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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Beland (talk | contribs) at 05:54, 17 September 2004 (→Polish actors - redundant: De-listing 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. Know if the category you are looking at needs deleting. If it is a "red link" and has no articles or subcategories, then it is already deleted (more likely, it was never really created in the first place), and does not need to be listed here.
  2. 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.
  3. It is recommended that no one depopulate the category (remove the tags from articles) before the community has made a decision.
  4. 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.
  5. Add new deletion candidates under the appropriate day.
  6. 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).
  7. Sign any listing or vote you make by typing ~~~~ after your text.
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For a listing of ongoing discussions,
see the dashboard.

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Old discussions from this page have been archived to: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 16

Childless orphans B-G

"Obvious":

"Non-obvious":


Category:Cat breeds and Category:Cat types

I think there's overlap here, and that these two categories should be merged. --Rossumcapek 18:09, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Keep both. There is a big difference between a "breed" and a "type". Breeds are recognized by cat clubs (or working on being recognized) and types are general categorizations by color, coat type, etc. [[User:Lachatdelarue|Lachatdelarue (talk)]] 20:35, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Leave as is. What Lachatdelarue said. Just look at what's there--types are not breeds. For a similar model, see Category:Dog breeds and Category:Dog types. Elf | Talk 21:24, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Olympians at the 2000 Summer Olympics -- Add to this discussion

The category Olympians at the 2000 Summer Olympics does not follow the naming scheme of the other years, furthermore there is already an Athletes at the 2000 Summer Olympics category. It should be deleted because it is redundant.

This belongs on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. RickK 05:56, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

Sept 15

  • Category:Summer sports - this term varies too much from country to country. Firstly, you can't really categorise field hockey as a "summer sport" The only sport listed so far is Field hockey; in Australia (one of the sport's major powers) the main club season is in winter, and this appears to be the case (to pick the first northern hemisphere country I could google quickly) in Wales. I don't think that India and Pakistan *have* seasons accurately described as "summer" and "winter". If you're going to categorise "winter sports" as "sports requiring frozen water to play", and "summer sports" as everything else, the title "summer sports" becomes a) misleading, and b) almost useless as a category (unlike the "winter sports" category which is useful under such a definition). By such a categorization, Australian Rules football would be a summer sport; no Australian would look for a sport played almost exclusively in winter (except in the Northern Territory and preseason warmup matches) listed as a "summer sport"! In the end, I can only conclude that this category is just too problematic, whatever criteria is chosen for it. --Robert Merkel 04:04, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Unpopulated orphans

Obvious geopolitical category redundancies:

Obvious computer category redundancies:

Category:MUDs and Category:MU*_games:
Keep They overlap but neither is contained in the other: not all MUDs are games; some are chatrooms with scenery; and DU MOO (a "MUD/Object oriented") is primarily an distance-learning site, with software objects serving as carefully thot-thru real-time presentation and discussion aids, used, e.g., in teaching MOO programming and conducting seminars for professionals (primarily in educational fields). --Jerzy(t) 08:31, 2004 Sep 15 (UTC)

Obvious Jewish category redundancies:

Non-obvious Jewish category redundancies:

Obvious fictional redundancies:

Misc. obvious redundancies:

Non-obvious misc. unpopulated orphans

Programming languages

These were apparently unnecessary for Category:Programming languages.

These are redundant with Categorical_list_of_programming_languages.

-- Beland 05:09, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Poles

Lightly populated, but redundant with Category:Polish people. -- Beland 05:09, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:United_States_Congressmen

Gender bias. Should move back to Category:United_States_members_of_Congress or equivalent. -- Beland 05:09, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Train stations and Category:Railway stations

These should be merged. Lacrimosus 07:05, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • Agree; keep Railway stations (since enclosing category for Train St. is Category:Rail transport & also Rail/railway seems to be more commonly used in titles than Train.) Elf | Talk 21:48, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Category:Popular_programming_languages

What is "popular"? This is so wide open to interpretation that it invites edit wars. Programmers are very partial to their favorite languages--I should know... I am one. :) -- Stevietheman 15:12, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Delete. The "Major programming languages" section in the Programming language article already provides a list *and* a better definition ("used by at least several thousand programmers worldwide"--although I don't know how one proves that-- compared to "currently in use by large numbers of programmers"). If it had to exist for some reason, "Major programming languages" would be a better category--oh, wait, there *is* Category:Major programming languages, also with a better definition. (Also a recovering programmer if that makes a difference.) Elf | Talk 21:35, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Sept 14

Kept cleaning "Cities in ..." series

I kept moving bits from badly named subcategories of Category:Cities by country. The following categories are now emptied and redundant :

I also ask for

If somebody is courageous, or knows how to use a bot, there is still a Category:Swedish cities waiting to be moved, but too big for me...

I moved the main articles to Category:Cities in Sweden. Are you talking about Category:Swedish municipal seats? [[User:Yardcock|Yardcock | talk]] 20:46, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)
No, I suppose I had made some mistake, I was nearly sure that there were dozens of articles in the category... I probably visited some other (maybe towns in Poland ?) then felt sure I had already watched out Sweden. Thanks this was a pure blunder of mine --French Tourist 21:10, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Note that I have also bothered sorting out the mess in the series "Towns of ..." but I stumbled on a few difficulties that are out of topic here, but that I will probably detail soon on Wikipedia talk:Categorization --French Tourist 19:58, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So, thanks a little help I received, I can finally ask for

I created Category:Cities and towns in Botswana and Category:Cities and towns in Lebanon since I didn't think there was a need for separate categories for Cities, Towns, Villages etc for these countries. I have no objection to these categories being moved to just Cities in X, but shall I take as our standard for countries other than the US, that "Cities" covers any size of urban centre?-gadfium 21:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Nice to hear from this original creator, since I had recently got a slight feeling I could have made a mistake renaming it. Clearly, different creators had different understandings of the meaning of city (as explained in the introduction of this precise article city of the Wikipedia). See my ramble about "cities" and "towns" on the talk categorization page ; I perceived your original intent only while writing these reflexions. Thanks for your understanding ! --French Tourist 22:05, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Category:Record companies

Duplicates Category:Record labels. (And whoever is using redirects on category pages: Stop it!) Tregoweth 01:29, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

  • As I understand it, there is a difference between a company and a label. Why shoudln't cateogrization reflect this difference?--Samuel J. Howard 01:44, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)

Sept 13

Category:Blackfeet tribe

Unnused category originally listed on speedy deletions, unsure of criteria for categories. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 10:29, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • What's wrong with speedy? Nobody's using this for anything, so why keep it? --Ardonik.talk() 19:10, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

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)

Photography Museums:

  1. The National Museum of Photograpy, Film, and Television
  2. George Eastman House
  3. Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography
  4. Latvian Museum of Photography
  5. California Museum of Photography
  6. International Center of Photography
  7. Photography Museum Antwerp
  8. The museum of Photographic Arts

How many would you like?  ;)

Oh, and sculpture museums:

  1. Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum
  2. Richard W. Bock Sculpture Museum
  3. Amber Sculpture Museum (Lithuania)
  4. Miaoli Wood Sculpture Exhibition Center
  5. Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum

--Samuel J. Howard 09:35, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

  • Yes, but how many of those have articles at this time? -- Graham ☺ | Talk 10:29, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
    • I don't know, but the policy as I understand it is generally not to delete categories that are proper categories but simply not populated yet.--Samuel J. Howard 03:50, Sep 15, 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)
  • Delete. Category:Georgia seems more suitable as a disambiguation category, as it's likely to be created anyways. -- User:Docu

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)
    • Since the person who created the category agrees, I started the move of the content from Category:Chicago, IL to Category:Chicago --Vina 05:39, 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.

(Also, something should be done with the childless orphans, Category:Transport_in_Ireland and Category:People_from_Northern_Ireland. -- Beland 05:47, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC))

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)

No, I disagree quite strongly.
I don't see why all the categories need to be disambiguated. Certainly categories like Category:History of Ireland 1801-1922 shouldn't be altered — the articles are about the history of the whole island, before there was the division between the six counties in the North and the 26 in the Republic. I think the current situation where everything is in a category with a somewhat awkward name is definitely suboptimal. Why can we not have a category of Ireland, with subcategories of Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland; many of the articles in the category tree are about the whole island, and can go in subcats of Ireland and those which are only about one of the two nations on the island can go into the appropriate subcat. Most English speakers around the world couldn't give a fig for the awkward lexical gymnastics we go through so as not to offend small minorities of the people who care about the specifics.
Effectively, I'm suggesting that the hierarchy above (in preformatted text) be left as-is, but with Category:Island of Ireland deleted and its contents moved to Category:Ireland. I don't think Category:Ireland is ambiguous, if it then contains subcats of Category:Northern Ireland and Category:Republic of Ireland. — OwenBlacker 15:21, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)
I completely agree. A precedent may be found at Category:Korea. -Sean Curtin 00:09, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)
Sounds like good plan in the spiriti of cats. --Jerzy(t) 03:31, 2004 Sep 15 (UTC)

I'm not really offended by use of the short phrase "Ireland" to denote the whole of the island, but when I started to browse the category scheme, I was pretty confused about which subcategories and articles applied to which entities.

I started to notice there was a problem when it became clear that at least one person assumed "Sport in Ireland" means "Sport in the Republic of Ireland". Then I noticed the fact that "Republic of Ireland" seems to be poorly populated compared to "Ireland", and I began to suspect that this was a general phenomenon.

I'll agree that Category:History of Ireland 1801-1922 is a good candidate for being an exception, even though most Americans, at least, won't know that this was a period of Irish unification unless they visit the category and read the header.

The main benefit of including the word "island" in all general-Ireland categories is that it will become immediately obvious when people classify articles in the wrong place because they didn't bother to see if the category existed or was the right one. With the "island" proposal, these would quickly show up in Category:Orphaned categories from an automated scan. --Beland 05:47, 15 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) Add these:

-- Beland 04:00, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Redundant Irish sportspeople

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

No as to the third pair:
Category:Northern_Ireland_footballers
should be a sub-category of
Category:Northern_Irish_football
and (by some collection of intemediate categories) also a descendant of
Category:People
But Category:Northern_Irish_football
cannot be a descendant of
Category:People
since some of its descendants will be team histories, tournament articles, articles on rules and strategy, etc., rather than exclusively bio articles.
--Jerzy(t) 05:25, 2004 Sep 15 (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)

No, re US: move both
Category:United_States_sportspeople
and
Category:Sportspeople of the United States
to
Category:American sportspeople
since "U.S." is not appropriate to activities that are almost entirely independent of the U.S. government (decentralized phenomena of American society). The only contexts where it's proper to say either "U.S. athletes" or "U.S. sportspeople" is where there is a formal national team, e.g. in the Olympics.
--Jerzy(t) 05:42, 2004 Sep 15 (UTC)
I have never heard anyone make such a distinction before. I think it has more to do with whether the phrase works better with a noun or an adjective. Like "American invasion" or "Rivers of the United States" vs. "U.S. invasion" and "Rivers of America". There are 103 "sportspeople" categories, and the only other one that has "Sportpeople of Foo" is Category:Sportspeople_of_the_Dominican_Republic, so I agree that "American sportspeople" is best. Hopefully non-U.S. North, South, and Central Americans are not offended. -- Beland 05:42, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)
BTW, we currently have 250 U.S. categories, from Category:Art_galleries_and_museums_in_the_U.S. to

Category:Women's_universities_and_colleges_in_the_U.S., 208 United States categories, from Category:1950s_TV_shows_in_the_United_States to Category:Zoos_in_the_United_States, and 131 or so American categories, from Category:1951_American_League_All-Stars to Category:World_War_II_American_vehicles. -- Beland 05:42, 17 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)
It's worth explicilty noting that "sportsperson", while stitlted to American ears, will be understood without difficulty as a synonym for "athlete" in its American sense. --Jerzy(t) 06:32, 2004 Sep 15 (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)

  1. "Senator" is a common noun unless used as a title before someone's name, so "U.S. senator..."
  2. "Senators elections" can, i guess, mean "Elections of senators", but the American English very seldom uses a plural attributive noun: American two-man submarine, as opposed to (unless i am mistaken) British two-men submarine. Perhaps in part because of that distinction, "Senators elections" rings like a misspelling of "Senators' elections".
  3. But in any case, the American phrase would be "senatorial elections" or "Senate elections".
Bottom line, i suggest "U.S. Senate election results by state"
--Jerzy(t) 06:44, 2004 Sep 15 (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)

Well, no: "Congressman" is used almost exclusively as a title, and only for members of the (national) House of Representatives! Otherwise, the arguments i made re Senate apply here as well, except that there's not a good counterpart to "senatorial". Hence i recommend "U.S. House elections", in which i use uppercase H because these are elections for the U.S. House [of Representatives]). --Jerzy(t) 08:08, 2004 Sep 15 (UTC)
No, this is a parent category for both House and Senate elections. Postdlf 14:26, 16 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)


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)
Consistently with what some user did on a similar deletion request from September 3 on Cities in the Netherlands, I have moved the contents of Australian cities into Cities in Australia, am of course against deletion of Cities in Australia and shall ask in a few minutes the deletion of Australian cities instead. --French Tourist 17:13, 14 Sep 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)
In which case which category was created first or has more entries? One of them has to go but which one?GordyB 10:13, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
The article is at color not colour, so I think it's preferable if the category is at Category:color.
Maybe we should leave Category:Colour or at least its talk page and note there that Category:Color should be used (or the other way round). -- User:Docu

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)
  • Keep, I see this as congruent with categorising albums by year, films by year, etc., plus I thought it was reasonably well agreed that categories and lists serve different purposes and neither one removes the need for the other? —Stormie 01:45, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. The year articles have no easy option for an unknown date within the year. Also there is a limit on how many people you want to hack into a list, whereas the Category has no such limit. We would also have Category:Unknown year of Birth to provide incentive for research. --Phil | Talk 09:14, Sep 15, 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)
  • Propose to approach this in a more wikipedia:categorization of people way. E.g.:
    • Give user:ssd (who created the category), and others, the opportunity to insert a workable definition of what mysterious people should be in this category;
    • Consider whether some kind of merging with List of borderline fictional characters (that contains several definitions of why people can be mysterious/partly fictional) would be useful. (--Francis Schonken 14:35, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC):)
  • Please sign *after* your posts, Francis, not before them. And the reason we add the cfd notice, is exactly in order to give people the opportunity to give a reasoning for the category and why they feel the name is appropriate. This process currently taking place is the "opportunity" given. Aris Katsaris 14:40, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC) (I posted a reply to this comment on user talk:Aris Katsaris --Francis Schonken 19:13, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC))
  • Delete. --Gary D 19:18, Sep 16, 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()
    • Changing my vote from abstain to keep, as I should have done to begin with. --Ardonik.talk() 05:27, Sep 15, 2004 (UTC)
  • 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)
  • (I am the guy adding the stupid cats.) It has been stated, i think repeatedly, that lists are suitable for things like countries, or states/provinces of countries, that have a definite number, whereas cats are suitable instead for things that expand freely; arguments against that should be directed to that policy, not to instances of compliance with it.
    • The scenario of seeing the famous Smiths together is not absurd, just backwards: you don't add them one at a time in order to see them together; you see them together to find the one you want. I was doing something finicky at List of people by name: Bra#Brady a night or two ago, and just by looking without any conscious thought, noticed that Jim Brady wasn't there. While looking more focusedly at the other four Bradys there, it occurred to me neither was his wife the activist, nor Diamond Jim. (A text search didn't turn up Monica Brady (because she's Sarah!), but i didn't waste time text-searching "Brady": this is a wiki, so i followed Jim to the gun-control lobby and found her proper name there. Diamond Jim is a well-targetted text search. Jim/James has an article, and the other two are red links.) My point is that looking at lists quickly does things for the brain that text searching can't. So don't think Museum of the Bradys, think disambiguation. If you look on a dab page for Monica Brady, you find Sarah Brady right quick. To the extent this is about pages to look at, those pages are dabs: what's Hegel's first name? Or Dalton's? (No matter which Dalton you have in mind.)
    • These cats are all responses to corresponding articles (often explicit dab pages but i think sometimes also doing etymology/origin stuff) that others have linked to, from pages in the List of people by name tree. I find these editors generally object to incorporating the list portion of, e.g. Anderson, into List of people by name: And#People named Anderson, with that link taking over the corresponding position in Anderson, and the additions and corrections to Andersons being made in that one place instead of having two lists that need to be either harmonized with each change or (more likely) cross-checked by every reader of them. My outlook is that therefore
      • A standardized link format is desirable. (And the recent spurt in my creation of children of Category:People by surname is the result of another editor's automated LoPbN traverser choking on the free-form versions of such links within LoPbN: when i came to a link in the exception list from the traverser, i standardized the link within LoPbN into a format linking to both the article and a newly created cat.)
      • A category is easier to update than a list:
        • Cat: Look at the bottom of the rendered page to see if it's included, and edit the same page to add the cat tag, just above the language links, if it isn't.
        • LoPbN list: Link to this pages "What links here" page, sequentially search the unalphabetized list there; if you don't find "List of people" there, link to List of people by name, hit End, within-page-click the first letter of the surname, then within-page-click that list's longest leading substring of the surname, which links you to the page where the surname belongs; find a longer leading substring in the ToC of that page and within-page-click on it, sequentially search for the adjacent names it belongs between (but of course it may be already there if you searched the "What links here" page poorly, or if it has the full 500 page-names listed), remember the two; back up and click the "[edit]" link for the section, find the two names again (being careful, because they're in the confusing piped-markup format now), and do your edit.
So it's the better way of raising the likelihood that a bio article gets linked into a single means (not 10,000 unlinked dab pages) of gathering all the bio articles.
    • IMO, you should vote "del" on this if you have a better way of facilitating the ultimate recognition of bio articles. But IMO it will be three to twelve months before we really have much idea of how to make the cat system work long term, and for now, you and i just have theories about it. (Not to mention that the software support for cats is not done. I assume that one upcoming feature is the ability to list not just the children of a cat, but other descendents as well, say three generations, or all of them. And that that is impossible until the system can hunt down cycles, e.g. the 3 cats including "category:computer terminology" that last week worked together to accomplish the trick of each being its own great-grandparent. Probably someone else found it by hand, as i did, but fixed it.
    • If, on the other hand, all you're sure about is that it's conceptually ugly, you should vote "keep" for now, and see what it accomplishes, and how ugly it looks when the cat software is complete. It can still be deleted later on, when its work is done, or when there is evidence that it's simply categories gone wild.
    • My maximum vision for it is influenced by the likelihood that Category:People will have the largest set of descendants that have as much structural similarity as they will. At present, the best guess is that LoPbN has about 25,000 names. IMO more than half of them are live links, and IMO there are another 10,000 to 100,000 bio articles that are not linked by LoPbN. (We know there are 385,000 articles -- tho i don't know whether that counts redirects.) That's significant enough a part of WP that i'd like to think that once we have advanced category support:
      • Tagging an article Jones or maybe even Surname:Jones will have the same effect as Category:Jones (if the cat already exists) or that plus editing Category:Jones and tagging it Category:People by surname (if it doesn't).
      • Having such a tag will
        • guarantee the system will add a (hand-editable) corresponding link to a dab named Jones if such a link doesn't already exist, and
        • suppress the display of "Jones" and display a single-character-sized stick-figure icon in the "Categories" box,
        • incidentally, also do things like suppressing rendering of redundant categories that lack some kind of override qualifier field.
      • Now that i've seen the technique of adding to categories (or their talk pages?) red links for non-existant articles that belong in the cat, i'm getting ready to admit that the end of the manual LoPbN is foreseeable, with various kinds of sublists of the grand list of existing bios' respective people automatically compiled, and even better places to list needed bios (and perhaps generate "shadow stubs", with just name and dates that are visible only when an editor tries to create a new page with the same name)).
      • That turns LoPbN into scaffolding for getting its current contents into the Cat system in an orderly and hopefully automated way. It may still be important to keep it usable in the interim (and make it moreso), by editors who are intimidtated by categories, and perhaps even maintain it through a few cycles of automatic replacement by an autmatically generated similar list.
    • Coming back to the current moment, the surname cats i created all have two or three people in them, but are straightforwardly expandable, in some cases to dozens, just by doing the clerical work of going to the appropriate LoPbN page and following each one's respective link to edit the tag into its corresponding article. Even if manual creation of Surname tags fails to catch on beyond my standardizing links that anyone adds in LoPbN to a surname-dab page, i think the logical extension of it is for bots and/or the future cat system to ensure every article linked from LoPbN or another List of People has at least one "real" cat tab, or a surname-based tag if there are more than 2 (or 20, or however many) sharing the surname, or a "Category:Rare surname" tag for the rest. With a stick-figure icon (maybe at the top rather than the bottom of the page) for those and any other descendants of Category:People, tagging by hand the residue of icon-less bios may become doable -- especially when pages in the town/city/county/state/country hierarchy are tagged with, say, a street-grid icon. And a "Random uncategorized page" link could focus that work further.
    • I'm not very committed to the surname tags, and i'm more interested in this as an object lesson on the Category:People problem. But i do think the opposition to these cats is shortsighted and premature, and i hope they are kept.
--Jerzy(t) 13:55, 2004 Sep 15 (UTC)
Could you synopsize your argument to three paragraphs or less? And please don't use so many bullets in discussions, because bullets are normally used here to indicate a new post, not subpoints of the same post. It makes it extremely confusing to know when each post ends and the other begins. Thank you. Aris Katsaris 01:07, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

(--Francis Schonken 14:02, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC):)

  • Added this as a topic to wikipedia:categorization of people (first and, thus far only, example of "problematic" "BC style").
  • My first thought: this is rather a "non-wikipedia classification" topic, but then I thought: hey, wait, all classification at wikipedia is in alphabetical order, so are all surnames. When people are in categories they should be there with a category tag that looks like "category:Topic|Surname, First Names" - then you get the names alphabetically by surname. Don't know whether there is a general problem of not correctly applying the "category" tag?
  • Seems to me a lot of work with only a marginal "bonus" effect to other, already existing systems for grouping people with the same surname at wikipedia.
  • Personally, I'd see disambiguation pages as the best place to do this kind of grouping of surnames. Note that some time ago I put quite some work in finding all Eponym, all First name and all Surname uses of Orlando included in wikipedia, and made nice separate lists about these on the Orlando disambiguation page. Well, someone removed these lists from the Orlando disambig page. Still think what I wanted to do there, more effective than doing this with categorization. Disambiguation pages have both the advantage of being expandable, when new articles are added to wikipedia that need disambiguation in this sense, and the advantage of attempting completeness in a list-like manner. See Singer (linking to Singer (disambiguation)) for an example of how this is starting to work out right. In short, I propose to mention disambiguation pages as a specific listing technique on Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes.
  • However, I have no opinion on whether the "people by surname" category, and its "surname" subcategories, should be kept or not ("people by eponym" subcategory should be kept by all means in my opinion, but could, as far as I'm concerned, be a direct subcategory of "people" category).

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)

  • Delete. -Seth Mahoney 22:43, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete. Quadell (talk) 04:44, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • Delete redundant category. Note that Category:American ice hockey, Category:Sports leagues of the United States, and Category:United States soccer will need to be recategorized before the deletion. --Ardonik.talk() 00:26, Sep 12, 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. United States is the correct designator, American is not. Pethan 09:49, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • Keep. America is a continent. Category:American Sports should be redistributed, along with the fact that it is only one of five in the 79 in Category:Sports by country that uses 'sports' rather than 'sport' (and one of the others – Category:Swedish sports – has a parallel Category:Swedish sport). [[User:Noisy|Noisy | Talk]] 11:05, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • I don't care which one goes as long as one goes, if United States sport is more politically correct than American sport then so be it.GordyB 20:53, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • "American" is the proper adjective to describe someone from the United States, however, and to a lesser degree "U.S." "United States" just isn't used as an adjective. Postdlf 02:10, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • I agree United States sport is slightly ungrammatical, US sport would be an improvement. I'm going to put one of these categories in the delete me list tomorrow so if anyone else has an opinion please vote because it's one vote for American and one vote for United States and otherwise I'll have to flip a coin..GordyB 16 Sept
  • Keep American sports; remove United States sport. I don't know about the rest of the world, but Americans use American as an adjective in this kind of situation, and use the plural sports.

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)

  • Delete. Quadell (talk) 04:56, Sep 11, 2004 (UTC)
  • Suppose either an "aristocrats" or a "nobility" category is perfectly viable as umbrella category for counts, barons, etc... Of course a good category definition is needed (e.g. excluding use of this category outside official nobility titles). Personally I'd make "Aristocrats" a redirect category to "Nobility". --Francis Schonken 14:48, 16 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)

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)


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)
  • I object. There are members of one set that are not members of the other set. And for the (large, I'll admit) number that there are, just list them in both catagories. We lose what... 1 kilobyte? And gain added value. I suggest we retain these as seperate pages. -SocratesJedi 06:10, 14 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: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: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.

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)

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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