there already has the ability to do this, please get me such a list! This should eventually make {{category redirect}}s redundant, but these things take time.

Having to type in the exact category title is bad, but in my view it's worse to have split categories. By all means create category #redirects - but if you come across a category #redirect that contains articles, and it seems sensible to do so rather than removing the category from the articles, can you convert it to a {{category redirect}} so RobotG can find it and eventually move the articles? Either that or pester the developers to make the Wiki software implement all the implications of allowing category #redirects. It's pretty complex, and I don't think it's high on their agenda - nor should it be: I think it's only on the various Wikipedias that the use and misuse of categories has become anything like an issue. --RobertG ♬ talk 12:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Woah, stop. Why on earth are we creating #redirect categories? Here's a posit: User adds category Y to article Z. Category Y is a #redirect. Preview/save shows it as a blue link. User clicks on category, immediately gets redirected, doesn't see the article he just added, head explodes. At least with a {{categoryredirect}}, when the user clicks on it, they know to put the article in the correct category. In my opinion, we are doing more damage by creating #redirect categories. --Kbdank71 15:47, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Help

I need to merge Category:Indigenous peoples of Australia into Category:Indigenous Australians. The two terms are exactly the same, but "Indigenous Australians" is both shorter and is the title of the main article: Indigenous Australians. I was going to do it myself, but I've never done this before and there's an extra complication: As of right now Category:Indigenous Australians is a subcategory of Category:Indigenous peoples of Australia. Can someone help me? Thanks, Sofeil 05:40, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

seeking an admin's help

There are three admin-necessary things that I'd like help with on the Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working/User page:

Deleting a whole bunch of empty categories in "Ready for deletion".
Switching the [[Template:User instrument]] code as shown at the bottom of Template_talk:User_instrument page.
Making a change on a protected user page (User:ForestH2/Userpage), changing category:Wikipedians who play piano to category:Wikipedian pianists, and category:User guitar to category:Wikipedian guitarists).

Anybody up for that?--Mike Selinker 12:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I've done 2 and 3. --RobertG ♬ talk 16:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Good thing. Thanks.--Mike Selinker 20:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

New fix needed: User:ForestH2/Userpage needs category:User Wikipedia/NP patrollers to become category:Wikipedian new page patrollers. Actually, what that page really needs is to have all its categories deleted, as the reason the page is locked is because the user has been indefinitely banned. Regardless, I can't do it, so someone with admin powers should take care of it. Thanks.--Mike Selinker 06:27, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I've removed that userbox from the page. You should ask the admin who blocked the user or who protected the page about deleting it, if you want to take that further.-gadfium 06:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Renaming a category

How do you do this?? --SunStar Net 10:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

You don't rename a Category directly. It is discussed as Wikipedia:Categories for discussion and then a decision is made and it is done for you. The directions are contained in the introduction, search for CFR. The result of a rename request will depend on the discussion. It could be a move or other action based on the individual case. Hope this helps. Vegaswikian 17:57, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

problems that need fixing

This page's directions are much more confusing than RM, and the automated processes produce at least two incorrect results.

There is a subheading called "If the category is a candidate for speedy renaming, use:" but no corresponding one called "If the category is not a candidate for speedy renaming, use:". As it stands, "If a single category:" is still part of the instructions for speedy deletion.
After adding the code for renaming on the category's page and clicking Preview, this adds a template with the erroneous "add entry {{subst:cfr2|Finland-Swedes|Swedish-speaking Finns|text='''Rename''', Your reason(s) for the proposed rename. ~~~~}} " which does not go away even after i did as that says (so all future users who see that template think they are being addressed and told to add a new entry)
Clicking on that link at "add entry" as well as on "Create the Cfd subsection. Click on THIS LINK" on Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion#How_to_use_this_page produces a project page with the erroneous heading "Editing Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 November 1 (section)" instead of "for discussion" --Espoo 11:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Lost request

On about 22 October 2006 I submitted a Category renaming request using the correct method - "Category:Freshwater fish of New Zealand" → "Category:Endemic freshwater fish of New Zealand". The comments were building up but now the entry has disappeared - can anyone tell me what happened? Ta GrahamBould 16:56, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The discussion was closed yesterday, and is archived at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 October 27#Category:Freshwater fish of New Zealand. - EurekaLott 17:15, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

It was marked as no consensus, but the votes were all for either rename or create a new category within the current one. It would appear that everyone would have been happy with the latter solution, so could a bot be set to move the existing entries accordingly?-gadfium 05:39, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Help needed with umbrella nomination

Please help with Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_November_2#Category:Education_in_Ancient_Greece. Thanks! --Espoo 08:04, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Deletion policy should be changed for living people extremes

I think its absurd that categories such as Surviving First World War veterans, survivors of silent films and Survivors of the 19th Century have just been nominated to be deleted because of the Living people policy. Surely these should be exceptions. Does anyone agree with me? Dovea 12:59, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Nope. Categories should not require constant policing of membership to make sure the contents still fit. Once you're in a category, you should stay there regardless of changes in your life (or lack of same).--Mike Selinker 20:35, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Waxy Yellow Buildup

I've been cleaning up some of the old entries in Category:CfD 2006-10 ... It seems that when a bot renames a category, sometimes it makes a mistake and copies the cfr tag into the new category. Look at the history of Category:Harvard Medical School alumni for an example. The subst headers are considerably more difficult to parse.

I've gotten several warnings from AntiVandalBot, it gets annoyed by people removing cfr/cfd/cfm tags. I don't blame it, it's working as designed, we want it to consider removing these tags as vandalism. However, I've taken to putting the discussion link as a comment to the change, so that someone looking over it later can tell what was going on.

However, it's often quite difficult to find the discussion, since often there's no indication of even what day to look at. And then of course the discussion is often listed under the old name, and not the new one, or it could be part of an umbrella nomination.

I've had a few thoughts about this ... it seems to me that when a new category gets created as the result of a discussion on the cfd page, we ought to add a link to the relevent discussion on the new page. Otherwise it can be difficult to find, later.

I've created a few of these, see Category talk:Solar System, although it seems strange to see a cfdend with an outcome of rename.

I'm hoping the bot bug can be fixed soon. If they could be made to add some kind of discussion link that would help a great deal too. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 15:56, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Dental laser

Hi, i am searching for the deletion log of the categorie Dental laser, where can i find it ? reg .Mion 02:43, 11 November 2006 (UTC), found it Category:Dental lasers. Mion 02:46, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Overcategorization

CFD regulars are invited to take a look at this new page, and reword it as necessary. The intent is to show both CFD precedent and simple guidelines for cats to avoid. (Radiant) 13:32, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I buy everything on that page.--Mike Selinker 20:33, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I am very much in support of this page. In addition, I think closing admins should be encouraged to use this page, as well as other relevant Wikipedia name-space pages, as a framework to weigh the arguments made at CFD. If a discussion does not have a clear consensus of opinion, and one side has valid arguments that are supported by the precedents at Wikipedia:Overcategorization or the guidelines at Wikipedia:Categorization, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) and Wikipedia:Categorization of people, that side should be given much more weight. Hopefully this would have a positive effect on CFD discussion, and they would be more discussions and less "voting". I'd like to see the guidelines for CFD changed to reflect this new process:

When posing a category at CFD, the nominator should state the problem and what guidelines and precedents apply. If there are no guidelines and precedents, the nominator might want to propose a new guideline. If the nominator thinks the guidelines and precedents are in error, they could argue how and why they should be changed. If they think the nomination is a special case, they could state that as well.
The discussion would focus on either the application of guidelines, the creation of new guidelines, ammending the guidelines or whether or not the nomination qualifies as a special case.
Arguments that do not address precedent or the guidelines can be heavily discounted by the closing admin.
If there are problems that cannot be resolved, or there seems to be some support for changing or creating new guidelines, the matter will be moved to Wikipedia talk:Categorization for more discussion and possible changes to the guidelines. New precedents can be added to Wikipedia:Overcategorization whenever there seems to be several examples of CFD discussions that all close with the same result.

In a sense, I am asking admins to behave more like judges and less like vote counters. If people know that the number of "votes" for and against does not matter, they will put more effort into convincing others by argument and less effort into gaming the system. -- Samuel Wantman 07:31, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that admins should not close purely based on vote counting, but when they don't they must explain clearly their reasoning. A simple reference to a guideline will not suffice in the most contested cases. Tim! 18:06, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks like good guidelines overall. I have moved my specific comments on them to the talk page for these guidelines (seemed more appropriate to post them there than here). Dugwiki 19:01, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

an extremely thorny template

We've converted category:User writing systems to category:Wikipedians by writing system, but for the life of me I have no idea how to move the contents. There is Template:User iso15924/category-intro, which somehow puts an associated category (e.g., category:User Arab) into the category:User writing systems. Can someone who knows something about templates look at this and figure out what to do to get it to send to category:Wikipedians by writing system instead? Much appreciated.--Mike Selinker 20:33, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

You already did this, with this edit. I suspect the issue you're seeing is that changing the categorization code in the template does not affect the database entries for articles/cats already including the template, so they don't show up in the new category. To get these updated you'll have to do a null edit on each of them (see Help:Category#Using templates to populate categories). -- Rick Block (talk) 15:51, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

cfd means discussion not delete change the log page links

Currently, when one follows the renaming procedure one ends up on a categories for deletion page. This is confusing. Please change the code if possible. TonyTheTiger 02:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't realize that before. The log pages are actually named that, so changing the code would not entirely solve it. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 02:11, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

This page was renamed "Categories for discussion" a while back so that all category discussions would happen in one place, and that includes renames. I believe there was a technical reason that the logs did not get renamed which has something to do with the bots that help us maintain things. Perhaps a bot expert can comment. -- Samuel Wantman 03:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I imagine it's bot-related. Would we need to move all the old logs to the new name? --- RockMFR 23:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I think we should leave the old files where they are, but start using the new naming convention at the start of the year. See the proposal below. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ProveIt (talk • contribs) 23:34, 14 December 2006 (UTC).

Category:Fortunes Top 100 Places to Work in America

Suggestions for renaming? - crz crztalk 15:58, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

/dev/null? Seems like overcategorization to me... -- nae'blis 20:33, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I think I agree with Nae above - most magazine lists are better handled as lists instead of categories. Beyond that, the name should match the actual wording used in the magazine for the list. Also, it's missing the apostrophe and should be either "Fortune's" or "Fortune Magazine's". Dugwiki 21:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Time to complete the grand renaming?

In late June of 2006 we renamed Wikipedia:Categories for deletion to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion. See Reorganizing CFD. The problem is that all the actual discussions are stored in transcluded pages:

The problem is that lots of things link to these discussions, and we don't want to break those links. Also, there are many templates that expect discussions take place on those pages.

I propose that we complete the rename, effective January 1, 2007, so that the new pages go like this:

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log 2007/January 1
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log 2007/January 2
Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log 2007/January 3

Note, this is the format suggested by William Allen Simpson, if people don't like it we could continue as:

Sometime this month, we ought to subst all existing templates that expect to know where the discussions are supposed to be, such as {{cfd}}, {{cfr}}, {{cfm}}, {{cfdend}}

Then come January 1, we simply update the templates to use the new naming convention. I can take care of creating the new boilerplate files ... I have a little python program that builds those, and it's trivial to change.

What do people think? ... ProveIt ^(talk) 01:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I was wondering when this would be done. I am in favour. I'd prefer Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 1, please, on the grounds that we are only changing the name, not the structure or the process. Also, remember that some CFD-implementing robots will probably have to be tweaked. Go for it! --RobertG ♬ talk 10:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I think I also prefer to continue with the same format ... it's a smaller change and less chance of breaking things. As a side benefit, I wouldn't have to update my python program. However, if theres some reason we'd ever want to split these files out year by year, then January 1 is surely the right time to do it. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 16:11, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

It just occurred to me; are we going to redirect to previous logs? I mean, for example, redirect Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2006 November 24 to Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 November 24? --RobertG ♬ talk 11:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

If a bot can do it, I think this is a good idea. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 16:39, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The sooner, the better : ) - I agree with RobertG - I also think we should keep the dates intact. And I agree that redirects for the previous logs would be a good idea as well. (I was thinking about whether the logs should be moved, and redirects fixed - a lot of work, but if it's right, it should be done - however, considering that they are historical, there's little reason for a move.) - jc37 16:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep, sounds good to me. I'm sure it would be easy for a bot to make all those redirects. the wub "?!" 12:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd very much prefer to NOT rename the existing files, since often in the discussion page it's useful to link directly to a subheading ... and I'm not sure if that still works through a redirect. No objection to creating redirects though, although I guess the only time that would really matter is if someone was adding 2007 cfdend tags to a discussion that happened in 2006 or before. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 16:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Rather than speculate, it's better to just try it and see:

Looks like it works, subheading links DO work through redirects. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 16:21, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I was bold and created the January files. I guess the next thing is to subst all the outstanding templates, although thinking about it if we create redirects to the old discussions the revised cfdend template will just work. Thinking about it further, the bots might have a hard time during the transition period, since it might be doing both old and new discussions in the same run. It depends on how the bot was written. Are we forgetting anything? -- ProveIt ^(talk) 16:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep, let's go ahead and do it. --Cyde Weys 16:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Support per this above. David Kernow (talk) 16:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
- We need an admin to update {{cfd}} and {{cfr}} ... I've already done {{cfm}}. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 01:30, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

South(west)ern artists

Category:Southern artists seems odd to me. It's a subcategory of Category:Artists by state, though of course the south isn't a state. Category:Louisiana artists etc. aren't subcategories of it. (Likewise for Category:Southwestern artists.) At this stage, I'm not keen to delete, just wondering. Curiously the project page doesn't seem to provide for nominations for discussion, instead forcing me to choose my proposed solution. Comments? -- Hoary 10:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Two-day waiting period

Why is there a two-day waiting period for speedy renaming? I simply want to have a typographical error corrected ("Category:Abortion in the Canada to "Category:Abortion in Canada") so that I get on with categorizing articles. There is nothing controversial about the fact that it is a typographical error and two days is a long time to wait to be able to get something done. -Severa (!!!) 18:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

As there is nothing in the old category, you can just create the new category and categorize to your heart's content. You do not have to wait. -- Samuel Wantman 08:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. I had considered that, but then, there would be two categories, one of which would need to be deleted. I didn't want to waste server space. -Severa (!!!) 09:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:People by religion and occupation

Category:People by religion and occupation has in the intro A category for persons who are notable for both their religion and their profession or are known for integrating their religion into their profession. This while, well intentioned, is likely overly POV.

In the category we only have sub cats that don't include that reasonable definition but rather appear to be simply ways of grouping people already listed in other categories. Given that, it appears reasonable to simply delete this all as over categorization. Since this would be a rather large delete I decided to ask here to see how others feel. Vegaswikian 20:33, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I haven't looked to see, but I can imagine that there might be a handful of categories where people are notable for both their religion and profession. If there are any like this, and it is non-controversial and NPOV, they could remain. The rest should probably be deleted. If there is just one or two that survives, it probably should be deleted just to keep additional categories from re-seeding. On the other hand, I imagine that many of these could remain as lists. Perhaps a way to go about this delete is to prepare some templates that will be added at the end of the CfD discussion which would give people a week to save the contents of the category as a list, before it gets deleted. The tagging of the categories with the template should be mentioned in the nomination. I'm thinking that without the transitions into lists, this deletion will be very unpopular. With annotations, the lists might be able to survive AfD. -- Samuel Wantman 22:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm OK with profession by religion categories as long as religion is somehow relevent to the occupation. However, it almost never is. For politicians, judges, writers, and religious workers, sure, it's relevent. For baseball and soccer players, certainly not. For therapists, meybe ... I could see a case being made. There's probably others I'm forgetting. I did not support the idea of entertainers by religion, but I think a case could be made for comedians who write their own material, in which case they qualify as writers. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 23:21, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep in some cases it would be easier to make the case for most entries in a category but likely not for all. Given the list suggestion from Samuel Wantman, would that be acceptable so that all of these similar intersection topics have the same solution to prevent recreation in the future? I don't see a problem with AfD since this is a list v cat problem and if the list is the better way then they will likely not be considered for nomination. Vegaswikian 00:29, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

So maybe the nomination should be to listify? Then it would happen following the normal course. But your comment raises the question of how does this happen today? If it is completly manual, as I suspect it is, then your suggestion for a template to allow 7 days for those interested in keeping the data to make the list might be an improvement on the current process. Vegaswikian 09:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Academic institutions v Schools

It seems that Category:Academic institutions and Category:Schools are really one in the same and the current setup seems to lead to confusion. Would it make sense to merge Category:Schools into Category:Academic institutions? Vegaswikian 05:36, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea, since similar ground is covered by both. However, I believe that there may be a slight semantic difference between the two. I would suggest just merging all into academic institutions, but I really think "school" should be in the name. So how about: Category:Schools and other academic institutions? - jc37 19:30, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

From a cursory inspection, it looks like the schools category covers primary and secondary education, while the academic institutions category serves as a parent category for schools, universities, and other related subjects. I don't see a reason to merge them, but the schools category could probably use a clearer introduction. - EurekaLott 19:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Looking at the article School it seems that it's mainly the US that uses it to encompass all academic institutions, whereas elswhere it's virtually never used for a tertiary institution (although it is used sometimes to mean a university department and sometimes a constituent part of a federal university - e.g. School of Advanced Study, London School of Economics but this is considered highly exceptional). Definitely we should keep Category:Academic institutions. Timrollpickering 20:16, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Even with an improved introduction, I'm not sure that keeping both is the right choice. My thinking is, do a merge and then restructure if needed. Schools are clearly a subset of academic institutions. Vegaswikian 09:49, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Where to have preliminary discussions

I'm noticing several discussion here about what to do about certain categories. It would seem that the place to discuss these categories is on the CFD pages and not this talk page. What is different about these discussions is that people are posting the problem before proposing a specific remedy to the problem. Similar discussions like this happen at Wikipedia talk:Categorization. I think this is a better model for consensus decision making than what we usually do at CfD. Perhaps we need a template for tagging categories that says that a category is being discussed and briefly states the problem. It could say that the result of the discussion might lead to the deletion, renaming or merging of the category without specifying which is being proposed. At CFD the person would post the category, state what the problem is and mention some possible ways it could be dealt with. If the nominator has a clear solution, it could be presented, and other editors could add their own alternative solutions.

If we really want to embrace this method of doing things, we should discourage a simple one word "Delete", "Keep", "Merge", "Listify" or whatever. People could add their opinions and say why they agree or disagree with a proposed solution. What we really need to look at is whether a consensus has been reached by the people who put the time and effort into discussing it.

Having discussion like this might lead to less contentious battles. At the end of the discussion there might be a real consensus for a sensible solution. -- Samuel Wantman 21:17, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Hm, interesting... kind of in line with the "for deletion" -> "for discussion" change. (Radiant) 14:58, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

There's another aspect to this process I'd like to mention: Silence equals agreement. Often, a category is nominated for deletion or renaming and there are a very small number of people who agree and no disagreement. This means that everyone who looked at the discussion either agrees with it, or they do not have an opinion, or they don't think it is worth blocking consensus. This type of behavior needs to be encouraged. If a category developes into a long list of "keeps" and "deletes", it means that more discussion needs to happen and there clearly is not a consensus. -- Samuel Wantman 08:28, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe CFD (and TFD) already do that? Rubberstamping isn't useful and should not be encouraged. (Radiant) 14:58, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

WP:OCAT

Since this was built on common practice, had positive reactions, and is already being cited in CFD to good effect, I think OCAT is a guideline by now. Thoughts welcome. (Radiant) 14:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I've already been citing OCAT in CFD discussions. I'll repeat here, that with citations to past CFD discussions that support each WP:OCAT type, the page would clearly be a guideline because it would be describing current practice. The examples currently on the page are often hypothetical. These hypotheticals are useful, but citations would be better. -- Samuel Wantman 02:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Categories and main articles

Some of the proposed renamings or mergers have resulted in long debates that have already taken place for the main articles, but don't always produce the same name results. Categories relating to the Roman Catholic Church are the most obvious current example, but there was also Category:SS where the main article is at Schutzstaffel. All too often a lack of consensus or different people contributing to different debates at different times is resulting in articles and categories out of sync with each other - the worst of all worlds. It's very rare for people to oppose category renamings out of opposition to matching the main article, but rather they tend to disagree with the main article's title in the first place.

Is there any way that some nominations to rename articles and categories could be combined, so that a single naming can be agreed on? Timrollpickering 00:30, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

...and CfD update notifications

I agree that linking (discussions of) category names and main articles of the same name (or vice versa) seems a good idea, but not sure how to (semi-)automate such a process... Meanwhile, I also suggest anyone contributing to a CfD discussion thread should receive an automated message if/when the thread is edited following their visit, so they know that someone may've responded to their contribution (or at least added one of their own). Regards, David Kernow (talk) 01:09, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

That might be possible by just setting up some javascript to mimic the new message warning, and retargeting it to the right page. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 01:11, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Births and Deaths by State

Was there a discussion on Birth and Deaths by State in the United States? there is Category:People of New Jersey that has people that have any residential relationship to New Jersey. I wanted to see just the people who died in New Jersey. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 19:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Books/works/etc. by author categories

Cross-posted to Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Novel categorization, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (categories) (this is where the November discussion was), Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Books
I know this has been hashed over before. Each of the sub-cats of Category:Works by artist has its own style, but they are relatively consistent within their sub-cats, and I for one would like to apply a consistent style for written works. I have done a count: of the 344 sub-cats of written works by author (books, short stories, novels, etc.), 162 sub-cats are named [X] by [Name] or [X] of [Name] and 182 are named [Name] [Xs]. If we can't agree on aesthetics, can we at least go with the numbers (i.e. [Name] [Xs])? Any thoughts? Her Pegship (tis herself) 21:16, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Um... Is there any particular reason we care enough about complete consistency of category titles to recategorize what will probably end up as 1000+ articles? -Amarkov ^blah_edits 22:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Good point; my answer is that it's easier to do this now than it will be some day when we have 2,000...or more...and someone must have a bot that can do this. I hope. Her Pegship (tis herself) 14:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(categories)#The_Return_of_Works_by_Artist... should be the single place to debate this. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 09:15, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_November_14#Category:Novels_by_author -- ProveIt ^(talk) 15:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Deleted Category

I created Category:Barry family on December 9 and populated it with 5 members. Someone unpopulated it and it has been deleted. Was there debate about this deletion? Was it a speedy without debate? TonyTheTiger 18:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It must have been unpopulated for 4 days, meaning it's a candidate for speedy deletion. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 18:49, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

It was deleted on 14 December 2006 by MrDarcy (talk · contribs) with a comment that it was empty. -- Samuel Wantman 21:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

In reviewing the edit histories (why am I doing this?), it appears that User:203.214.91.215 went around on the 10th and removed the category everywhere you'd added it, which means that by the 14th, the category had been empty for 4 days. ~ BigrTex 22:01, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion about diffusing categories

I have a recurring problem when editors on their own, after no discussion, take on the task of diffusing large categories into smaller subcategories. I am fully aware of how this used to be the norm, and necessary for technical reasons, especially with subcategories by nationality. However, that is no longer the case. Many perfectly fine categories are getting chopped into little pieces for no good reason. A pure wiki system of regulating this does not work. Unchecked, categories will be diffused into meaningless tiny overcategorizations. It has been my understanding that the diffusion of large categories should happen only after there has been discussion. Id like to formalize this as policy and propose that CFD be the forum for these discussions. The problem is that unless this is caught early, it is huge task to undo or redo. The policy should be "Depopulating of existing categories should not be undertaken without discussion at CFD". There could be an exception for quick depopulation shortly after the category was created, and if it was created by the same person. I'd go so far as to say I think that if depopulation continues after a warning, it should be a blockable offense. Any other opinions? -- Samuel Wantman 01:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

While I agree with the principle of discussing prior to major changes I most definitely do not believe it should be a blockable offense, and further think that forcing every category change to be a requested move is not a helpful idea as it will generate just one more sub-process that has nowhere near enough people monitoring it. So I agree with the principle, but oppose your proposal based on the principle. --tjstrf talk 10:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not talking about every change. I'm just talking about totally depopulating an established category. Blocking would only be if a user continues to depopulate after being warned, and refusing to discuss. -- Samuel Wantman 10:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like reasonable idea, but I'd leave the blocking clause out of there (at any rate, it is understood that repeatedly violating policy/guideline after being told not to is disruptive). >Radiant< 12:26, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

While I agree that depopulating categories without discussion is often problematic, I don't see why that discussion necessarily needs to take place at CFD. Its role as bureaucratic red tape aside, CFD is generally not frequented by subject-matter experts; while it can handle procedural questions of naming and such more-or-less adequately, it's not really a useful forum to discuss categorization issues that require deeper understanding of the subtleties of a particular subject area.

(Or, in other words: why can't discussion about categories take place at WikiProjects? It makes much more sense, for example, for a split of some obscure chemical category to be discussed—possibly at great length—by the chemistry experts at WP:CHEM, rather than simply running it through a week-long CFD where many of the respondents may not be at all familiar with the topic.) Kirill Lokshin 18:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

While I don't have a problem with, as an etiquette matter, notifying related projects about the creation of new subcategories to break up overly large ones, I wouldn't agree with automatically reverting the creation of subcategories if that notification didn't take place. Nor would I agree with blocking editors who appear to be operating in good faith by subdividing what appear to be overly large categories.

On the occasion when new subcategories are too narrow, they should as now be discussed for upmerging on cfd. It may turn out during the course of the cfd discussion that the new subcategories are in fact a good idea and reflect normal guidelines. If the cfd discussion has a consensus to remerge the subcats, then so be it.

The only time I'd back blocking an editor for this is if they have, in bad faith, recreated subcategories that have already been deleted and notice of that deletion was readily available. If someone stubbornly persists in recreating deleted categories, and doesn't respect cfd delete decisions, I wouldn't have a problem if they are blocked from creating categories. Dugwiki 18:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Similarly to Dugwiki: many experienced users have never looked at CFD, but may be involved in specific discussions elsewhere about categorization. - Jmabel | Talk 19:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Is there any reason why instructions can't be placed on such categories as to what kind of subdivision is desirable. It's been my experience that many Cats have little or no explanation as to how to populate them nor when/why to subdivide them.--RCEberwein | Talk 04:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it would be much better to create some templates to apply to categories to give standard guidance about acceptable (and unacceptable) subcategories. The criteria could be pipe options. Ideally of course such impositions of criteria would be posted on the category talk page for discussion. The template could also request that new proposals for diffusion be added to the category talk page for discussion, to encourage new editors to add their expertise, and not allow categories that have been "established" back in the glorious old days stultify. ... This is a bit bureaucratic but less bureaucratic than a central process, and more welcoming. --lquilter 15:25, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Categories I'd like to ban ...

all forms of people by opinion ... however actively supporting a cause is a different matter.
any kind of people by astrological sign, or chinese astrological year.
any kind of people by hair style, hair color, hair length, facial hair, or baldness.
any kind of people by dress, including neckties, eyepatches, eyeglasses or toupees.
any kind of guest stars category.
any kind of performers by performance category.
any kind of occupation by ethnicity, except where it can be shown that ethnicity is relevent.
any kind of occupation by religion, except where it can be shown that religion is relevent.
any kind of occupation by gender, except where it can be shown that gender is relevent.

Opinions? -- ProveIt ^(talk) 04:05, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

The last three are already banned by a guideline, and the previous four have no chance of passing a CfD. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 04:07, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to get a "performers by performance" discussion started eventually (it's on my "to do" list). And if I may attempt to guess at the future (though "always in motion, the future is" : ) - I think that we'll likely find consensus for everything except Radio/TV series cast members. - jc37 11:26, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

There are many defining performer by performance categories so they should not under any cicrumstance be banned. It would be better to do something constructive rather than wasting time discussing something which has been discussed to death and reached no consensus several times. Tim! 14:31, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for posting your opinion on how you feel I should spend my time. Please pardon me if I choose to disagree with your points of view in said post. - jc37 14:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I pretty much agree on all counts. Except for the performers by performance categories, there is clear precedents for these, and they are included at Wikipedia:Overcategorization. As for the performers, Tim! is not correct. There has been consensus both ways on this issue. Stage and film performer by performance categories have been consistantly removed, while most TV categories remain (guest appearances get removed). I think the survival of these TV categories has more to do with the strength of the TV wikipedia sub-culture more than it has to do with categorization policy. I'd support their removal as well. We seem to have forgotten that lists can often present information in a better format than categories, and cast and production lists are a good example of that. If the categories are replaced by lists, they will appear in the same position of the TV show taxonomy, and will not clutter up the categories for actors that appear on scores of shows. In fact, many of the eponymous TV show categories serve no purpose. Many have few links, all of which can be found in the article of the show. We don't have to make categories for everything. -- Samuel Wantman 08:35, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I've suggested elsewhere that we treat Radio/TV series cast lists as a category exception. This seems to be the only example of "Performer by performance" that has been argued to the point of no consensus fairly consistantly. I think that that would be a workable compromise. - jc37 09:52, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I could agree with this if I saw some distinction between radio/tv and other medium. I don't yet see the rationale that makes it acceptable in one category and not in another. There seems to be an advantage to having the cast listed in lists instead of categories. The list can add information like what part they played, when they were part of the cast, whether they were major or minor characters, etc... Since the cast list would be prominently linked to the article for the show, it would be easy to find. So on the category side, having a list instead of a category seems to be a clear winner. On the article side, each actor would not be in a category for the shows they appeared in. This too, seems like an advantage to me, as their filmography should appear in their article, or in a list that is prominently linked. The filmography can contain red links (or no link) for obscure appearances, the list can be chronological, it can be annotated. So what is gained by having these categories? I see no advantages, and just disadvantages. -- Samuel Wantman 21:18, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, several thoughts:

We've had quite a few CfDs on these, which typically result in "no consensus".
There is no reason why a list and a category cannot supplement each other in this case. (The category could even link to the list in its introduction.) Each has advantages and disadvantages, and since "Wikipedia is not paper", having both should not be a problem on that count.
Radio/TV series are a different phenomenon due to widespread "broadcast". Unlike movies, Stage productions, and so on, such shows were/are "free", and so have somewhat of a "unique" position of notoriety for that reason.
Because they are an ongoing series (over time), rather than being a "one-shot", that also places the actors in a unique position of "noteriety" based on that performance. (There is a major difference between "going out" to a performance in a movie theater or a stage production at a theatre, and having the show "in your own home" (the Johnny Carson phenomenon - "Going to bed with Johnny every night").)

I'm sure there are more reasons, but these are the ones I recall. - jc37 07:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Expanding a nomination??

Two days ago, I nominated the subcat Category:American Vietnam War propaganda films for deletion. I've subsequently looked into the matter more thoroughly, and it looks to me like that's not the only problematic subcat of Category:Propaganda films. There are several others that share the same defect of attracting very subjective POV additions, which should also be brought into the discussion. Is there a way to expand a nomination to include related subcats, after the discussion is already under way? Or is there a better way to handle this? Cgingold 16:43, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

It's really best to include them at the beginning, but if there aren't too many comments, you should be able to add very closely related ones. -Amarkov ^blah_edits 16:57, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Need some cleanup help

Category:CfD_2006-11 still has a bunch of entries that were not listed or not closed out correctly. If someone wants to jump in and give a hand cleaning up, please do. Vegaswikian 07:37, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

CFD 17 December - Category:Orders and decorations of Australia

I wonder if I could ask, what is holding up the implementation of this nomination? It is a large group nomination, listed on the 17th. Since being listed the mass rename has achieved overwhelming support, albeit with one or two minor issues over the name of three of the categories. Consensus has existed for a good deal more than seven days yet every other debate of the 17th has been closed but this one. If someone could help get this sorted then I would be grateful.

Xdamr^talk 05:37, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Would an iterim tagging of said categories with {{Category redirect}} to 'New' proper name pending Admin Manpower be allowed or would it create a headache when someone actually closed the CFD section? I'm not certain what the BOT would do if the new category is listed as a bluelink. I believe it creates or moves the old when operating on a redlink. Certainly, {{Category redirect3}} could be added without harm with a summary note to the archived page showing the new name result. // FrankB 07:56, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Problem with the system (or the way it's applied)

I've recently had a bad experience with the Speedy Renaming process — and similar things have happened to me before. I put up a category for speedy renaming, as it contained a glaring and embarrassing spelling mistake: "Category:Occitan personnalities". This clearly needed correcting to Category:Occitan personalities, but the category was, at the time, rather full, so I proposed it here, hoping to get some help with the transfer of articles. Instead, when I returned to the page, I found that my proposal had disappeared. Some detective work eventually revealed that it had been removed to the discussion page for category deletion. No-one had bothered to inform me (this seems to be standard, if discourteous, practice; the same thing happened to another of my proposals within a day or so), no indication had been left at this page, and the renaming notice at the category had been left unchanged, pointing to a non-existent discussion here.

Someone then objected to it on political grounds, it was largely ignored, and today I find that the renaming has been rejected as "no consensus". Well, there was no chance for consensus, as the proposal had been hijacked and removed from discussion here. The result was that an obvious and clear renaming proposal was rejected, and the embarrassing spelling mistake stayed. (I decide to do all the work myself, but when I returned I found that the category had been virtually depopulated, only one article remaining; presumably by the objector — who has just tried to propose it for deletion again, within hours.)

At the very least, proposers should be informed that their proposal is being moved, and the notice at the category altered accordingly. Better would be a policy that ruled out this sort of thing. Perhaps a move should depend upon the agreement of the proposer, or a deletion proposal should wait until the renaming proposal had gone through (with provisions made for very populous categories, so that work isn't duplicated unnecessarily.

Any thoughts? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 12:05, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Since we now discuss all the merging, renaming, lisifying and deleting on the same page it would make it easier on everyone if it were clearer what was being proposed. Every CFD posting should start with:

PROPOSED CHANGE: Rename Category:xxx to Category:yyy

Notification has always been a problem with xFD's. With CfD's you are only likely to see it if you visit the category page, regularly vist CfD, or have edited the category page. If you were just someone who spent a bit of time categorizing dozens of articles, you might miss it entirely. Anyone can choose to watch any category they want, but this takes some effort. It would be nice if notifications of xFD could be automatically posted on the talk pages of anyone watching the page. I doubt this is currently possible, even with a bot, because there is no public record of who is watching what.

If a nomination gets changed, the tag on the CFD should be edited to reflect the change. This could be as simple as doing a null edit with an edit summary comment that the CfD proposal has changed.

The big problem for me is that it is near impossible to figure out what is happening with a category sometimes. In this example, I have no idea how the category got depopulated. Since I know nothing about the category, I don't know what articles used to be in it. I can't go find an article that was removed and there is no history of the contents of the category. Mel, you can track down who depopulated the category by finding a former member of the category and looking at the history. --Samuel Wantman 21:45, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's the problem — I don't know who used to be in the category... I only know that when I last looked at it, it was populated by tens of articles. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:57, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately there is no other method of determining what happened. This is a limitation of the WikiMedia software. -- Samuel Wantman 09:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

If anyone's interested, I discovered the person responsible for depopulating the category (see here); he removed the sole remaining person from it, and I'd added that article to my watchlist. I'm beginning to repopulate Category:Occitan personalities; it's a huge and tedious job, but as at least one person in the current discussion has supported deletion of the category because it only had one member, I think that it's important. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

A problem with a set of new categories for films

WikiProject Films has created a new department for categorizing films (on the Dec. 27), where we are trying to build consensus for a general and massive recategorizing. A very hasty member has decided to act by himself and has created a new series of categories starting from Category:1890 American films to Category:2009 American films, all contained in the new Template:Americanfilms. Also Category:2006 Japanese films, Category:2006 French films, Category:2006 Spanish films, Category:2006 Italian films, Category:2006 Canadian films, Category:2006 Australian films were created on the same individual impulse. We are not anywhere close to consensus yet, plus this should be part of a wider decision on organizing all possible film categories, before we coordinate the huge task and jump to work. IMO, all these new categories should be speedy deleted, until we have our plan ready. I do not doubt that the editor meant well, but all such categories should wait for a project decision, even if at the end we decide they are the way to go. Seeing that he is being massively reverted, he has promissed to stop further whimsical moves in categories and wait for us, which will be a big relief for all members concerned. Hoverfish Talk 23:09, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I would like to second this suggestion, as a fellow member of the WP Films Categorization Department. Girolamo Savonarola 06:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the diffusion tag, and tagged all of these categories for deletion as I don't want to see them populated before there is a consensus. If there is a decision later to have categories like these (which I don't think is a good idea), they can be recreated. -- Samuel Wantman 08:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

A radical thought

As I was tagging 140 categories for deletion just now with AWB (see section directly above), I started thinking about how most of the categories being deleted are created by people who are new to wikipedia and don't understand the categorization system. It is not an easy thing to understand. I've not seen anything comparable to our system anywhere else. Our guidelines make it sound like almost anything goes. Two years ago it was just fine that everyone who wanted to create a category could. Now I'm not so sure, and in a year or two, the number of bad categories might explode. So I'm toying with the notion of restricting category creation to admins.

We could make a page called "Wikipedia:Categories requested" and people could request the category. Any admin could create one. There could be criteria for speedy creation, like being part of an existing taxonomy (like fooian fooers, albums by artist, etc...) Anything that isn't obviously OK could be discussed at CfD. If an admin would nominate it for deletion at CfD, wouldn't it make more sense to discuss it before users put so much effort into categorizing scores of articles? If someone is planning a total reorganization of films (like the example above), there are many people who would like to know about it. If a category is going to be a POV magnet, lets discuss it before everyone gets upset.

Looking over recently created categories just now, it seemed that most of the good ones are already being created by admins, and most of the others are overcategorizations. I'd rather be working on articles than patrolling CfD. I'm all in favor of a pure wiki system for articles, but categories are different. You are unlikely to find most of the silly articles that get nominated at AfD unless you are looking for them, and I'm not bothered by finding a stub about a non-notable subject. When I see people categorized in silly categories it makes the entire categorization system look bad. Consider the difference between having an article called List of people with red hair as opposed to seeing all those people categorized in Category:People with red hair. Also consider the work involved in getting rid of the single article as opposed to recategorizing hundreds of people. I don't know if this is even an option in WikiMedia, but if it is, I'm hoping we can discuss it here, and if there is support for this, to bring it to the larger community. Thanks. -- Samuel Wantman 09:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Very interesting; I was thinking of the feasibility of restricting category creation today as well (while dealing with yet more redundant categories from User:EJBanks). I hadn't thought of limiting it to admins, probably since I'll never reach that exalted rank myself ;) That might be a bit too limiting. Is there a way of restricting new users from creating categories for, oh, the first couple of months? That would give them enough time to see how categories are structured without the temptation of adding to them. I'd hate to see good editors that aren't on the admin path from being locked out. CovenantD 09:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

That's why I was thinking of the "speedy creation" critieria. All this means is that you would have to wait a short amount of time before the category was created. It is probably easier to do this then to come up with some interim level. -- Samuel Wantman 09:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I forgot one part of this. There should be a new guideline along with this says that articles should not be put into categories that haven't yet been created. An alternative to this if it is technically possible, is that uncreated categories should never be displayed -- no red categories with articles, and no category pages. That way, you wouldn't have to remove the category tags from the articles in a deleted category. -- Samuel Wantman 09:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I think restricting category creation to admins is extremely limiting. Admins are not supposed to be gatekeepers for adding information. In an attempt to reduce problems, the functionality of wikipedia will also be severly limited. However, a process that blocks new users from creating categories will have my support. In addition the user blocking system currently in place is too broad. Maybe it can be set up so users intent on creating category vandalism can be blocked for a long term from creating or modifying categories but not blocked from creating or modifying articles. --- Skapur 03:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

To repeat a comment I made to a similar proposal somewhere further up the page: why CFD? What, precisely, is the reason why categories cannot be adequately discussed in a place other than some central bureaucracy? I see absolutely no reason why, for example, a functioning WikiProject cannot consider such questions and come to a reasonable consensus without the need for any formalized red tape. Kirill Lokshin 03:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

What if a topic is not covered by a functioning WikiProject? What if a category crosses the boundaries of several WikiProjects?. Nothing prevents the CFD from being discussed in the WikiProject and the consensus presented to the regular CFD process for ratification. WikiProject participation tends to be very limted and self promoting. --- Skapur 03:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but we're talking about creating categories here, not deleting them. Putting a week's delay into the deletion process is fine; forcing people to go through the same wait to add a category is senseless bureaucracy. Kirill Lokshin 03:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

This discussion started because of deletion requests created by a user creating lots of unneeded categories and when I made my comment above I was still thinking deletions. See my comment above your first comment above. I am all for reducing red tape but I also do not want speedy category creation restricted to admins or WikiProjects.--- Skapur 04:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, ok. :-) Kirill Lokshin 04:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I am only 4 months into wikipedia and the point of categorization is still not clear to me, although I am doing my best to understand it. I copy here a line from Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes: Categories should be on major topics that are likely to be useful to someone reading the article. Samuel Wantman said all films should be in cat:Films. That's a major topic, but its usefulness is limited to some searches for titles under other spellings, or maybe under other relevant (suspected) names. But I can't find an optician near my area in a whole-world telephone catalogue. I will have to look in my local yellow pages instead. So although general categories are absolutely necessary to build a structure, the ones that end up being put in articles, should be the useful ones. It would solve all our problems if there was a wiki-mechanism which could take Cat:1975 films, Cat:American films, Cat:Comedy films and produce a listing for all 1975 American comedy films. Yet, as things are, and if this limited group is indeed useful, we have to give it as Cat:1975 American comedy films. This is in my opinion the source of all the mess. By Samuel Wantman's suggestion, categories are mostly Keywords that are useful in defining the article. But linking to Category:American films, which when thoroughly applied will contain several thousands of titles, is very questionably useful. Plus we already have growing lists on major topics. In Lists of films#By letter & number we are trying to list ALL films with articles, plus we display year of release, which is by far more useful than a bare A-Z. I give all this only as an example of the problem of category usabilty. By the way if categorization should be left up to admins, it shouldn't be ANY admins, but a special body of them focusing on Categorization and including at least one admin closely related to each wikiproject. I don't think that any and all admins are of one opinion about proper categorizing. And I don't think the general guidelines are easily applicable to specific areas when it comes to usability. Hoverfish Talk 09:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I still do not believe that restricting category creation is the answer. I however agree that keyword capability is needed in Wikipedia. Keywords are not the same as categories although in the absence of keywords, categories are being abused as keywords. Keywords imply boolean search logic which categories lack. --- Skapur 07:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

There is one more issue that crops up from time to time and that is POV categories. When this happens, categorization is used as a way for POV opinion to be applied to an article without the article getting tagged as a POV article. See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_January_1#Subcats_of_Category:People_by_Former_Religion and the five other articles in that CFD page beneath it. The solution to this issue is that categories that even hint of being associated with a POV should be speedily deleted and should not have to go through the CFD procedure. --- Skapur 07:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Restricting category creation would not be a good idea, there are currently about 2000 categories created a week (check special:newpages and use the namespace selector) and no process could handle the throughput. Tim! 11:59, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps. How many of those 2000 do you think are reasonable? What are our statistics for CFD every week? How many categories would never be requested because of this process? Let's say a significant percentage never get requested because people read the guidelines for category creation and realize they are making a mistake. Then assume that a fair number get put up for discussion, but most get speedily created. The question would be, did the savings in time at CFD from discouraging the creation of bad categories out-weigh the time spent in the ones that actually get discussed. I think this might be a net efficiency. Every category discussed takes the effort of numerous people to discuss, and the considerable work of admins to make the changes. The work involved in creating a category is very quick and easy. You click on the link and do a null edit. It is a pure wiki process for admins because any admin could choose to create the category, and anybody at all could remove the category from the list and flag it for discussion. This is similar to how WP:PROD works. Good categories would be created within hours (if not minutes), and bad ones will never get populated. -- Samuel Wantman 21:12, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

To the person who created it, the category is completely reasonable. The simple solution is to make any category name with even a hint of POV subject to speedy delete along with any old sparsely populated category. The issue seems to be current CFD process. It is cumbersome. The solution is not to make new category creation difficult but to make category deletion easier --- Skapur 18:30, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm open to this idea but how would this process work? Currently anyone can mark a category for speedy deletion and if anyone questions the tag it gets discussed. The criteria are less severe than what you propose, and we still have oodles of discussions about categories that are tagged. Quickly deleting the category is just going to upset people who have just put the work into creating it. If they challange the deletion and are successful they will end up feeling mistreated. Admins would probably be afraid to delete many categories for this reason. What do you think about the following proposal? -- Samuel Wantman 02:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

a modified, less radical (PROD)-like proposal

All new category pages start out protected and users can only edit the talk pages. The instructions on the talk pages instruct the category creator to add {{Cat request}} which adds a box that says something like:
"This is a new category. New categories are regularly reviewed by administrators and the community to see if the are correctly named and follow categorization guidelines. Add a proposed description of the category on the talk page, and include the categories where this category should be put. If after 10 days of being reviewed, there is no objection to the category, an administrator will unprotect the category page, copy the proposed descritpion, and categorize this category as requested. If any Wikipedia user determines that the category does not conform with our guidelines they can propose that it be deleted. If there is disagreement about deleting this category, discussions will continue at WP:CFD. Warning: Editors risk having their work on this category undone. You may want to wait until this tag is removed before proceeding adding articles to this category. This notice can only be removed by an administrator. Even when this notice is removed, a category can be nominated for deletion. Preliminary approval is not a guarantee that this category will have a long life."
The next step would be that admins review the tagged categories, which are automatically categorized in Category:New categories (review requested) or somethigh similar. If the category is acceptable without any reservations, the admin would remove the original tag from the talk page and place a different tag would on the category page. The category page would remain protected. The new tag would say:
"This is a new category: A preliminary review by an administrator has found that this category follows categorization guidelines and is correctly named. After prelimnary approval, the category may still have this approval removed if anyone finds it objectionable. If after 10 days, nobody challanges the approval of this category this tag will be removed and the page will be unprotected. Until then, any proposal for the text for this page should be discussed on the talk page.

To challange the approval of this category: add {{Cat prod}} to the talk page, which requests that the category be deleted. Give your reasons for why you think the category should be deleted. If after being tagged with {{Cat prod}} for a week nobody challanges the deletion, this category will be deleted. Anyone who removes the {{Cat prod}} disapproval should add {{cfd}} and follow the instructions on that template. Administrators will review the history of the talk page to see if there has been any objections. If you remove a {{Cat prod}} tag, you should be willing to defend this category at CfD. Undefended creation of a category will weaken the chance of a category being approved.
Reviewed and approved categories would be categorized in Category:New categories (Admin reviewed). Any category marked with {{Cat prod}} would be categorized in Category:New categories (proposed for deletion). This would make it easier to see what categories are being created. The process helps guarantee that an admin will look at every newly created category, and allows anyone to object to a category before it is linked into the categorization scheme.
- {{Cat prod}} could only be used on a new category. The creator of the category could remove a prod tag. Once a category survives being prodded, it would need to be tagged with CfD. Admins will have to check that a prod has not been removed before unprotecting the category.
- CfD would continue as normal, with one exception. If there is no consensus to keep a new category the default would be delete instead of keep. Hopefully most of the bad categories would be removed shortly after creation. The process will probably discourage many newbies from creating categories. I'm undecided if that is a good or bad thing.

-- Samuel Wantman 02:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:CatDiffuse

Template:CatDiffuse has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. --Samuel Wantman 02:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Grand renaming, final step ...

It looks like everything went according to plan ... however I think it's time to do the final step. We need to fix {{cfd result}} so that it will work correctly with the new names, and in such a way that it doesn't break existing discussion links that use the old names. It seems to me that we can do any of three ways:

subst all outstanding {{cfd result}} and {{cfdend}} pages.
create new discussion redirects to all the old deletion pages.
rename all the deletion pages with discussion names, which would automatically create redirects.

Either way, a bot could probably take care of it in short order, and the final step is the same, updating {{cfd result}} to use the new discussion name. What do people think? -- ProveIt ^(talk) 16:30, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. For clarity, could you list the above in a numbered "step-by-step" process? (First we need to do this, then this, etc.)

Also, clarify how about the changes to the template, old versions and new versions? subst would seem to me to break the old versions, unless you're planning to subst the old ones before making the change to the template, and then subst the more recent ones? - jc37 21:47, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm saying there's one remaining problem, and I know of three different ways to fix it, and suggesting we decide which way we want. I can't do any of them, I don't have a bot. I don't particularly care which of the choices we pick, as long as we do one of them. In any event the last step should be to update the template. My concern is that it's already quite difficult to find old discussions, and breaking cfdend will just make an already difficult task much harder still. -- ProveIt ^(talk) 15:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Right, I'm going to start on solution 2 since I think I've worked out how to do this and there are already problems closing discussions. the wub "?!" 13:07, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I think I've done everything. the wub "?!" 17:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Performers by performance

Notice: Please see Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization#Performers by Performance et al., for a "CfD-like" discussion about categorisation of performers by performance. - jc37 21:44, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

New speedy rename proposal

I have proposed a new speedy rename mechanism for categories at Wikipedia talk:Village pump#New category speedy rename criterion. When I wrote the proposal, I though thta the Village Pump would be the best place to submit the idea. After looking here, however, I almost wonder if I should have placed the discussion here. Anyhow, please let me know your thoughts. I think this may ease some of the category renames.Dr. Submillimeter 21:09, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Changes to Template:CatDiffuse

Following the failed nomination to delete Template:CatDiffuse, a discussion at the template's talk page about changing the template has been progressing (albeit slowly). Please contribute to the discussion. Dr. Submillimeter 21:11, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Missed tasks from completed discussions

What do I do with categories that weren't deleted or renamed from CfD days that have long since fallen off the main page? Can they be speedied or do they have to be relisted? –Unint 23:01, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

They need to be cleaned up by looking at each one. I did many of these, but right now I'm waiting for someone to close the last two days discussions from December to reduce the size of the list. If there are some that you are interested in that were closed, you can list them in the work queue based on the closing reason. Vegaswikian 08:46, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Something's wrong with the page.

I reported this before, but don't think there was a discussion about it. There's something wrong with the CfD page. Clicking on the edit link for one section sometimes brings you to a neighboring section. Who knows how many misplaced/missed votes happened as a result? I use Firefox 2 on WinXP SP2, but doubt it matters. Xiner (talk, email) 15:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Is it repeatable for you? I went down the page at random clicking the edit links and didn't have a wrong section once. If it is repeatable, can you copy the link that is behind the edit link (ie right click and "copy link location") and paste it here. Thanks! Syrthiss 15:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Happens all of the time. I believe that the cause is an added section since it normally happens with newer discussions. I think the pattern is that an editor loads the page. Spends time reading, maybe doing something else, then goes in to comment. The edit command edits by section number so if a new heading is added, the section number will be off by one, from the old data on the editors machine, and the editor will have the wrong section brought up for comment. Vegaswikian 18:38, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I have never understood why this happens, but I have been able to fix the problem by doing a null edit -- editing the entire page and just adding a space somewhere. -- Samuel Wantman 08:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

You don't even need to add a space anywhere. Just hit edit, then save. The edit won't appear in your contribs list, but it should force an update. Carcharoth 23:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Controversies Category

All the articles were recently removed from Category:Controversies. It is listed under Pending completions, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 19. Should the articles have been removed now? --Jagz 01:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

That discussion was closed as delete. Pending completions just lists days that still have at least one discussion that has not been closed. Vegaswikian 01:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)