Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 December 11

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December 11

NEW NOMINATIONS

Abortion

Category:Pro-Life Wikipedians to Category:Wikipedians Against Abortions
Category:Pro-Choice Wikipedians to Category:Wikipedians For Legal Abortions
  • Rename, Pro-life is a loaded term, as is pro-choice. Wikipedia should not be a place for politicking, and divisive/explosive categories such as these should not carry controversial terms. As it stands these two categories violate rule #8 of the guidelines, namely by being controversial and POV. They probably don't belong in Wikipedia, but if they must, they should state what they are, and no more. Xiner 22:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do not rename. "Pro-choice" does not mean "for abortion" it means "for reproductive rights." There are lots of people who are pro-choice who do not like abortion but feel that outlawing it only makes problems worse. If these categories shouldn't be named as they aren, there's probably no better name for them. I'm voting keep as well because I disagree with the notion that we should not be allowed to categorize ourselves as we see fit. The old T2 destruction of userboxes was a fiasco that should never be repeated. — coelacan talk22:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    Rights is itself a loaded term. For vs. Against is the best I can come up with now. My userbox was T1 deleted, and since these categories had inspired me to create it in the first place, I think we should rename them. Xiner 22:31, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well you'll have to come up with something better. "For abortion" is factually inaccurate, and worse than the current names, which are at least each embraced by their respective sides. — coelacan talk22:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Ha! Your userbox is clever though, I might have to borrow it for myself. — coelacan talk22:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Acceptance by the respective groups is not the issue here. There are people in this world who'd support the category "Death to Infidels" or "Death to Abortionists". Xiner 23:07, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Remakes

Category:Remakes - Holds two disparate subcategories: Computer-related remakes and Film remakes. Both are already sub-categorised elsewhere, more appropriately. - jc37 20:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Anti-Islam writers

Category:Anti-Islam writers (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Article name is inherently POV. Stong potential for writers who should simply be listed at Category:Critics of Islam to be listed here. I would have suggested merge, but at this time all the entries in the category are already in Category:Critics of Islam. — coelacan talk20:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Strong delete. For very real safety reasons, Wikipedia shouldn't host what can amount to a hit list compiled by editors. Terrorists and radicals can just look at the list and be saved a lot of time. If the safety concerns weren't a real problem it would be a very different matter. If this sounds paranoid or crazy, stop and think about who we are dealing with -- people who are not acting normally, but who do target any public critics they can get an eye on, and Wikipedia shouldn't make it easy for them. -- Fyslee 20:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Probably so. There is nothing in the foreseeable future that indicates a whole generation of discontented young men and women with radical tendencies are going to suddenly change their minds. It's a sad situation all around. In this case we need to see realities in the eye and not do anything that can endanger anyone. -- Fyslee 20:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing to merge. Everyone in this category is already in Category:Critics of Islam. That was stated clearly in the nomination. — coelacan talk22:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Catholic footballers (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
This category has serious POV and OR issues. It's added wholesale to football players that are from certain countries without any references, and I don't see how it's useful. Amoruso 19:07, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Immigrants to England

Category:Immigrants to England (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Survived a group nomination in July but I want to consider this one individually. Firstly, why have England separately? Someone has added Tony Blair to the category on the grounds that he was born in Scotland, which is stretching a point too far. Secondly, what counts as an 'immigrant'? Paddy Ashdown is in the category, because he was born in India, but he was born to an English family. Spike Milligan is also there, again born in India, but he was very much conscious about his Irish ancestry. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 17:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Delete We're all dying. Need I say anymore?--Zleitzen 16:23, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep- the nomination fails to state a valid reason for deletion. Most of us have not been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Such a diagnosis marks a significant milestone in an individual's life and it should be recorded as such. It's also not all that difficult to find verifiable sources for such a diagnosis. A category grouping for these individuals allows readers to quickly identify living people with a terminal diagnosis and thereby track notable people quickly. I suspect that this category would be highly useful to journalists, researchers, and friends. Rklawton 16:59, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename to something like Category:People diagnosed with a terminal illness or Category:Terminally ill people or something better if you have it. The cat mey be useful but the name is not. Otto4711 17:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, I fail to see an encyclopedic value which justifies having this category. I could potentially support a rename as suggested by Otto4711. BruceHallman 17:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename to Category:People diagnosed with a terminal illness I support that rename suggested by Otto. FYI, I also made this category a subcategory of Category:People by medical or psychological condition, as it seemed like a natural parent. I'm not sure the category needs to be deleted, though. The only problem I see with it would be maintainence, since it can theoretically be added to any biography if and when they become teriminally ill. Dugwiki 17:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I should add that the key question that needs to be answered is which of two schemes are more useful. The first scheme is to include only living people with terminal illnesses and, when the person dies, remove the category from the article. In that case, I'd suggest renaming it to something like "Category:Terminally ill living people" or "Category:Terminally ill people". The other scheme is to include people both living and dead who, at some point, were diagnosed with a terminal illness. The advantage to that scheme is that once the category is added, it always applies. So from a maintainence standpoint, once someone is diagnosed with terminal cancer, for example, you can add this category and don't have to worry about revisiting the article after the person dies. If this scheme were adopted, I'd suggest the name Category:People by medical or psychological condition. Dugwiki 17:44, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I think renaming is fine, so long as it's clear that the subject is currently alive but diagnosed as terminal. Rklawton 17:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - As far as encyclopedic value goes, this category provides a quick index using information that's already contained within biographical articles. I can think of a lot of uses for such a category: media researchers, celebrity fans, prayer groups, etc.Rklawton 17:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete This category is not related to individuals' encyclopedic achievements. Osomec 18:58, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, I think the concept is problematic as whether a chronic condition is "terminal" or not may be disputable. For one, "terminal" in the sense of malignant cancer that will kill you in 6 months is quite a different thing from "terminal" in the sense of a neurodegenerative condition that will kill you in 10 years. For another, the lethality of a particular condition may change as medical science advances. "Consumption" was a death sentence before antibiotics, but non-MDR-TB tuberculosis is not feared in the industrialized world; an HIV-positive person in 2006 can potentially live for decades with treatment— perhaps longer than the average person in some parts of the world. We all eventually die of something.-choster 22:45, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Rename to the more general Category:Vehicle braking technologies--Hooperbloob 15:52, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Merge into Category:American Roman Catholic bishops, which contains only 59 members. See discussions of December 6th and December 7th. -- ProveIt (talk) 14:41, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Quackery

Relisting from November 30 CfD. Previous discussion:

The following three options suggested by Loxlie 05:16, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Rename - The term (and even the definition in the Wiki article) is controversial. Its been subject to a deletion discussion before, and, under the current name, causes silly and endless POV wars in many controversial subjects (see talk:homeopathy). Its an archaic and unspecific term, which only serves to further entrench already entrenched opinions.
If Category:Medical Pseudoscience is accepted, it could become a subcategory of category:pseudoscience, which would be subject to a separate discussion'.
or...

Merge - Much as I personally agree, such a merger would inevitably be controversial, and therefore not helpful...
or...

Merge - If anyone agrees there's no need to have seperate category ...

  • It is now removed from the Fraud category. (Someone didn't understand what they were doing.) You are quite right. While they are often related, most quackery is probably practiced by innocents, ignorants, or true believers who aren't intent on defrauding anyone. BTW, not all quacks are frauds, at least not by intent. -- Fyslee 23:03, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Rename to Category:Medical protoscience a subcategory of Category:Protoscience My second choice would be Category:Medical pseudoscience (I've changed my vote based on the concerns raised by Leifern below.) --Lee Hunter 14:05, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
    • The material here isn't protoscience, its pseudoscience at best. JoshuaZ 17:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - this would also cause revert wars sooner or later down the road. I think the point we are trying to make is that there are varying levels of controversy about certain practices that claim to have medical benefits, ranging from virtually undisputed (antibiotics for pneumonia) to overwhelmingly disputed (I don't know, voodoo) with lots of stuff in between. We run into all kinds of problems here - we might be accused of ethnocentrism if we slap a derogatory category on aryuvedic and chinese herbal medicine, people who are convinced that their particular practice really helps them, and then the whole issue of protoscience. I'd like to find a solution that forestalls another round on another term at some future date, as more and more editors get involved in Wikipedia. I have to consider this a while longer before I come up with a solution, but I'd recommend that we not just jump to another category. --Leifern 14:13, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Rename to Category:Medical pseudoscience. -Sean Curtin 01:58, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - Medical pseudoscience is just a euphemism; there would also be revert wars as true-believers crawl out of the woodwork to babysit the articles about their favorite schemes and scams. The category is useful and its title is the common word for its contents. Bkalafut 01:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Weak Rename Bordering on keep Medical pseudoscience is reasonable. Aside from reasons already discussed, quakery is simply not that common a term. However, Bk is correct that renaming won't stop the POV warriors. JoshuaZ 01:32, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. Agree that medical pseudoscience is simply a euphamism. Renaming would be weasel wording. Jefffire 10:55, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
  • comment Just wanted to note that just about all of the people who have voted here (including myself) have been involved in a revert war regarding the use of the Quackery cat on the homeopathy article. It would be nice to hear from disinterested parties.--Lee Hunter 13:52, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Rename (see below). This won't solve the problems, but the suggested solutions won't either. The conflicts will first end when editors accept the category for what it is, which is not a declaration that something actually is quackery, but that it is considered to be so by scientific critics and skeptics. That's in keeping with the NPOV policy here, and therefore any objections to its use are policy violations based on POV suppression. Category tags are only aids to help people find related topics. The category already contains subjects that are obviously not quackery (in fact anti-quackery), but that are related to the subject. A better solution would be a disclaimer automatically added to all category pages explaining the nature of categories: "Inclusion in this category is only an aid to finding subjects possibly related to the category topic. In some cases the relationship may only be peripheral. Bla, bla, bla....or something like that." Thereafter the only discussions would be if there was a relationship or not. -- Fyslee 23:03, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Rename. The problem here is that POW warriors would probably want to include each and every article under the category Alternative Medicine under the Category Quackery. So what is then the point with this category? To add a few anti-quack entries to a long list of everything alternative? Another comment: As the term Quackery is derogatory it should require more than just that some party claims that X is quackery for inclusion in a list such as this one. The disclaimer in the beginning is easily missed and a sloppy reader will be misled into believing that all the entries in the list are quackery. A better way is to add relevant entries from this category to the list “List of pseudosciences and pseudoscientific concepts”. A new list with Medical Pseudoscience can be created. In this way each entry has to be justified. The five(?) anti-qauck entries in the Quackery Category can easily be cross-referenced by links in each article. MaxPont 15:46, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

If "Quackery" too derogatory, "Medical pseudoscience" still judgemental, but "Alternative medicine" confusing and/or too tame, how about Non-scientific medicine (plus brief explanation on category page indicating that these other names used depending on POV)...?  Regards, David Kernow (talk) 03:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question Are there any other WP categories that are equally pejorative, POV and ambiguous? I've been looking for a while now and I can't find any. The guidelines for categorization are clear "Categories appear without annotations, so be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category." Quackery is obviously not self-evident to many people and it is highly controversial. --Lee Hunter 14:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete or, if kept, oppose rename Based on the above discussion and previous discussions, my opinion is that the category probably should be deleted due to POV problems. One scientist's quackery might be another scientist's legitimate area of study. However, if kept, I don't like the proposed rename based on comments in the discussions that indicate that the terms "quackery" and "pseudoscience" refer to slightly different things (the difference appears to be related to a level of consensus among mainstream scientists as to the invalidity of that particular area of study. If something is generally considered slightly possible, but not verified, it's "pseudoscience". If it's considered virtually impossible or even fraudulent, it's "quackery".) Dugwiki 18:35, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Just about everything currently in the Quackery category (including the article which spawned this, in my opinion bad-faith, request for deletion), is not really subject to dispute between real scientists. That, (e.g.) homeopathic remedies are mere placebos given fancy names and dressed up with a theory any informed modern layman can recognize as bogus is not a matter of scientific controversy. 22:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)~

*Rename to Quackery-related subjects. The description is now changed to make it a useful aid to study. It already is intended to be so, as it includes articles that are obviously not meant to be understood as quackery. This new title, and the new description, gives this category great potential for usefulness. -- Fyslee 19:17, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete. Why keep such a opinion-driven inflamatory label? What purpose does it serve other than allowing skeptics to name-call something which they don't like. It is one thing if someone is knowingly commiting fraud, but if it is a case where someone belives in what they are doing and someone does not, then we are dealing with a POV label. And it is not the job of Wikipedia to choose one side or another when it comes to such labels. This is tantamount to having a category entitled "Liar" and putting a political party in there. Levine2112 19:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • No, it is not, because the criteria for being quackery are rooted in scientific merit, which is objective. Whether or not a practice is quackery is not a matter of journalistic opinion. Bkalafut 22:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • I agree. But too often on Wikipedia it is used as such. And much of the edit wars and debate occur over items which some are so sure are quackery and others are sure of just the opposite. What to do when both camps have scientific evidence supporting their side?Levine2112 22:49, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't merge, because quackery and pseudoscience are two different (though related) concepts. Keep is OK or, if it were to be renamed because of POV concerns, the appropriate name would be something like Category:Alleged quackery, by analogy to Category:Accused Soviet spies. These are much more specific than a useless category for every person or entity accused of lying. The description of Category:Alleged quackery, if that name is used, should limit the category to what's considered quackery by the scientific community. A couple of nutjobs who allege that vaccination is "quackery" wouldn't put Vaccine in the category. It's NPOV to report the scientific community's nonacceptance of things like homeopathy. JamesMLane t c 20:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • After thinking this through I think "alleged quackery" may make the most sense. In any event, deletion is unnacceptable and indeed could be viewed as almost be nature leading to undue weight problems. JoshuaZ 21:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename to Alleged quackery. Quackery is a useful category, and if "alleged" is what will get the true believers in the various forms of hucksterism to leave it alone, then let's add it.Bkalafut 22:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Rename to Alleged quackery per Bkalafut. This may be workable as it is an NPOV title. The category description would need to be more specific again, and not as broad as it is now. When in use, removal of the category would then be a clear POV violation in the form of suppression of opposing POV. -- Fyslee 22:40, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Westnet

Category:Westnet (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

No reason for the Westnet article to reside in a category of its' own. -- Longhair\talk 02:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Rename to Category:Current TV network series, convention of Category:Television series by network. -- ProveIt (talk) 00:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC) [reply]
  • Comment: it's a long-standing convention to have categories of this sort. We have some radio/tv hobbyists like this user who edit here doing this kind of categorization and no one's opposed them before. No reason to get in their way now, and it's a useful sort of category. — coelacan talk20:38, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]