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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Beland (talk | contribs) at 03:33, 14 September 2004 (→[[:Category:History of Life]] and [[:Category:History of Climate]]: - De-listeding deleted categories). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Guidelines and policies

Shortcut
  1. Read and understand Wikipedia:Categorization before using this page. Nominate categories that violate policies there, or are misspelled, mis-capitalized, redundant/need to be merged, not NPOV, small without potential for growth, or are generally bad ideas.
  2. It is recommended that noone depopulate the category (remove the tags from articles) before the community has made a decision.
  3. Add the name of the new category and {{cfd}} to the category page for deletion. This will add a message to it, and also put the page you are nominating into Category:Categories for deletion. It's important to do this to help alert people who are watching or browsing the category.
  4. Add new deletion candidates under the appropriate day.
  5. Make sure you add a colon (:) in the link to the category being listed, like [[:Category:Foo]]. This makes the category link a hard link which can be seen on the page (and avoids putting this page into the category you are nominating).
  6. Sign any listing or vote you make by typing ~~~~ after your text.
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Some categories may be listed in Category:Categories for deletion but accidently not listed here.

Old discussions from this page have been archived to:

There is currently a debate on Wikipedia:Categorisation of people which you may want to look at if you are thinking about nominating a people-related category for deletion. Many such disputes are ending up in /unresolved.


Current (tentative) cleanup practices:

  • Categories nominated immediately after creation by their creator, or due to misspelling may be deleted and de-listed after 2 days if there are no objections. Presumably these discussions are not interesting, and so do not need to be saved on /resolved.
  • People-related discussions that do not have a clear consensus for deletion after 5 days are moved to /unresolved (interim measure until the current mega-controversy is resolved).
  • If there is a clear consensus for deletion after 7 days, then de-populate the category and move it to the "Delete me" section (unless it is a "red link", in which case, it is already deleted). Save interesting conversations in /resolved; discard uninteresting conversations.
  • If there is a clear consensus to keep after 7 days: 1.) Copy the discussion to the category's talk page. 2.) Remove the {{cfd}} tag from the category page. 3.) If the discussion is precedent-setting, put a note in /resolved with a link to the category's talk page.
  • There is currently a poll on Wikipedia talk:Categories for deletion about what to do if there is no clear consensus.

Likely nominees

Your help is needed sorting through a list of /likely candidates for deletion.

Nominations

Sept 13

Category:Photography museums

Unnecessary subcategory—most art museums include different media, and I don't believe there are too many that cater just to photography. They can all just be included in the proper country subcategory of Category:Art galleries and museums without anything really being lost, unless we also want Category:Painting museums, Category:Sculpture museums... Postdlf 02:23, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Swedish_Privy_Councilors

This is a misspelling of Category:Swedish Privy Councillors. -- Beland 07:21, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:London (disambiguation)

Disambiguation categories seem like a bad idea. -- Beland 07:21, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • I can't see a use for these, and they just group together exactly what we try to keep separate with disambiguation pages. Delete. Postdlf 01:58, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Chicago

See Category:Chicago, IL. -- Beland 07:09, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Personally, I really dislike seeing postal abbreviations in category names. I'd rather move the contents of Category:Chicago, IL to Category:Chicago. BTW, there is also Category:Los Angeles and Category:San Francisco and who know how many others. And many others that include the postal code. Seems we should at least try to be consistent. But unless there is a need to disambiguate, I don't see why the postal code should be included. [[User:Bkonrad|older≠wiser]] 19:03, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Agreed. -Sean Curtin 23:31, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)
    • Yeah, my bad—one of my earliest category creations, before I decided that the full state name should be included or not at all. Move contents to Category:Chicago and then delete Category:Chicago, IL. Postdlf 01:57, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Irish reorganization

I'd like to ask that all of the following category names be disambiguated to include one of the following words: "Republic" "Northern" "island" "language" "ethnicity".

There are also currently 3 subcategories and 18 articles in Category:Ireland, which need to be moved to a less ambiguous place, as per the category's header.

In the course of reorganization...

Top-level island-wide subjects (for example, Category:Irish_mythology) should be cross-referenced from the top-level of the Republic and the North. And so on for second-level subjects, etc., as needed.

Some subjects are clearly separable; I'm not sure whether they should be cross-referenced from Category:Island of Ireland. For example, right now, we have Category:Towns_of_Ireland, which contains only Category:Towns_in_Northern_Ireland and Category:Towns_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland. Clearly, Category:Towns_of_Ireland should be deleted, but should the two subcategories then be included directly in Category:Island of Ireland?

Some categories are mixed. For example, in sports, some teams represent the island (like the Irish rugby union), and others represent one part or the other. Should there be a combined sports category, listing both Republic and Northern articles and subcategories?

The top-level structure looks like this as of 8 Sep: 

Category:Northern_Ireland
  Category:Airports_of_Northern_Ireland 
  Category:Counties_in_Northern_Ireland 
  Category:History_of_Northern_Ireland 
  Category:Northern_Ireland_people 
  Category:Northern_Ireland_political_parties 
  Category:Towns_in_Northern_Ireland 
Category:Ireland
  Category:Companies_of_Ireland 
  Category:Elections_in_Ireland 
  Category:Irish_cuisine 
Category:Republic_of_Ireland
  Category:Counties_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland 
  Category:History_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland 
  Category:Irish_Defence_Forces 
  Category:Military_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland 
  Category:Politics_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland 
  Category:Towns_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland 
Category:Island_of_Ireland
  Category:Counties_of_Ireland 
  Category:History_of_Ireland 
  Category:Irish_culture 
  Category:Irish_institutions 
  Category:Irish_mythology 
  Category:Irish_people 
  Category:Irish_political_parties 
  Category:Limerick_topics 
  Category:Northern_Ireland 
  Category:Provinces_of_Ireland 
  Category:Religion_in_Ireland 
  Category:Republic_of_Ireland 
  Category:Sport_in_Ireland 
  Category:Sport_in_Northern_Ireland 
  Category:Towns_of_Ireland 
  Category:Transportation_in_Ireland 
  Category:Ulster

The only extant replacement for the childless orphan Category:Northern_Irish_culture would be Category:Irish_culture. I'm not sure whether or not it should be deleted. -- Beland 05:47, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is a reasonable case for merging Sport_in_Ireland and Sport_in_Northern_Ireland as most sports I can think of i.e. Hurling, Gaelic football, rugby etc are all-Ireland and would need to be put into both categories. The main sport that isn't all-Ireland is soccer which could easily be solved by subcategories Republic_of_Ireland_soccer and Northern_Ireland_soccer.GordyB 20:53, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Computer and video game genres

These empty orphans would be put under Category:Computer and video game genres, but I'm not sure they're necessary.

-- Beland 04:50, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Edmonton Oilers

Category:Edmonton_Oilers_players_(WHA) and Category:Edmonton_Oilers_(WHA)_players should be deleted in favor of Category:Edmonton_Oilers_players, unless there's some ambiguity I'm not aware of. -- Beland 04:50, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

More unpopulated orphans

The following misc. categories are childless orphans, and are probably "obvious" deletes because they have populated replacements.

--Beland 04:50, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)


The following I was less sure were "obvious".

-- Beland 04:50, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Athletes vs. Sportspeople

I'd like to ask that all the subcategories of Category:Athletes be moved to "Category:Track and field athletes" and subcategories to "Country X track and field athletes" instead of "Country X athletes". Apparently, British English for "track and field athlete" is "athlete", and the American English meaning of "athlete" is "sportsperson". This creates a horrible ambiguity, which I'm sure is resulting in some misclassification. -- Beland 03:36, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I will second this motion. —Mike 23:59, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Redundant Irish sportspeople

-- Beland 03:36, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Northern Ireland people

Category:Northern Ireland people and Category:Northern Irish people are both populated and should be merged to one or the other. I prefer the former. -- Beland 03:36, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Redundant election results - unpopulated orphans

-- Beland 01:38, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Election results in the United States

This is lightly populated, but seems entirely redundant with Category:Elections in the United States. -- Beland 01:38, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:U.S. Congressmen election results by state

There are only two possible children, for the House of Representatives and the Senate. These should be listed in the parent directly. -- Beland 01:38, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Bad capitalization/punctuation - unpopulated orphans

-- Beland 01:31, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Geographical and US places - unpopulated orphans

Municipalities in the US are categorized by state, not county.

-- Beland 01:31, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Defunct_liberal_parties

Currently, this is an empty orphan. It is perhaps POV and probably obsoleted by things linked from Timeline_of_liberal_parties_around_the_world. -- Beland 00:15, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Redundant political parties by nationality- empty orphans

-- Beland 00:11, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Redundant liberal political parties - empty orphans

Because liberal party articles for most countries are listed directly in Category:Liberal_parties, the following appear to be unnecessary:

-- Beland 00:11, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Polish actors - redundant

Category:Polish actors is redundant and currently empty. There is already Category:Polish actors and actresses. RedWolf 03:29, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

Cities in Australia

Category:Cities in Australia is empty and redundant - Category:Australian cities exists. -- Chuq 11:13, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I suggest holding off on this one. It was just created and it looks like there might be some re-org going on with the "cities by country" categories. —Mike 00:08, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Sept 12

Mormonism - empty orphans

"Latter Day Saint" is preferable to "Mormon"; also, be aware that there is more than one denomination in the "Latter Day Saint Movement".

-- Beland 23:47, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Military/aviation/seacraft - empty orphans

Probably redundant:

Certainly redundant:

-- Beland 23:45, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Redundant miltaries - empty orphans

-- Beland 23:45, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

WWII things - empty orphans

-- Beland 23:45, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Capitalizations

Misspellings - empty orphans

-- Beland 22:26, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ok. I speedily deleted most of the (empty) categories above. -- User:Docu

Colour isn't a misspelling it's UK English. As I understand it US and UK English are both considered equally valid by Wikipedia and so unless there is already a category called 'color' it should be kept.GordyB 21:01, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

And there is already a Category:Color. —Mike 00:11, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

Category:Deaths by year, Category:Births by year, and all subcats (formerly Category:2003 deaths)

Category:2003 deaths (and all the other years): another example of over-the-top categorization. --Auximines 15:51, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Delete 'em all; we have the year articles for this. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 16:18, 2004 Sep 12 (UTC)

Keep, but complete the death category with a birth one. These categories allow to identify easily biography articles and select them based on years/decades/centuries.

As there are many reasons to link from a year page to an article, these pages can't offer the same as the category. Besides, it's much clearer and easier to assign than, e.g. Category:19th century people. Many of those articles are currently uncategorized and the category system is less error prone and more likely to be corrected than the lists (e.g. Charles Rosen, Gypsy Rose Lee on 1914 [1]).

In other fields, categories based on years complete the categorization of the topic (e.g. Category:2003 albums as per WikiProject Albums|, despite the fact there are already lists.

Deaths by year, Births by year could be used to build the List of people by name. -- User:Docu

  • Keep, if we can use a bot to keep it consistent [[User:Sverdrup|User:Sverdrup]] 18:11, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 18:14, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Not likely to be used indexically by a user, and thus not a useful category scheme. Snowspinner 18:26, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. This information is better handled on the year pages. "Births in XXXX" and "Deaths in XXXX" serves so little categorization purpose, and only clutters the category space on people pages. Categories should assist researchers in find similar information by subject. These ones are about as useful as People by last initial - completely arbitrary. I've proposed a system which follows along the lines of the "As of" dating system. Not so say my idea is right, but just to give an example of a more useful system than categories. -- Netoholic @ 18:28, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Netoholic: Please avoid removing the categories for now. -- User:Docu
      • Docu: Please don't lecture. I changed that one before I fully realized how many your bot was changing. -- Netoholic @ 18:40, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      ) --User
      Docu
  • Delete - I still think this is completely redundant with the years articles, and less informative and less useful. Adam Bishop, 18:30, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. Browsing deaths is instructive. -- orthogonal 19:10, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. If this were a family genealogy, I would say keep. But because we're talking about a vast number of unrelated biographies the categories aren't needed. —Mike 21:24, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep all. First, the category system allows for an erroneous date of birth/death to be fixed much more readily than if said error is listed in the individual's article, the year's article, or both. (It's quite possible that there are already year articles that disagree with a person's article over what year the person was born or died in.) Second, the category system allows for sorting by name instead of by date as is handled in the individual year articles. Third, I personally don't think that everyone with a Wikipedia article should be listed in the articles for the year in which they were born (and, where applicable, the year in which they died). The year articles should list the famous and otherwise notable people, but the categories can and should categorize everyone with an article. -Sean Curtin 23:08, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Category:List_of_fictional_secret_agents_and_spies

see Category:Fictional secret agents and spies instead (as per talk-- User:Docu

Sept 11

Category:Mysterious people

Hopelessly vague and subjective. Lunchboxhero 23:02, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

  • It's POV. Who's to say what makes a person "mysterious?" What criteria were used? Most importantly, why is this distinction considered significant to begin with? Delete. --Ardonik.talk() 23:10, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • It may be POV, but it's a nice collection of interesting people, ranging from clearly very mysterious to somewhat mysterious. I vote Keep'. --ssd 04:48, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Highly inappropriate as a classification. Postdlf 17:34, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Middle-earth Sindar, Category:Middle-earth Eldar

Superseded by Category:Grey Elves and Category:High Elves. See also Category talk:Middle-earth Elves. [[User:Anárion|Ана́рыён]] 22:09, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Go ahead and delete. This was a move made after much discussion. --[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 22:22, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Category:GFDL images

These are being squirted all over image pages, wasting people time (and database content) .. but are completely meaningless (GDFL explicitly only applies to text). Or, if they are supposed to apply to the text of the image pages, they are redundant. mfc

  • Good gravy, this is one of the largest categories on the Wikipedia (I figure only Category:Stub has more articles under its wing.) I'm pretty sure you're completely and utterly wrong about the applicability of the GFDL to images, but I'll withhold my vote until someone more nuanced in these matters than I can provide a comment. Abstaining from the "strong keep" side of the fence. --Ardonik.talk()
  • Keep. Perfectly harmless and automatically added by {{GFDL}}. The GFDL can and does apply to images. Guanaco 20:33, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Is this category in danger of hitting the 15k limit? --ssd 04:49, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sept 10

Category:Priests

As a supposed child of Category:Roman Catholic Church this was very badly named as the word "priests" is too generic and can refer to other religions as well. I moved its contents to Category:Roman Catholic priests which can now take its place. Aris Katsaris 02:56, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Anderson; Category:Bauer; Category:Cole; Category:Collins; Category:Fischer; Category:Farmer; Category:Schmitt

Sorry, but these all seem completely stupid. The guy seems to want to make a different category for each single surname in the English language that there ever existed, or atleast ones that he can find more than two people sharing the name!! This is as much a definition of categorization scheme gone wild as one can hope to find. Please delete. Aris Katsaris 22:11, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC).

  • Delete all. Postdlf 22:38, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Wow this is an ambitious project! I wouldn't imagine it will end up being so useful, though. Delete. -Seth Mahoney 22:41, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Tempted to vote "keep", but for the headache of linking and listing similar-sounding and otherwies linked names. -Sean Curtin 01:47, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Quadell (talk) 04:44, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • The Wikipedia is not a geneology or surname list; I'm surprised that the creator of these articles was User:Jerzy (one of the admins!) This stuff makes better sense in the Wiktionary, where the etymology and origin of specific names can be discussed. I don't envision people trying to find out who the world's most notable Smiths were by typing "Smith" in the search box.
    Delete. --Ardonik.talk() 00:26, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Category:Capital punishment

Duplicates Category:Death penalty. Susvolans 10:51, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Art galleries, museums, and museums, oh my

Category:Art_galleries_and_museums should be merged with Category:Museums, all the way down to the Art galleries and museums and/or Museums in Location X categories at the bottom of this muddled dual hierarchy. How this might be accomplished is not for me to say, but it is for you. -- Beland 02:52, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • I'm unclear on why you would think so—why isn't subcategorizing museums by kind valid? To expose my bias upfront, I created Category:Art galleries and museums, because I thought art museums should be grouped together, as should natural history museums, maritime museums, and other kinds, and museums should also be grouped by the country and state they are in (or city, if there are enough of them). So are you saying that every article on a museum should just be in Category:Museums? Postdlf 02:58, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • I just reverted the category changes you made to Category:Museums in the United States—that category is for all museums in the U.S., not just art museums. I'm thinking that was your misconception—why else would you remove Category:American culture and Category:United States buildings to make it a subcategory of Category:Art galleries and museums in the U.S.? Please take another look at the contents. Postdlf 03:11, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Was the title itself confusing? "Art galleries and museums" was meant as "art galleries and art museums", not "museums and art galleries". Maybe it should have been "Art museums and galleries". Postdlf 17:40, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • Yes, that's exactly why I was confused. I'm happy to keep art-specific categories if they are less ambiguously named. -- Beland 03:33, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Assyrian_Orthodoxy

I think this may be a reference to the Assyrian Church of the East which is apparently no longer needed. I found it empty. -- Beland 02:29, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Delete empty category. I can't even see what articles would be placed in it. --Ardonik.talk() 00:15, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Category:Acadaemia

Redundant with Category:Academia, but it has a weird Wikipedia: page in it, by accident, I think. -- Beland 02:07, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've deleted it. Guanaco 02:12, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
What to do about the weird Wikipedia: article? -- Beland 02:33, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Comment: Which article are you referring to? --Ardonik.talk() 00:19, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit/Krik -- Beland 03:24, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:United States sport

Redundant as Category:American sports already exists and has more entries. GordyB 10:57, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sept 9

Category:All_system_messages

I found it empty. There is only one possible member, Wikipedia:All system messages, which belongs directly in Category:Wikipedia:Template or successor. -- Beland 13:45, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:American_car_companies

Replaced by Category:Car companies of the United States. -- Beland 13:45, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Afghan vs. Afghani

To my understanding, "Afghan" is proper English; "Afghani" is not. Thus:

-- Beland 13:45, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • I made both of those categories, and I agree, I was wrong. They should both say "Afghan". Quadell (talk) 04:46, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Afghan leaders

Why not just make it a sub cat? It captures people who should be in the category:Monarchs, while non-monarch heads of state of Afganistan shouldn't be in there. Gentgeen 17:46, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Hmm. I hadn't thought of that. OK, done. -- Beland 01:10, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Aristocrats

This is empty and points to Category:Nobility, which doesn't exist. Was Category:Nobility deleted on purpose? If so, this should be, too. -- Beland 13:45, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Australian_Liberal_Party_MHRs

It would be redundant with Category:Australian_Liberal_Party_politicians, but I'm not sure this group shouldn't be subdivided. -- Beland 13:45, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Australian Liberal Party MHRs specifically applies to the lower house of the federal parliament (House of Representatives). There are also Liberal Party Senators, as well as Liberal Party politicians in state parliaments. User:Adam Carr has protested the use of "MHR" though (he suggested Australian Liberal Party MPs would be a more suitable name). I gave up on categorising political articles because of his reversions. -- Chuq 11:19, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Australian_Labor_Party_MHRs

Same as above. -- Beland 13:45, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Ontologically uncertain

This category defines its purpose as, "there is some uncertainty of the existance of the things in this catagory. It may sound odd to have a catagory with members that may or may not exist, but the various beliefs regarding their existance is the cause of many great cultural events." Category is inherently POV, and includes such miscellaneous items as God, Aryan race, and unicorns. Smerdis of Tlön 13:33, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • I kind of like the idea behind this category: all things about whose existence we are uncertain, though I think the title could use some tweaking. I don't think it represents a problematic POV to say, for example, that we are, as a species, not certain that God or races in general (not just the Aryan) exist. The topic is heavily debated. Unicorns, I think, we are agreed don't exist. But yeah! I kinda jive with the category its self. Maybe it just needs some cleanup. -Seth Mahoney 22:48, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Highly POV. The idea can be preserved by making sure that all of the contents are in some way subcategorized under categories that make their status as beliefs apparent (Category:Belief, Category:Theories, etc). -Sean Curtin 01:53, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
    • As everything ultimately comes down to a belief, theory, or assumption, not so good an idea. Postdlf 06:54, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
      • I was going to make the obvious argument that there is a difference between my believing, say, in you and my believing in, say, God, when I realized the category should be deleted for an entirely different reason. God should be its only member, or at least is the only member I can think of off the top of my head. Then I realized that other things can be put there, if we're talking strictly philosophy, like numbers, ideas, thoughts, and so on. Now I'm going back to keep, but maybe with a different title and as a subcategory of Ontology. Also, remove the mythical beasts. I still don't think their ontological status is uncertain. -Seth Mahoney 07:03, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • Note: could one of you who think this category is POV explain why? It doesn't seem POV at all to me to say "the existence of this thing is contested". -Seth Mahoney 07:04, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
    • Contested by whom? After all, if we really want to remain NPOV we'd have to include Holocaust in this category - the vocal minority of Holocaust deniers probably outnumbers the people who believe in unicorns. And there are still Flat Earthers and non-heliocentrists out there, so all articles relating to space travel and the circumnavigation of the globe should be given this tag. -Sean Curtin 23:23, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
      • Gotcha. Yeah, I can see where you see the POViness now. It seems to me, though, that there is a difference between saying, as Postdlf does below, that this category will have to contain anything anyone ever doubted and things which are actually contested, that is, things over which there is honest-to-goodness debate on. Unfortunately, I think the dividing line would end up being arbitrary, so I change my vote to delete. -Seth Mahoney 22:25, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete with extreme prejudice. There is no way to make this a meaningful classification, no way to remove POV problems. Do we really want to categorize subjects based on whether some people, somewhere, at some time, had doubted their existence? Postdlf 17:37, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:1900s (decade) and Category:2000s (decade)

(These were moved from Empty orphans, below, where it was suggested that they be replaced by Category:1900s and Category:2000s.)

The phrase 1900s usually refers to the period from 1900 to 1999. I suppose there should be a separate way to refer to the years 1900 to 1909. (The Twentieth century refers to the years 1901 to 2000, which is a slightly different timeframe than the 1900s.) But I'm not sure if we even need categories for these time frames at all. Quadell (talk) 04:56, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Hmm...see also Category:20th century. If there are going to be categories regarding time periods, the existing scheme of decades and centuries and years for well-documented periods seems reasonable to me...though it might be nice to align the two with something like Category:1900-1999? -- Beland 06:07, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Empty orphans, 0-A

The following categories (in the left-hand column) were orphaned and empty when they found them, and they all had an obvious replacement or replacement. After the -> are shown the replacements. If you object to one or more of these being deleted, please separate it out into its own section so we can more easily discuss it. -- Beland 06:44, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

category:American actors

We already have Category: U.S. actors and actresses [[User:Gamaliel|Gamaliel File:Watchmensmiley20.gif]] 06:19, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Hurricane seasons

The structure looked like this: 

I. Category:Tropical cyclones
   A. Category:Atlantic hurricanes
   B. Category:Hurricane seasons
      1. Category:Atlantic hurricane seasons

The Category:Hurricane seasons is an unnecessary level. This is similar to the previous Olympic discussion. I moved Category:Atlantic hurricane seasons into Category:Tropical cyclones. —Mike 05:27, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

Sept 8

Category:Wikipedia:Template

This violates the "don't show category structure" rule, and is also a little confusing. If this is a useful category, I think should be re-named to "Category:Wikipedia templates". -- Beland 01:24, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

This is in the Wikipedia namespace, so I don't think it is a problem, although perhaps the rename is justified. --ssd 00:23, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Category:Wikipedia:All_system_messages

There's only one article, and no potential for expansion, as far as I can see. -- Beland 01:24, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia:Infobox_template

There's only one article, and no potential for expansion, as far as I can see. -- Beland 01:24, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia:Navigational template

There's only one article, and no potential for expansion, as far as I can see. -- Beland 01:24, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:WikiProject:Texas

  • Only two articles, the Wikiproject page and its discussion page. I think someone may be missing the point here. -- Beland 00:27, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sept 7

Category:Vivisection

This category represents a POV expansion of the concept of vivisection as discussed in the vivisection article to include all animal experimentation and cast it in a POV light. An appropriate category would be Category:Animal Experimentation or some such. While arguably, there could be a category about only vivisection strictly construed, only 1 current resident would qualify (there are only 4 as it is) and it would be difficult to verify many residents, and would require constant POV creep policing which we have experienced re: vivisection. Delete.--Samuel J. Howard 21:46, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

Category:LPMud Drivers

Violates naming conventions (capitalization). Entries transferred to Category:LPMud gamedrivers. -- Naive cynic 19:24, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)

New category is more properly "LPMud drivers" --Nspollution 20:01, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Category:Life

Redundant with Category:Biology and Category:Origin of life. --Lexor|Talk 03:15, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Is Category:Life intended to be the beginning of the tree of life? —Mike 04:03, Sep 7, 2004 (UTC)
If so, it needs a different name, perhaps Category:Evolutionary tree of life, or just Category:Evolutionary tree. --Lexor|Talk 12:39, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
This reads like one of the fundamental categories listed on the main page. Maybe it should be added to that scheme. Category:Evolutionary tree as a replacement for Category:Life, BTW, would be POV. -Seth Mahoney 22:51, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
If the intention of the category creator is as an evolutionary tree, i.e. in the sense of the WikiProject Tree of Life (which it certainly currently looks like), then that's not POV, it's describing what it is. I'd also be happy with Category:Tree of life in that case if the word "evolution" raises hackles, since it's often referred to it as that by biologists too. What I'm saying is that if we have Category:Biology, and the intention of category is about topic relating to life in the biological sense (i.e. not personal life etc), then we don't really need it. If it means anything else then it also needs to renamed to avoid confusion with life in the biological sense. --Lexor|Talk 10:58, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sept 6

Category:Rebel Alliance and Category:New Republic

Since there was a huge overlap between those categories (a character in one of them was 95% certain to belong to the other one as well) I asked about merging the two in the relevant talk pages. Getting no objection, I proceeded to create Category:Rebel Alliance and New Republic characters and moving the items into it. Please delete the now empty categs above. Aris Katsaris 01:25, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

    • I thought that it might be a bit *too* long if I also added the word "Star Wars" in there -- it's already stretching the limits of length, I think. Besides with both "Rebel Alliance" and "New Republic" in there, I don't think there can be much confusion that we are talking about Star Wars. Aris Katsaris 03:11, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • There do exist enough characters to eventually justify both categories (as a way of breaking up the larger category), but at the moment the list is fairly sparse and it's difficult to make the distinction, so we might as well delete. They can be re-created if the new category ever gets large enough to be a problem, but for now, deleting keeps people from adding new articles to either category by mistake. --[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 22:26, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:World cities

See also Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/World_cities.

Inherently POV, listing a city under this category means what exactly? That someone arbitrarily considers it important enough to be of note? Should be emptied and removed IMO. Someone already placed it in vfd it seems. Aris Katsaris 12:47, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • We already have World cities and Thirty most populous cities in the world. This would be OK as an annotated list, but not as a category. It has also already been voted for deletion by the VFD crowd. Delete. -- Beland 03:47, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete, with some regret, because I like the concept, but it has inherent POV problems—you know sooner or later Birmingham, England is going to be placed in it. Annotated list is the way to go rather than a category. Postdlf 01:54, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Are there any cities not in the world? Any cities not worth the world's notice. Quadell (talk) 05:07, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Category:Historical liberal parties/Timelines

I think this should at least be renamed "Timelines of historical liberal parties". See "General naming conventions" on Wikipedia:Categorization. -- Beland 04:33, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Football venues

Contains one article, might be better within the other categories' Category:Football (soccer) by country -gadfium 04:10, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Are you proposing "Football (soccer) venues in the United States"? If so, "Football (soccer) venues" should probably unify them, but this category would still need to be deleted. -- Beland 04:49, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The article it contains is not a soccer venue, it's a football/baseball stadium (or, was, it has since been demolished). Don't delete it. anthony (see warning) 02:39, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical images

Misspelling of Category:Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial images ("Commerical"). Not sure how the articles that are there now are being assigned there. -- Beland 02:34, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Delete spurious category. --Ardonik.talk() 00:18, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)

Category:Creative Commons NonCommerical images

Similar misspelling of Category:Creative Commons NonCommercial images. Once again, I can't remove these images from this category, so this category needs attention even though it doesn't really exist. -- Beland 02:38, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Periodicals and Category:Journals

This was an orphaned category, but I attached it to Category:Publications for the time being. It has two subcategories and no articles.

Category:Image:Satellite images and children

Category:Image:Satellite images and children are orphans that belong under Category:Satellite images and should obey the naming conventions there (i.e. "Image:" should not appear). -- Beland 01:02, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Category:Image:Satellite_images
Category:Image:Landsat_images
Category:Image:TERRA_images


Sept 5

Category:Image:Maps and children

The entirety of this orphaned tree looks like this:

Category:Image:Maps
Category:Image:Historical_maps
Category:Image:Canadian_historical_maps
Category:Image:United_States_historical_maps
Category:Image:Relief_maps
Category:Image:United_States_relief_maps

-- Beland 00:15, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • I moved the images over to the correct categories. These are all cleared now. —Mike 08:32, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)

Sept 3

Category:Unusual articles

Inherently POV (which is a shame -- I love Wikipedia:Unusual articles...) Tregoweth 17:59, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

  • It's a useful parallel to Wikipedia:Unusual articles, but I can see the inherent POV — typing [[Category:Unusual articles]] into an article that you don't like in order to denigrate it is just a little bit too convenient, and I can forsee edit wars taking place over this. That said, my vote is to keep so long as the criteria used to include the category in any article are the same criteria used to list that article on Wikipedia:Unusual articles. The category should not be applied arbitrarily. --Ardonik.talk() 00:12, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. POV and guaranteed to start fights on individual articles. I'd like Ardonik's suggestion, but I think the category falls under Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. Wikipedia:Unusual articles (which I like) is just meant to be something interesting for the editors here. Using it's criteria and applying it as a subject category for articles seems not so good. Lose the category, and keep the article. -- Netoholic @ 05:12, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Cities in the Netherlands

This category already exists in Category:Dutch cities. I thought they were the same thing, so I moved all the links to Dutch cities. Sorry about that. However, this does not appear to be a neccesary category. — Braaropolis | Talk 04:06, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Delete me

The below meet the eligibility requirements for deletion at the top of this page. These categories have been de-populated, and any documentation of this decision taken care of. Admins may delete these categories at will. If there is a particular category which is replacing the deleted category (if redundant, misspelled, etc.) as noted below, that should be mentioned in the deletion log entry.

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