User talk:Marcocapelle/Archive 5

Are these really appropriate categories?
I saw Category:Massacres perpetrated by Jews and Category:Massacres perpetrated by Muslims, one of which was created by you and the other by. I think these should be deleted. VR talk 01:00, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
 * if they aren't kept they should be merged to, respectively, Category:Jewish religious terrorism and Category:Islamic terrorism. Also if they aren't kept then probably Category:Religious massacres should not be kept either (i.e. that should be merged to Category:Religious terrorism. An alternative might be to rename the categories to e.g. Category:Massacres perpetrated by Jewish religious terrorists and Category:Massacres perpetrated by Muslim terrorists. A final point of discussion is whether e.g. the article King David Hotel bombing belongs in the category at all. It is not in the scope of the article Jewish religious terrorism and it does not look like the perpetrators had any religious motives. Marcocapelle (talk) 03:26, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey Marcocapelle, I have a dumb question. How exactly does category merging (say X merge to Y) work? Is it that you apply the applicable entries in X to Y (meaning only those relevant, but not those that are irrelevant) and then delete X? VR talk 09:04, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
 * not a dumb question at all. The answer is yes, except there is no check on relevance when it is an automated merge by a bot (which happens most of the time). In the discussion one may request a manual merge instead of an automated merge and specify why a manual merge is needed in a particular case. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:27, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Category:Massacres perpetrated by Muslims has been nominated for deletion
Category:Massacres perpetrated by Muslims has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. VR talk 16:46, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Happy Christmas!


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Category:Local government in Anderson County, South Carolina
Hello, Marcocapelle,

You are usually flawless in your CFD closures but I believe you forgot to tag this category for deletion. Any way, I saw it when it showed up tonight on Database reports/Empty categories.

I hope you are having a pleasant holiday. Happy New Year to you! Liz Read! Talk! 01:42, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Category:Indian restaurants outside India has been nominated for deletion
Category:Indian restaurants outside India has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. -- Another Believer ( Talk ) 18:14, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Redundanr
Don't you think that Category:Wikipedia categories named after Hebrew Bible people Category:Wikipedia categories named after royalty (along with most/all of the categories Wikipedia categories xxxx) are redundant? Editor2020 (talk) 01:32, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I read somewhere that the original idea was that categories named after a person would only be a subcategory of Wikipedia categories named after x because normal biographical categories should contain the article about the person instead of the category. Admittedly, meanwhile the latter happens a lot as well. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:02, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * It is probably a good idea to post the question with my answer at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories as well, to see if other editors have thoughts about it. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:07, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Russia and foreign agents
Hi! Please take a look at Categories_for_discussion/Log/2022_January_3. I explained that non-profit here is not an American category, but a part of a category from Russian law. Maybe you would like to change a vote? By the way, is it a vote or a discussion, how does it function in enwiki? Wikisaurus (talk) 12:22, 8 January 2022 (UTC)
 * for more info about the process see WP:NOTVOTE. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:27, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Category:The Downlink members
Hello, Marcocapelle,

You tagged this category for speedy deletion but it hasn't been emptied. Could you get the bot to do this? Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 06:52, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
 * there was just a little bit of delay before the removal of the category from the template script affected the category content, or put it differently you happened to be busy with deleting too quickly after I G6-tagged the category page. (I would rather not postpone tagging, because then there would be a small risk that I entirely forget about it.) Marcocapelle (talk) 12:09, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Template:GeorgiaUS-legislative-committee-stub
Hello, Marcocapelle,

This template didn't link to a deletion discussion. Maybe the tag is different on a template page than a category page. Thanks. Liz Read! Talk! 06:58, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * the link does not work because these templates are discussed on a technically "wrong" platform (while content wise it is the right platform). I do not think there is a solution for it except leaving a comment in the edit summary. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:18, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Alternatively, could you perhaps close the stub discussions directly? It is just a lot on the January 2 page, otherwise there are hardly ever discussions about stubs. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:22, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't close a lot of deletion discussions some I'm not familiar with CFD closures but I'll if there is anything I can do. I need to pick up some different admin responsibilities so maybe I'll try to move into this area later on in 2022. Liz Read! Talk! 20:45, 10 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Hello, Marcocapelle,
 * You, or whoever closes the discussion, have to find a way to change these CSD tags for templates. They attempt to link to a TFD discussion but there is not one to link to. Can you adapt the deletion tag to point to a CFD discussion where the decision was made to delete them? It's important that this information is included in a deletion summary on the page. Thanks for looking into this. Liz Read! Talk! 07:53, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:1st-century BC Indian philosophers


A tag has been placed on Category:1st-century BC Indian philosophers indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Qwerfjkl talk  16:15, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Category:Bolivian television hosts
Hello, Marcocapelle,

What do you want to do with this category? It was unclear from the CFD decision and it showed up on the Empty Category list tonight. Thank you! Liz Read! Talk! 01:05, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Recent spree
Hi Marco. Thought you might be interested. I noticed a relatively new user is keen on creating such categories.---- As Azerbaijanis only became an ethnic group in the 19th/20th centuries, and English-language sources make no mention (or barely ever) of individual Azerbaijanis predating this time period, these categories will never be populated. - LouisAragon (talk) 15:08, 19 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Update: I just noticed that this IP is mimicking said users ("Multituberculata") edits in relation to these categories throughout several other Wikipedia languages. Probably to create more audience/i.e. room in order to press such categories as "legitimate".  . - LouisAragon (talk) 15:15, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
 * That IP is very concerning, and the categories created by Multituberculata are historically incorrect. No such designation at the time. Seems to be just a POV pusher. ZaniGiovanni (talk) 16:55, 19 January 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't think this qualifies as vandalism so you just have to nominate these categories at WP:CFD. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:15, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yeah I agree, its not vandalism. As for the CfD nomination, here it is. - LouisAragon (talk) 00:29, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Rename categories
Please see my proposal to speedily rename subcategories of Category:Enforced disappearances by country e.g. Category:Forced disappearances in Argentina to Category:Enforced disappearances in Argentina to align with the parent category per C2C. Hugo999 (talk) 04:24, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Category:3rd millennium in Bagmati Province
Hello, Marcocapelle,

I have temporarily de-tagged this category page because your CFD closure doesn't state what the decision was so it's not clear to me that the category should be deleted. Could you revisit your closure and state what the result is? Many thanks. Liz Read! Talk! 04:13, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I'll happily revert all of my category edits once I see your final CFD closure decision. Liz Read! Talk! 04:17, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ Thank you! Liz Read! Talk! 04:20, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

CfD closures
I saw your request at WP:CR for help with the CfD backlog and figured I'd give it a try. I've tried to do a handful of merges, renames, and relists; they should be listed here. I'd appreciate it if you'd check my work: did I do everything more-or-less correctly? Thanks for all you do at CfD: doing some of these closes myself has certainly helped me to appreciate how much work goes into them! Best regards, Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:54, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * thank you very much and you did a good job! The only additional advice I can give you right now is to add an Old CfD notification on the talk page of a category when it is not deleted (e.g. when renamed). This is mentioned under Categories_for_discussion/Administrator_instructions and while the explanation of the Old CfD notification is in the "Keep" section, from the examples it becomes clear that it may also apply to "Rename". Marcocapelle (talk) 08:57, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Many thanks. I went back and added all of the Old CfD templates, and I've closed/relisted several more discussions today. Thanks again for your help, and do let me know if there's anything else that I might not be aware of. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 07:47, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Yale University Categorization
Hello, Marcocapelle. I noticed that you gave the Yale Universities Alumni decade categories for merging.(For reference, I have been sorting all alumni into these categories) What do you intend to do with these categories, as none of these were discussed in any of these talk pages. Thanks, MrMeAndMrMe  Let's talk 15:36, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * not sure what you mean. The intention is to merge, but you had already figured that out. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:17, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * , yes, but what is the point of merging in this case? MrMeAndMrMe  Let's talk 18:19, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * please read the comments of the speedy discussion and if you do not agree with them you can say so in the CfD discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:21, 4 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Ah, did not see the comments. Apologies! MrMeAndMrMe  Let's talk 18:24, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Landscape
No, this is much less specific, and much less helpful! What are you trying to do here? Johnbod (talk) 15:29, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I tried to move him from a history category and a gardens category to a biographies category. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:37, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
 * But as a very major figure in the style he clearly NEEDS to be in the "history" category, rather than (as well as) a ragbag assortment of shopping centre & airport designers. How does this help the reader? You didn't do the same to Capability Brown, nor should you. Johnbod (talk) 15:42, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I do not understand. Shopping centre and airport designers are not landscape and garden designers, are they? How would they get mixed up? Marcocapelle (talk) 15:50, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I think you will find they are, or some of them! You say you tried to move him from a "history" category, but there simply are no "garden history" categories that I can see (anywhere).  The gardening categories arte a huge mess, but a deal of thought is needed before attempting to rearrange them. Johnbod (talk) 15:56, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I was referring to Category:Landscape design history of England, that sounds like a history category. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:25, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Well until I did it today, that was not linked to Category:Gardening in England, which is typical of the craziness of these categories. Johnbod (talk) 03:36, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Category:Gardening in England is the parent category of Category:Landscape design history of England so the article does not have to be in both. Perhaps it would be clearer when the latter category was named Category:History of gardening in England. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:24, 6 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I have checked a number of articles in Category:English landscape and garden designers and they all belong in that category. I still do not understand how you come to think the category also contains designers of shopping centres and airports. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:59, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Category:Historiography of LGBT in New York City
This doesn't appear to be the proper use of such a category. Historiography is the study of how history is written, so if this category collected works about how NYC LGBT history was written, would make sense, but simply collecting history books about LGBT in NYC fit within the prior category, Category:History of New York City. Alternatively could rename the one in question as Category:LGBT history in New York City, but in either case it's a triple intersection, which we usually avoid. czar 02:54, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I do not quite see the problem. History books are subject of historiography just like military battles are subject of history and barium is subject of chemistry. We include subjects of studies in their respective category trees. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:52, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The Historiography category contains items that should be classified as History, not Historiography. Gay New York and Let the Record Show are both works of LGBT history. For "historiography" to be a defining trait of these works, the work would have to analyze how LGBT history is written as a major component of the work. I believe these category creations should be undone. czar  14:08, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Ruling families of HRE
Hi, I closed Categories for discussion/Log/2022 January 2 using "Ruling families" for all. Let me know if you think I was misguided on the Saxony category or any other details. – Fayenatic  L ondon 11:59, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Cisleithania again.
I've nominated a few articles for renaming. See Talk:1900–1901 Cisleithanian legislative election. I thought that it was a natural follow-up to the CFD decision. But it's being opposed. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:28, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

CFD
Regarding this - it doesn't actually appear to have been re-listed at Categories for discussion/Log/2022 February 28? GiantSnowman`
 * thanks for notifying. The discussion had been removed by Anomiebot. I have restored it now. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:37, 1 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Bloody bots! Thanks. GiantSnowman 19:38, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

Cfd/speedy notification
Hello. I'm still rather clumsy at times when initiating CFDs. I started one earlier on a category you created. Soon after I realized I intended to do a speedy instead and reverted myself. When I redid it as a speedy, I would have ticked 'notify page creator if possible' if I had noticed Twinkle defaulted that to off for a speedy, so I'm therefore notifying you now. The page is Category:Swedish history-related lists and the cfd/s is here. Cheers!:) --DB1729 (talk) 23:23, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Disestablishments in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic


A tag has been placed on Category:Disestablishments in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz Read! Talk! 20:37, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Problem with some boat types and categories
There are a number of names of boats that apply to different and somewhat unrelated types. Therefore when you have removed what you presumably think is a parent category of a type of boat (e.g. ) you are ignoring the problem that not all boats in the article are in the sub-category. I would hope that the articles concerned are clearly written enough for this to be obvious. I just thought I should flag this up in case there is some overwhelming reason for your edits. I have reverted those that I have spotted. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:27, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
 * A solution in (I guess) most cases is to add some extra categories if you really want to get rid of the category "boat types" - as in . ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 21:39, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Category:People from the Republic of Geneva (1541–1815) has been nominated for renaming
Category:People from the Republic of Geneva (1541–1815) has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Rathfelder (talk) 19:35, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

Batch CfD with AWB
&#8213; Qwerfjkl  talk  07:34, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) Open AWB (I presume you have AWB permissions).
 * 2) Fill out the page list with the pages to be tagged (I typically run some regex on the list)
 * 3) Under the   tab, tick "Enabled", and select "Prepend", and paste the CfD template into the box below
 * 4) Under the   tab, add a summary, click "Start", and then click "Save" for each edit
 * To expand on Step 2, here's how I do the regex bit:I typically use Notepad++ for things like this, but there are plenty of tools out there. Your goal is to get just a list of page names, one per line.The list starts off as something like this, copying from the CfD page:
 * Category:People from Adamantina to Category:People from São Paulo (state)
 * Category:People from Almeirim, Pará to Category:People from Pará
 * Category:People from Ananindeua to Category:People from Pará
 * Replace the starting :* undefined on each line with nothing to get rid of it. Then, replace the regular expression .+ |undefined with nothing. (This regex represents the ]] |undefined text followed by everything else after it on that line.AWB "Make List" tool with "Text file" selected.png Once the regex stuff is done, save the file and upload it to AWB to add all the pages at once. (See the screenshot below and to the left.) Bsoyka  ( talk ) 14:41, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
 * I just get the list as plaintext (as you described above), the copy & paste it directly.  Qwerfjkl talk  15:05, 16 April 2022 (UTC)


 * ✅!! Thank you so much for your help!! Marcocapelle (talk) 18:23, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

Tagging categories for deletion
Hello, Marcocapelle,

For some reason, you are not using links to the pertinent CFD discussion when you are tagging categories for deletion after you close CFD discussions. For example, the most recent example linked to the CFD discussion for today, April 21st, instead of the correct date. Also, we can't delete categories that are not empty, that leaves red linked categories on pages which are to be avoided per WP:REDNO. I assume emptying categories is part of closing a CFD discussion, whether or not you are an admin. Your tagging is usually flawless so I assume this is temporary glitch with these language categories. Thank you for all of your consistently good work. Liz Read! Talk! 05:37, 21 April 2022 (UTC)
 * the date was a mistake indeed, apologies for that. I realize that non-empty categories cannot be deleted, so I left them to be checked by User:Pppery as recommended in one of these discussions. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:43, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Closing "delete" CFDs as a non-admin
Hi Marcocappelle. I've been trying to understand how to help out with the backlog at CFD as a non-admin -- which has been comparable to navigating the maze in The Shining. I've seen that you have closed CFDs as "delete" and I'm trying to understand what are the steps involved. I assume that you manually empty each category before tagging them for a G6 speedy deletion? (For reference, I'm aware of WP:CFDAI, WP:CFDW and WT:CFDW.) JBchrch   talk  21:24, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
 * That is exactly correct. I am manually emptying with a link to the discussion in the edit summary. After I tag the page as G6 an administrator will delete the category, sometimes within a few minutes, sometimes after a few hours. Feel free to ask more about it when you need, because I have meanwhile been doing this for quite a few years. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:02, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! JBchrch   talk  14:14, 23 April 2022 (UTC)

Maha bint Mishari Al Saud and others
You have deleted a cat from these articles, but you also added a wl just above the defaultsort, these are reverted. --Egeymi (talk) 09:04, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
 * thanks, that was unintentional indeed. Marcocapelle (talk) 09:14, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for April 28
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Category:People using unaccredited degrees has been nominated for deletion
Category:People using unaccredited degrees has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. --Animalparty! (talk) 07:09, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Category:Languages of Palestine has been nominated for merging to
Category:Languages of Palestine has been nominated for merging to. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Place Clichy (talk) 19:54, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Tagging categories
Hi, Marcocapelle.

I want to nominate and tag Category:Counter-terrorism and many subcategories for speedy renaming per C2D because the main article was renamed to Counterterrorism (without a hyphen). Is there a quick way to tag categories en masse? 1857a (talk) 22:22, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
 * there are even two ways. One is to ask for help at AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks. The second way is to learn using AutoWikiBrowser yourself, see further up my talk page. Marcocapelle (talk) 23:51, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks! 1857a (talk) 00:59, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Germany categories
Hey, regarding your nomination of Categories_for_discussion/Log/2022_April_11, I noticed there were many leftovers not included in that CfD such as Category:1st-century BC establishments in Germany, Category:9th-century establishments in Germany‎ and many establishments categories such as Category:1490s establishments in Germany. What should be done with these? Gonnym (talk) 12:05, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
 * establishments are a problem that will probably never be solved because many establishments (places, buildings etc.) still exist today. Editors will argue (and have argued) that establishments in Germany categories should be kept because today they are in Germany. The best solution I can think of so far is entirely abandoning the establishments by country scheme but that would be quite radical. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:50, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was coming to ask about the same thing, there are still quite a few Germany categories in Category:Establishments in the Holy Roman Empire by year, especially for the early modern period (1600s-1800s). There is a lesser number in Category:Disestablishments in the Holy Roman Empire by year. I was wondering if you were going to nominate them as well. Liz Read! Talk! 20:13, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

CfD advice
Hi, what would you say should be done to nominations with no participation, even after the first relisting? Would it be a soft outcome, a no consensus, another relist, or something else? As a specific example, see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2022 April 25 .&#8213;  Qwerfjkl talk  14:03, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
 * as far as I know there are no very clear rules laid down for this particular situation. Below is what I found best practice for myself. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:45, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
 * 1) I start checking whether there is consensus about a broader principle, e.g. as specified in WP:OCAT. If that is the case then I will happily close as soft merge/soft delete.
 * 2) If not, I check whether I can participate in the discussion instead of closing it. Especially when I have any doubt, I will share my doubt with the nominator, if only in the form of a question.
 * 3) If there is no consensus about a broader principle and I also do not see any reason for doubt myself, a soft closure is preferable over a no consensus closure for sure.
 * 4) At the same time, leaving a discussion open for another month (while not relisting) is also a good option, or maybe the best option. Some admins (or other editors) check whether they can close long overdue discussions and they might join the discussion instead, thus contributing to a clearer outcome. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:45, 29 May 2022 (UTC)
 * As a long-time CFD Admin volunteer, I think the above is superb advice. The only thing I'd add is to notify relevant WikiProjects. Check whether the category talk pages have relevant WikiProject banners, and if not, add them – this should result in the CFD being notified to projects via the Alerts system. Occasionally, I manually post a link to the discussion on WikiProject talk pages too, or on the talk page of the main article, or in similar current CFDs. – Fayenatic  L ondon 05:33, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Germany categories
Hello, Marcocapelle,

I'm writing to you because you proposed Categories for discussion/Log/2022 April 11. I ended up handling the deletion of many of these categories once they were emptied but there are some of these Germany categories that fell through the cracks that still need to be dealt with and I was hoping you could put together a proposal, Part 2.

You can find some of them in Category:Establishments in the Holy Roman Empire by decade, Category:Establishments in the Holy Roman Empire by century (which has the same ones as in Category:2nd-millennium establishments in the Holy Roman Empire) and Category:18th-century disestablishments in Germany. I also wasn't sure whether some of the categories in Category:Establishments in the Holy Roman Empire by state should be merged as well. And there are things like separate child disestablishment categories for Austria, Austrian Netherlands and Old Swiss Confederacy, should these be merged like the German categories were? I wish I had taken classes in European history when I was back in college and I'd know more about why Germany is considered a separate country prior to the 10th century and after the 19th century but not the intervening centuries. Thanks for any insight and help on this you can offer on this subject! Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 21:26, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I also wanted to mention that Gonnym really helped out clearing and recategorizing some of the lingering Germany categories that were still in Category:Establishments in the Holy Roman Empire by year so that parent category is completely cleaned up now. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 21:28, 1 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Oh, my, I just looked at the rest of your user talk page and see that I've already had this discussion with you and Gonnym earlier in May! I must review an editor's talk page before posting a new message. Well, I'll leave this all here for you any way, in case you had any new insight into some of the other categories that I mention here that weren't mentioned in our discussion (above) in May. My apologies for repeating myself! Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 21:32, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Cfd nomination
I saw you did a cfd nomination for Category:1966 establishments in Bangladesh because there was no Bangladesh before 1971. That's why I proposed to renamed them to East Pakistan in the discussion page. I also know that there is no branch category for East Pakistan. Should I create the branch category or wait for the end of discussion? Mehedi Abedin 14:38, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
 * let us first wait for other reactions. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:27, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Category:Morning Again
Hey, Marcocapelle,

Did you mean to tag this for speedy deletion? Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 06:25, 11 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Also, please nominate categories like Category:Fictional characters with body dysmorphic disorder for deletion at WP:CFD. I see a lot of times you emptying categories instead and, as you know, this is actively discouraged. In fact, it is stated that edits that empty categories "out of process" should be reverted but I won't here. But please go through proper channels in the future. You know the system better than I do so none of this information should be news to you! I know that CFD works more slowly but I've seen this happen before with other empty categories and I would rather not start reverting your edits that effectively empty a category. Thank you. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 18:00, 13 June 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure why you involved Category:People from Baryshivka Raion and Category:People from Manhush Raion in a CFD discussion when they were already tagged for speedy deletion CSD C1 the day before. It would have been deleted today but now they are part of a CFD discussion. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 22:28, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
 * the category might have been repopulated before deletion and then forgotten at CfD. Inclusion in the CfD nomination is just less risky. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:35, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

Category:Roman Catholic prince-bishops in the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for merging
Category:Roman Catholic prince-bishops in the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:21, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

Songs based on real people
Hi, the discussion at Categories_for_discussion/Log/2022_May_29 is going in a different direction since you last commented there. You might want to start Category:Songs based on real people (or Category:Songs about real people?) anyway, as not everything in the nominated category would belong there. – Fayenatic  L ondon 08:45, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Category:Bishops of Verden has been nominated for deletion
Category:Bishops of Verden has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 12:06, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Supercategories of Category:Knowledge
I was about to make some categorization changes to Category:Knowledge, when I noticed that they would effectively revert two of your edits, one of them fairly recent.

The edits: 12 August 2016 and 2 April 2021

I thought it was worth discussing, since these broad categories can get kind of contentious, and I would prefer not to engage in a slow edit war.

I would argue that the topic of 'knowledge' is generally classified as a component of epistemology, rather than the specific category Category:Mental content; note that mental content is currently a redirect to a small section in mind. Knowledge is certainly related to the philosophy of mind, but I don't think it's a subcategory relationship. Also relevant: the guideline allows an article to share categories with its eponymous category, an exception to the general guidelines around categories. Retro ( talk  &#124;  contribs ) 14:15, 24 July 2022 (UTC)


 * thanks for checking. Here is how I look at it. (Almost) all articles in the tree of knowledge naturally belong to mental content as well, but not vice versa, so knowlegde is a proper subcategory of mental content. Likewise (almost) all articles in the tree of epistemology naturally belong to knowledge as well, but not vice versa. Not every article about knowledge is about the philosophy of knowledge. In other words, epistemology should be a subcategory of knowledge rather than a parent category. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:09, 24 July 2022 (UTC)


 * I find your point about epistemology compelling, since the term 'knowledge' and topic of knowledge is used more broadly than merely the philosophical study of knowledge. Epistemology could be thought of as one lens for looking at the topic of knowledge. The general approach of analyzing article scope in relation to the subset included in the category tree going upwards also seems very useful.


 * Mental content still does not seem like a proper parent category of Knowledge; I don't think knowledge is restricted to the internal contents of a mind, and I suspect reliable sources would agree. I think it sort of imposes philosophical idealism on the category tree to sort it this way, which doesn't seem like an entirely neutral categorization scheme.


 * For present subcategories of knowledge that aren't really about mental contents, I would give Category:Access to Knowledge movement, Category:Bodies of knowledge, Category:Knowledge deities‎, Category:Knowledge economy‎, Category:Knowledge engineering‎, Category:Knowledge management, Category:Knowledge sharing, Category:Sociology of knowledge, Category:Sources of knowledge, among others. Granted, perhaps some of those categories shouldn't exist or be direct children of Knowledge, but that is still 9 out of 26 direct subcategories, hardly insignificant. Also, many of the other categories I didn't mention seem improperly scoped as direct children of Knowledge (for instance, Category:Inductive reasoning is currently a direct child, but it's also a deeper descendant via Category:Reasoning in Category:Sources of knowledge).


 * (Importantly, I did not modify the category tree before analyzing it to hopefully reduce personal bias). Retro  ( talk  &#124;  contribs ) 20:55, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

I really didn't intend to write a wall of text, so I'm sorry if that was annoying. I've been thinking about it for a few days, and my current conclusions are that broad categories shouldn't have parent categories unless they're a strict superset. An example I would give is Category:Computing being a subcategory of Category:Technology.

As for how this applies to the Knowledge and the Mental Content categories: I agree that 'knowledge' is strongly related to minds (arguably, minds causes knowledge, or are required to organize it). But it seems to me there can be articles about knowledge that aren't about the mind (by contrast, all articles about computing are articles about technology). I don't really feel like making this change right now without consensus beyond myself. I'll probably think about it some more and try to understand the rest of the category tree better over the next few years. Retro ( talk  &#124;  contribs ) 22:17, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
 * if you are willing to take a few years for it then you certainly have patience 😀. To me knowledge seems as much part of the mind as computing is part of technology. Maybe not every article about knowledge is more broadly also about the mind, but in most instances that will be the case though. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:51, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Prince-bishoprics of Livonia
I can't make up my mind about this category. I don't think that "of Livonia" is tenable; they were not created by the Livonian state (the Livonian Confederation or Terra Mariana). So at best, they could be said to be "in the Livonian Confederation". As far as I can tell, the bishops were eventually created as Prince-Bishops by the Holy Roman Empire. So they are "of the HRE". But this didn't last very long. Any thoughts? Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:25, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * the subcategory is Category:Prince-bishops in Livonia and "in" sounds slightly better than "of". Marcocapelle (talk) 18:54, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
 * So what about a proposal to rename it to Category:Prince-bishoprics in Livonia or Category:Prince-bishoprics in the Livonian Confereration ? Laurel Lodged (talk) 10:36, 29 July 2022 (UTC)
 * sounds perfectly fine. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:04, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:1758 establishments in China


A tag has been placed on Category:1758 establishments in China indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 01:03, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Category-related Barnstars!

 * User:Fayenatic london and User:Marcocapelle

Ok, so I think we'll all agree that there are a lot of contributors to cfd. But I see you two almost everywhere. Contributing to a vast number of discussions and closing ones you haven't.

It seems to me, at times, you're all that stands between keeping a discussion going in order to find consensus, and it turning into "no consensus".

So 2 things.

First:

and:

Hiding created this a long time ago to give to me. I'm (hopefully) paying that sentiment forward:

You both well deserve them.

And finally, as noted, you've both clearly been very active around CfD. So I'll pass on some advice which had been suggested to me by others before me:

Look around at those you see positively and civilly contributing, who you might deem to have a clue(tm). And see if they might be interested in being nominated for adminship.

If it helps, this is my criteria: User:Jc37/RfA/Criteria. But honestly, you should follow your own instincts to what you feel is right.

I wish you both well : ) - jc37 12:02, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Category:Gandhians
Hi Marcocapelle. You may have seen that Category:Gandhians, which you nominated at CfD and which was soft-deleted, has been recreated at my request. You're of course free to renominate it and seek consensus, though you might want to look at my comments at WP:REFUND, where I outlined my objections to your rationale. Those objections shouldn't, of course, be taken as an endorsement of the category's use in every current case – there are probably a lot of cases where it's misused or isn't supported by the article content. I plan to have a more substantial look through the articles in the category at some point, but that won't be for at least a few days. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 15:51, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

CfD (closed 10 August)
(This one) Apologies, I was away on a camping trip at the time you closed the discussion. I'll see about splitting the contents some point the upcoming 24h, after I catch some much-needed zzzs. AddWitty NameHere  04:43, 18 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Took a bit longer (decided to unpack first which took a bit longer than expected) but am now heading to split the categories. AddWitty  NameHere  15:23, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

Finnish professors
Hi, I've just seen the recent CfD discussion on Finnish professors, and was only alerted to it when that cat was subsequently removed from a few articles I've created. I realise it's too late now, but I just wanted to explain that in Finland there is an honorary title of Professori, which has nothing to do with academia, per se — see for example Alfons Almi, who was an opera singer and administrator, and never held an academic post in his life (AFAIK).

Although that cat has been deleted, it might be an idea to create a new one, say 'Finnish honorary professors' or something along those lines, to cover these honorary-only appointees. What do you think? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 09:30, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't expect that this will hold, per WP:OCAWARD or more generally per WP:NONDEF. Marcocapelle (talk) 16:39, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks for that, very useful to read about some cat guidelines (not my area of expertise by any stretch!). I'm not sure I quite understand why Category:Knights Bachelor exists, but Category:Finnish honorary professors couldn't (surely nobody's defining characteristic is that they've been given a knighthood?). I'll probably need to think about that more. Thanks again, -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 16:54, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

Ottoman Empire categories
Hello, Marcocapelle,

My, you are busy keeping Wikipedia's categories correct and in order! We're so lucky to have you working on categories.

I have been tagging some recently emptied categories about annual establishments on the African continent because you removed these categories from annual establishments in the Ottoman Empire. If you find yourself finished with that project and with a little, extra free time, some of these annual African continent categories can still be found in categories in Category:Years in the Ottoman Empire, specifically, I'm coming across ones that are in Category:Years of the 16th century in the Ottoman Empire. It must be an enormous chore going through hundreds of annual categories but considering that you've done it for Ottoman Empire establishments, I assume you are knowledgeable enough about the extent of the Ottoman Empire to go through the Years of the Ottoman Empire categories as well, should you find it an appealing task.

Thanks again for all of your work on the project! Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 21:30, 24 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Just thought I'd leave an example to show what I'm talking about. You removed Category:1541 establishments in the Ottoman Empire from Category:1541 establishments in Africa but Category:1541 in Africa still contains Category:1541 in the Ottoman Empire. Hope that helps explain the situation a bit better. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 21:35, 24 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Should Africa categories also be removed from the categories in Category:Disestablishments in the Ottoman Empire by year as well as the disestablishments by decade and centuries? Or are there some years where this wouldn't be a good decision? Thanks for any feedback you can offer. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 21:06, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Same goes for Category:Disestablishments in the Ottoman Empire by decade. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 19:58, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I am still working on the years, but getting closer to the finish of that, now at 1870. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:11, 11 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I've just done the much smaller equivalent of removing Spanish East Indies categories from the Oceania hierarchy. At the end you may find it useful to search for Ottoman in and variations of the same. – Fayenatic  L ondon 07:16, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Article creators get all of the attention but Marcocapelle and Fayenatic london, you are my heroes for doing all of these manual category removals! This kind of work is so necessary for categories to be consistent and useful but it mostly goes unrecognized. Thank you for taking on these projects. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 06:49, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

After some delay...
...I've finally got around to dealing with splitting all the articles out of the two categories mentioned above. (Sorry about that delay, kept getting distracted by dozens upon dozens other moth-related things that needed doing. sigh) How does soft deletion of a category go from here on again? (I'm still a bit rusty on the process side of niche things like that after my recent 1.5 year break, tbh) AddWitty  NameHere  06:30, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
 * thank you very much! Deletion is taken care of. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:36, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
 * You're welcome, and thank you for your incredibly rapid response! Once again, my apologies for the delay. AddWitty  NameHere  06:38, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Precious anniversary
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:09, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * your effort is greatly appreciated but I am afraid you are confusing me with someone else. I have been here for 9 years and a bit. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:16, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * there's a link, no, as last year ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:57, 2 September 2022 (UTC)
 * sorry I completely misread the section title as an alternative phrasing of "happy anniversary". Then thank you very much! Marcocapelle (talk) 07:07, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

False statement in the voting process
You said here that: the Commonwealth was a real union with e.g. the Sejm of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth not separated between Poles and Lithuanians, which is verfiable false statement. Because both Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Crown of the Kingdom of Poland continued to exist. Please educate yourself about history of Poland before you make statements like that affects the way Wikipedia describes history of the region Marcelus (talk) 08:57, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I did not say that Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Crown of the Kingdom of Poland ceased to exist, please read more carefully. Marcocapelle (talk) 09:38, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * That's exactly what you said, how else can one understand your statement? Marcelus (talk) 11:32, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * one can understand it by reading it literally, rather than by interpreting it too loosely. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:22, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * So why did you vote oppose if you know that both states didn't cease to exist? Marcelus (talk) 18:13, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * as said, because it was a real union. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:15, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * And? What does it change, both state still existed Marcelus (talk) 18:23, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I would appreciate if you apologize for the title of this section. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:27, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I won't, I would like if you stop taking votes in subject you clearly has no knowledge about Marcelus (talk) 18:33, 8 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Striking false accusation by User:Marcelus. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:53, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
 * My "accusation" wasn't false Marcelus (talk) 20:54, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Category:Kingdom of Saxony
Still needs to be purged. I told you at the time that it would be a lot of work. Laurel Lodged (talk) 17:37, 16 September 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ - Marcocapelle (talk) 08:00, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Proposal for WP:SMALLCAT
shouldn't we modify the WP:SMALLCAT text by adding something like: "If in the long run more articles may be written that fit the category, but while it is uncertain if and when that is actually going to take place, a small category may be upmerged in the spirit of WP:SOFTDELETE. In other words, this category may be recreated after are enough articles have been written that fit the category." Marcocapelle (talk) 08:00, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Overcategorization
Hello, Marcocapelle,

I know you do a lot of work with pages and categories that have been overcategorized so I was wondering if you thought that the categories on Category:Kurdistan Workers' Party could be reduced. I was brought to this category because of presence of some sockpuppets on the page, I don't actually know anything about this subject matter. But I thought with your knowledge and skills, you might get the parent categories down to a reasonable number. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 23:15, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

Category:Writers about psychopathy has been nominated for renaming
Category:Writers about psychopathy has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. ★Trekker (talk) 15:30, 4 October 2022 (UTC)

Muslims/Arabs
How can Category:8th-century Muslims be a parent category of Category:8th-century Arabs? There were certainly non-Muslim Arabs in the 8th century. Srnec (talk) 19:19, 9 October 2022 (UTC)


 * WP:SUBCAT: "When making one category a subcategory of another, ensure that the members of the subcategory really can be expected (with possibly a few exceptions) to belong to the parent also." (italic added by me) - Marcocapelle (talk) 19:26, 9 October 2022 (UTC)


 * How many is a few? Seems silly to me that John of Damascus, an 8th-century Arab, cannot be placed in the category "8th-century Arabs" because he wasn't a Muslim. Srnec (talk) 19:55, 9 October 2022 (UTC)


 * if John of Damascus clearly would have been an Arab then it would be perfectly alright to have the article in Category:8th-century Arabs. The article leaves quite some doubt about his ethnicity though. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:13, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

Your work here in Wiki
Hey Marcapella (oh gods please forgive me i know this is most certainly NOT your name; thought i would be able to see it in the typing page and would just copy it from there, I am so sorry). Anyhow..., i wanted to ask you about your work here. So you just edit and like improve (and maybe verify??) the information in Wikipedia?! How often do you do that, and just how do you recognize incorrect info from this insurmountable catalogue?! Do you have a job in the real life or have you dedicated yourself to this honorable act? I assume you must have some post-graduate certification and are well-versed in some, if not one, fields yes? Please just anything, tell me anything about yours, i'm curious 🙏😭.

Now i don't know how i can turn on notifications for this thing so i can get back here and check for my answer. I'll try tinkering around though. Thank you! Stoneintheedgeoftheuniverse (talk) 04:02, 12 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I have an academic degree and I speculate that most Wikipedia editors have that. Editing Wikipedia is entirely voluntary indeed. Risk factors for incorrect information on Wikipedia are 1) warning tags on a page itself (e.g. "article does not quote any sources"), 2) a lot of discussion on the talk page and 3) very few editors having contributed to a page. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:29, 12 October 2022 (UTC)

Relist discussion
I've been requested by another to relist Category: People of United Empire Loyalist descent for discussion. I was thinking of doing so, given their arguments were not mentioned in the discussion. What would you say?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1666198345517:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  16:52, 19 October 2022 (UTC)
 * while I do not agree with their arguments, I still think it is better to have the arguments included in the discussion for a fair assessment of consensus. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:09, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Category:Buildings where murder took place has been nominated for deletion
Category:Buildings where murder took place has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. QueenofBithynia (talk) 17:25, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2022 October 20
I think I've implemeted this, with Category:English cricket seasons in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Is this right?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1666954534178:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  10:55, 28 October 2022 (UTC)
 * wonderful! Marcocapelle (talk) 12:30, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Lists of nicknames of European royalty and nobility


A tag has been placed on Category:Lists of nicknames of European royalty and nobility indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 01:16, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Category:Bangladeshi Sufi saints
Can you reparent this one prior to it being processed? I'm not sure what the parents should be. Timrollpickering (talk) 18:44, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
 * ✅ - Marcocapelle (talk) 20:30, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Medieval civilizations
Hello

I see your friend closed the discussion. I opened it on the parent subcategory. Occasionally, I cited you. It is beauty. Take a look.--Maxaxa (talk) 01:11, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Container category
What is a container category?<span id="Jacona:1669554345616:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Jacona (talk) 13:05, 27 November 2022 (UTC) Hi Marcodapelle. Two questions:
 * a container category is a category that is supposed to contain subcategories only. In this case, we categorize men only by specific male occupations (i.e. subcategories), such as male singers and male sporters, but not otherwise. See also this discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:21, 27 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks!<span id="Jacona:1669570875171:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Jacona (talk) 17:41, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Not sure why you uncategorized this subcategory. Shouldn't that stay in the category?

Do you need any help? Looks like you're removing the cat from all articles? Sounds like a grind. -- DB 1729 talk 00:43, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Category:20th-century_African-American_male_singers was a mistake, thank you for notifying. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:20, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Creating a wikipage for Timothy Colbert-Kemp
Hi,

I'm interested in hiring you to create a Wikipedia page for a music artist, Timothy Colbert-Kemp aka "The Amazing T.k". We have several articles from blogs and such that we can send as references. How much are you services and how long does it take to complete? 2603:8000:5100:9F16:F5DA:51B5:720A:C9D4 (talk) 06:53, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Creating a wikipage for Timothy Colbert-Kemp
Hi,

I'm interested in hiring you to create a Wikipedia page for a music artist, Timothy Colbert-Kemp aka "The Amazing T.k". We have several articles from blogs and such that we can send as references. How much are you services and how long does it take to complete?

You can email me at Theamazingtk@gmail.com 2603:8000:5100:9F16:F5DA:51B5:720A:C9D4 (talk) 06:54, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Travis Henry photo, please help
Hey man, I accidentally deleted the image of Travis Henry, can you add one back please! Hb be lmmvv (talk) 07:01, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
 * you have not deleted anything, this is the net result of your edits. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:17, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

ArbCom 2022 Elections voter message
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"King of Germany" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect King of Germany and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 December 2 until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. Srnec (talk) 14:35, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Proposed Helsinki Metro stations


A tag has been placed on Category:Proposed Helsinki Metro stations indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 01:14, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * the stations just opened so this category might be deleted speedily (i.e. earlier than after a week). Marcocapelle (talk) 08:09, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

CfD processing
Hi, any idea why Category:Bay Area Rationalists at Categories_for_discussion/Log/2022_November_25 hasn't been deleted yet? Did the bot malfunction? Brandmeistertalk  12:34, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
 * be patient, non-admin closures by User:Qwerfjkl are not instantly processed. I had the same question to Qwerfjkl before. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:34, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
 * @Brandmeister, to clarify, I list the discussions at WT:CFDW so that admins can add them to WP:CFDW. This takes time. The bot processes the discussions every half an hour once listed.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1670424034718:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  14:40, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Ok. I thought the bot processes all discussions directly within a day or so. Brandmeistertalk  16:44, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Category:21st-century African-American activists merge?
Hello,

I note this change. Shouldn't these category merges also move these articles into Category:African-American activists, if they are being removed from Category:21st-century African-American activists. Thanks, --Engineerchange (talk) 01:34, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
 * the article is already in a subcategory of Category:African-American activists, namely in Category:African-American trade unionists. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:20, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Ah, missed that subcat. Thanks for the response! --Engineerchange (talk) 13:19, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Category:Bengali Muslim scholars of Islam
Hello, I have noticed that you are removing this category from articles under Category:Bangladeshi Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam. This is a grave mistake, Bengali and Bangladeshi are not synonymous. One represents ethnic origin whilst the other represents nationality. Both categories are needed, the parent-grandparent concept does not work here. SalamAlayka (talk) 18:52, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Bengali and Bangladeshi are not synonymous indeed, because Bangladeshi is a subset of Bengali. The parent-grandparent concept works perfectly well. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:32, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Bangladeshi is not a subset of Bengali. Bangladesh is home to many different ethnicities, not just Bengalis. That includes Chakmas, Biharis, Uyghurs, Punjabis, etc. SalamAlayka (talk) 20:34, 19 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Bangladesh consist of more than 98% Bengali people. For categorization purposes we treat that as a subset. It would lead to massive duplication if we would add Bangladeshi people to Bengali categories. In contrast, by all means add people to an ethnic category if they belong to the 1-2% minorities. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:42, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Bangladesh has a population of 165,158,616, so that 1-2% consists of over 3,303,173 people. Among the Category:Bangladeshi Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam, there are actually several articles on non-Bengali Bangladeshis as well as non-Sunni Bengalis. So what do we do in that case? I would include them in Bangladeshi category, but if Bangladeshi category is a subset of Bengali, then how would that work? SalamAlayka (talk) 13:53, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
 * we do not need to do anything. The articles are in Category:Bangladeshi Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam and that is perfectly fine for all of them. Besides, because we have Category:Bangladeshi Sunni Muslim scholars of Islam in a separate subcategory, we can be assured that the articles directly in Category:Bengali Muslim scholars of Islam are about either pre-1947 Bengalis or modern Indian Bengalis so that makes it a more coherent set. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:37, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

A new category project?
Hello, Marcocapelle,

You probably have your schedule full of things to do but I have a project for you if you are looking to clean up more categories. An editor this morning removed a lot of templates from regular categories involving college baseball seasons which emptied out a whole bunch of categories that only contained the template.

Looking into it, I found that there are quite a few (dozens? hundreds?) of these college baseball season categories for leagues that either just contain one article, for the season, or two, one for the season and a template for the season. It seems like it would be better to consolidate them into a decade category or even just a general category for the league than to have each season for each league have its own category for one or two articles. Luckily, the categorization was done by one editor so it's very consistent and organized if you wanted to check it out. You might have a little pushback from the category creator, Billcasey905 who has done really a tremendous job, it's just that I don't think there is any possibility of expanding all of these small categories. Some parent categories for them are Category:NCAA Division I baseball seasons and Category:College baseball seasons in the United States if you decide you want to take on this recategorization project, you might check in with WikiProject College baseball, too.

The only thing I'd add is that these college baseball seasons cover a long period of time, decades, and the earlier season categories are naturally much more sparse than the recent categories. It could be that the league categories after 1980 or so are fine and don't need consolidation but you'll see if you decide to check it out.

I hope, Wikipedia aside, you are having a pleasant end-of-the-year holiday period. Thank you for all of the work you do throughout the year and have a happy New Years! Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 22:38, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Marcocapelle!
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Happy New Year! Marcocapelle, Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.

Abishe (talk) 02:39, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

Abishe (talk) 02:39, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Happy New Year, Marcocapelle!
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Happy New Year! Marcocapelle, Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia.

— Moops  ⋠ T ⋡ 20:18, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year fireworks}} to user talk pages.

— Moops  ⋠ T ⋡ 20:18, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Science and scientists before the modern age
Hi, wishing you a Happy New Year!

I was not meaning to frustrate your nomination Categories for discussion/Log/2022 December 19, but I think the points that I raised there would need clarification in order to obtain a consensus. – Fayenatic  L ondon 12:51, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Academic staff
I've been renaming the few 'by university in' to 'by university or college in' so in your list there are redllinks eg Category:Faculty by university in Pakistan. Suggest you make all the targets 'university or college in'.<span id="Oculi:1675019328102:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Oculi (talk) 19:08, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Category:Establishments in Easter Island by century
Why are you emptying Category:Establishments in Easter Island by century by removing all categories from each establishments by century category? It seems odd that the Category:Disestablishments in Easter Island by century is left alone and for Category:20th century in Easter Island having one but not the other. Ricky81682 (talk) 06:44, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * EstCat has meanwhile been replaced by Navseasoncats in most year, decade and century categories. However, I did not realize that EstCat contained implicit parenting, apologies for that. For the 15th and 19th century categories I fixed it. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:04, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't it be better to adjust the template rather than manually put them back in? I mean, change Template:EstcatCountryCentury to wrap around Navseasoncats. I agree that displaying the entire decade and year structure was overkill. Ricky81682 (talk) 17:48, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

CfD close

 * ''Categories_for_discussion/Log/2022_December_19

Just an fyi. This one is closed. (Should hopefully clear the backlog.)

I'm pretty sure there will be orphaned cats, so my apologies. If it turns out that I have more time to, I'll take a look later. - jc37 06:40, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Countries under the Habsburg monarchy
Hi, you're better at European history than me. I noticed that Category:1615 in Hungary and Category:1734 in the Austrian Netherlands are categorised under Habsburg monarchy, but many of their siblings are not. I'll leave that for you to follow up if you are interested. – Fayenatic  L ondon 10:01, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Australian transport stubs
Hi, I've combined your five separate CfD !votes into a single one within the bundle named Australian transport stubs, to which I have added the matching stub templates that you !voted on too. I have also added the cat/template pair /VictoriaAU-road-stub, which I think Pegship had overlooked; I presume that you would have !voted delete on those too, I hope you don't mind. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 09:54, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:1635 establishments in the Ottoman Empire


A tag has been placed on Category:1635 establishments in the Ottoman Empire indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 02:00, 27 February 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:1783 in the Habsburg monarchy


A tag has been placed on Category:1783 in the Habsburg monarchy indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 01:19, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:1786 in the Holy Roman Empire


A tag has been placed on Category:1786 in the Holy Roman Empire indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 01:19, 10 March 2023 (UTC)

Category question
Hello, Marcocapelle,

I was tagging an empty category and I had a category question. You know more about Wikipedia's category hierarchy than just about anyone so I'm hoping you can help me understand. It was for a book series of the 18th century and the category just contained one article that is now being reviewed for extensive copyright violations so it is likely to be deleted and its categories were removed. That's straight-forward enough. But I go backwards to look at the parent categories and came upon Category:Mass media franchises by year of introduction (and decade and century). Now, I think of "mass media franchises" as a modern, 20th century creation, a merger of TV, radio, film and print media on a character(s). So, what does it mean to call a book series of the 17th or 18th century a "mass media franchise"? It seems anachronistic, as if we are imposing a modern entertainment categorization on to publications from hundreds of years ago.

There is no good forum to discuss the nature of category trees except for CFD which focuses on the merits and consistencies of individual categories so I thought I'd ask you if you think this branch of the media category tree was appropriate. If I had to draw a line, I'd say that a "mass media franchise" started somewhere in the mid- to late-19th century when magazines started having a cross-over with literature but even then, the idea of a media "franchise" is a very recent concept. Interested in hearing your thoughts on this. Thanks. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 22:35, 11 March 2023 (UTC)


 * I entirely agree with you for this case. Generally, if you have more questions or comments like this, it is recommendable to (also) post them at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Categories with a notification at the talk page of the wikiproject of the topic, or vice versa. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:10, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Archdukes of Austria
Not every Archduke of Austria was an Emperor or King of Bohemia. Laurel Lodged (talk) 22:37, 12 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I know, but the alternative would be that every ruler of the Habsburg Monarchy should have a dozen title categories added to their individual articles. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:16, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If a dozen categories exist and are valid for an individual, then they ought to be populated for that individual. I don't see how we have a chouce in the matter. Whether rhat dozen ought to exist in the first place is a different matter. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:19, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * they ought to exist, but primarily for the predecessors of the Habsburg monarchs. E.g. Category:Kings of Hungary is a very useful category for medieval Hungarian kings. Marcocapelle (talk) 12:27, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * OK But I don't think that that addresses my point. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:29, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I have manually diffused all Habsburg archdukes to Category:Habsburg kings of Bohemia where appropriate. I have removed Category:Archdukes of Austria from Category:Habsburg kings of Bohemia. Laurel Lodged (talk) 13:59, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I have manually diffused all Habsburg archdukes to Category:Kings of Hungary where appropriate. I have removed Category:Archdukes of Austria from Category:Kings of Hungary. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:38, 1 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I have manually diffused all Habsburg archdukes to Category:Kings of Croatia where appropriate. I have removed Category:Archdukes of Austria from Category:Kings of Croatia. Laurel Lodged (talk) 15:06, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 March 5
I've just closed this as rename. Do you need any help with making sure this is implemented?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1678732207664:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  18:30, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I would assume this can be processed normally with the bot. Do you have any doubts about that? Marcocapelle (talk) 18:35, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * No, no problem.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1678733005265:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  18:43, 13 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Nothing seems to be happening with Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 March 5. Oculi (talk) 13:41, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * can one of you help out please? Marcocapelle (talk) 18:19, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, but let's do it one section at a time. The previous one took a long time to clear up from the Working page. – Fayenatic  L ondon 08:33, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the ping; will take a look at it.  bibliomaniac 1  5  02:33, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Listed them on the large working page so it doesn't clog up the main page, given the size of the task.  bibliomaniac 1  5  02:44, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, that's fine. I'd forgotten that that page still works. – Fayenatic  L ondon 22:07, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * @Oculi, sorry, I totally forgot to list this. Thanks to Bibliomaniac15 for doing this.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1679420564377:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  17:42, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Category:17th-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth people has been nominated for renaming
Category:17th-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth people has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:52, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Category:18th-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth people has been nominated for renaming
Category:18th-century Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth people has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 08:53, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Category:Habsburg kings of Bohemia has been nominated for renaming
Category:Habsburg kings of Bohemia has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:10, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:Medieval Kingdom of Croatia has been nominated for renaming
Category:Medieval Kingdom of Croatia has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:12, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:16th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:16th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:40, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:17th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:17th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:40, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:18th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:18th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:41, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:15th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:15th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:42, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:14th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:14th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:42, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:14th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:14th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:43, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:13th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:13th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:45, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:12th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:12th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:52, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:11th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:11th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:52, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Category:10th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:10th-century women of the Holy Roman Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Laurel Lodged (talk) 16:53, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Withdrawal of CfD nominations
How do I withdraw CfD nominations? HandsomeFella (talk) 06:29, 14 April 2023 (UTC)


 * if nobody has even seen the nomination (within an hour or so after nominating), just remove it yourself and remove the tag from the category page yourself. Otherwise write "withdraw" under your nomination rationale with the reason of withdrawing it. Marcocapelle (talk) 06:33, 14 April 2023 (UTC)

People from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
I've just been looking around Category:18th-century people from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by occupation etc. Polish and Lithuanian people are parents of the Commonwealth, but should they not rather be within it?

There are "Polish-Lithuanian" occupational subcats that presumably should be speedily renamed to "from the P–L C". But there are other occupations which are separated between Polish and Lithuanian.

It's quite untidy… perhaps you might give it some attention when time permits, as our European history category expert! – Fayenatic  L ondon 10:39, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Emigrants
I am struggling to find a suitable 'emigrants' upmerge target for Stephanie St. Clair (in, but who in fact emigrated first to Canada and thence to the US, not that the order matters, IMO). Most of the entities don't seem to have a 'People' category let alone an emigrants one. perhaps. Any ideas? Oculi (talk) 23:10, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
 * is a perfectly fine solution, there is already one other article directly in it. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:32, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

fyi
For presumably obvious reasons, I closed this as "no action", please feel free to renominate if you so choose. - jc37 09:03, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Categories_for_discussion/Log/2023_April_5

Favor
I would like to ask to create 190+ categories like the existing "Category:North Macedonia people", because I didn't notice any Category:Finland people, Category:Netherlands people, Category:Canada people etc. Categories in this (your) format are missing for the other countries. Dandarmkd (talk) 19:52, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Category:Canadian people, Category:Dutch people and Category:Finnish people already exist. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:56, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * You reply consists only of demonym formats. Can you notice that the word "Canada people" differs from "Canadian people"? Why you didn't use the "Category:Macedonian people" instead of your "Category:North Macedonia people"? Dandarmkd (talk) 20:03, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * presumably it should be North Macedonian people. I cannot recall why I have not used a denonym. If you wish you can propose to change the name of the category. For instructions how to do that see WP:CFD. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:11, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The is no South/West/East Macedonian people and with this, there is no logic to be North Macedonian people. This is not the case of the two Koreas with the South and North Korean demonyms. Dandarmkd (talk) 20:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * in any case, if you want to have it changed, WP:CFD is the place to go to. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:19, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * There was a move review related to this topic, which seems complicated. Move review/Log/2020 August. Oculi (talk) 22:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Families of heads of state
Hello, Marcocapelle,

According to Categories for discussion/Log/2023 March 25 decision, there wasn't a consensus to delete these categories but it looks like you are emptying out some and tagging them for deletion. I wouldn't mind so much if you were changing the categories on the articles to a different category but it just looks like you are removing the category that the CFD says should not be deleted. Shouldn't they be upmerged to a more inclusive category rather than have these categories removed and deleted? Thank you. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 20:28, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree, I am making sure that the content stays in the tree of Category:Political families while the nomination did not explicitly say so. The discussion was really about "rulers" being a redundant category layer, aiming to convert this to, or keep it as, "heads of state" and "prime ministers". Marcocapelle (talk) 20:35, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * a further technical comment, just in case that that was not clear: a "split" at CfD implies deletion of the original category after splitting, otherwise it would have been called "diffusion" instead of split. Besides the latter is hardly ever discussed at CfD, that is just being done boldly. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:31, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Category:Films about Asian Canadians
Thank you for bringing this discussion to my attention. I understand but don't particularly agree with the nominator's arguments, as evidenced. DonIago (talk) 19:21, 19 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Are you also entirely lost as to what the end goal of this CfD is supposed to be? Am I being thick about this? DonIago (talk) 02:49, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
 * it seems obvious that nom tries (so far in vain) to revert the previous CfD but the discussion drags on very long now. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:07, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I tapped out after my last exchange with them, at least until they can clearly articluate what they'd like their end state to be here. I don't see a basic revert happening as I don't feel they've provided a clear justification for it, and at this point I think there's zero expressed support for it; I've expressed my direct opposition to that approach in any case. DonIago (talk) 06:05, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Query
Hello, Marcocapelle,

You have become my "go to" person for questions I have about categories since I see you often participating in discussions at CFD. I just ran into the recently created Category:World War II crimes by the Axis and the category title just seems wrong. However, I can't really bring it to CFD unless I have an alternative title to propose that it be renamed to. So, what do you think? "Axis powers"? "Axis forces" or "Axis countries"? It just seems incomplete as it is and there could be previous "Axis" sides in wars. Thanks for any help you can provide here. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 21:17, 19 May 2023 (UTC)
 * in case of doubt I always try to look for related article titles. In this case we have Axis powers and Axis war crimes in Italy so the category title could become Category:World War II crimes by the Axis powers or Category:Axis war crimes in World War II. Besides, I have not checked if the mention of World War II in the category title is perhaps redundant. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:14, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Category:4th-century rulers in Europe has been nominated for merging
Category:4th-century rulers in Europe has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:52, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

C19 in Austria
Following Categories for discussion/Log/2023 May 29, I noticed that Category:19th-century disestablishments in Austria is a disambiguation page, whereas Category:19th century in Austria and Category:19th-century establishments in Austria have content. Perhaps this is on your radar already. I guess it should be reopened like the Establishments category. – Fayenatic  L ondon 19:16, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Kingdom of Ireland emigrants to the Thirteen Colonies
I am wondering if it really makes sense to call these people "Irish". Many of these people were Scottish or English people who lived in the Kingdom of Ireland and then came to the Thirteen Colonies. I am not sure that they would have used the word "Irish" to refer to themselves. Many of these are people labeled "Ulster Scots".John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:29, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Ulster Scots are still part of Irish people. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:01, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

What is a large scope for emigrants cats?
We may want a discussion on this. For example right now Chadian emigrants has a total of 6 articles in 2 sub-cats. Maldivian emigrants has 2 articles in 2 sib-cats. Mauritian emigrants might have 26 articles in 6 categories, I have not bothered to check if there is any overlap. Nigerien emigrants has 3 articles, 2 in a sub-cat. Kuwaiti emigrants has a total of 23 articles, also assuming there is no duplication, in 9 sub-cats. The small cat problem here seems to have become very widespread.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:57, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I think in the specific case of Afghan emigrants the proposal will at present result in only 9 articles directly in Category:Afghan emigrants. I am not sure if there is any reason why only some of the 3 or less Afghan emigrant categories were nominated.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:27, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I was thinking about the large emigrant category proposal. I am wondering if it might be better to upmerge to all parents. For example Category:Algerian emigrants to Morocco is also in Category:Moroccan people of Algerian descent, but that is not a proposed target. If it was the proposal might gain more support.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:43, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Category:Monarchs of Transylvania has been nominated for renaming
Category:Monarchs of Transylvania has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 22:55, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Ancient women rulers
Hi Marco, I'd like to thank you for all the work we've done together on the "rulers" process, as well as many other categories. However, one of the main trees is currently stuck at Category:Ancient women rulers. I was wondering if I could ask your advice or help on how to proceed with it. A month ago, I was diffusing and reorganising that tree, but I seem to have upset a passionate, long-serving and well-respected colleague of ours, Aciram. At User talk:Nederlandse Leeuw/Archive 3, she vehemently objected to any reorganisation of "women rulers" into more specific trees such as "female regents", "queens regnant", "queens consort" etc. To her, this would be "destruction of women's history" on Wikipedia. I never intended that; in fact, I'm quite passionate about documenting women's history myself. "women rulers" is just not very helpful for categorisation purposes, as you and I and many others with us now agree. I tried to explain all of this to her, but she got only more upset, and then stopped answering.

Have I done something wrong? How should I proceed? I want to take her concerns seriously, but if she doesn't respond, I can't. Should I tag her again? Should someone else (perhaps you?) try to talk to her? Should we just ignore her and proceed with our "rulers" process (I don't think so, that seems rude)? I'd like to hear what you think. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)


 * this isn't easy at all, because what is the desired end result? Should we ultimately aim for splitting e.g. Category:8th-century BC women rulers to Category:8th-century BC queens regnant and Category:8th-century BC women regents? I am picking here a particularly poorly populated category for the sake of argument, but I fear that even in better-populated century categories the number of queens regnant will remain very modest. If that split is pursued, presumably some day the queens regnants by century will be nominated for upmerge per WP:SMALLCAT and what Aciram fears happens: the 8th-century BC women regents category and the articles about 8th-century BC queens regnant are no longer linked. This is the second time that I am just saying it is difficult without offering any solution 😞 sorry about that. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:25, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your response. Yes, that is my aim. On 8 May 2023, we already established a precedent for that with Categories for discussion/Log/2023 March 25, upmerging 13 SMALLCATS of Xth-century women rulers to Category:Ancient women rulers. After that, I diffused most of them to Category:Ancient queens regnant (which has no "by century" children) and Category:Ancient women regents. Now that I think about it, curiously, all children of the latter are titled "women rulers" rather than "women regents". I guess that means we could purge/move/diffuse all non-regents from those children, perhaps to Category:Ancient queens regnant where applicable? Once the purging is done, we could rename all children per WP:C2C to Xth-century women regents. I'm a bit surprised I hadn't thought of that before. At any rate, the Template:Navseasoncats series was already broken before the 8 May 2023 precedent, is now almost gone, but Category:Ancient women by occupation will still link Ancient women regents and Ancient queens regnant once we have diffused the "women rulers". But that's just the technical side of things.
 * I guess what Aciram and others are really worried about is that phasing out the word "ruler", in favour of either "regent" or "queen regnant", will mean women regents are no longer on an "equal level" with (male) kings/monarchs. And because ancient women were far more likely to be regents than queens regnant, the "ancient women rulers" Navseasoncats series collapses, and cannot be replaced by an "ancient queen regnant" Navseasoncats series which is a child of either an "ancient ruler" Navseasoncats series or an "ancient monarchs" Navseasoncats series. That means that readers navigating the "ancient monarchs" Navseasoncats series will no longer see "women/female/queens regnant etc." subcats, or items which are women in general. This is a kind of unintended "erasure" of "women's history" I hadn't really considered beforehand.
 * I guess I overlooked it because I think Template:Navseasoncats is overrated, and often just not useful for categorisation purposes. Some people love them for their own sake, and will defend them at all costs against deletion or merging. (e.g. Dimadick opposes any delete/merge of any Navseasoncat he has ever created, no matter how SMALLCAT, NONDEFINING, ARBITRARY etc. it is). I'm just not a big fan of "by century" categories in general, no matter which gender it seeks to categorise. But the practical consequences of phasing out "rulers" does seem to be impactful for the way the vague word "rulers" allowed especially ancient women and men to be (misleadingly?) presented as equals. I understand that appeal, and it's certainly not because I seek to "destroy" or erase or otherwise belittle women's history (quite the opposite) that I advocate for its phase-out. It's just part of our "rulers" process in general, trying to refine vague and ambiguous category names. However, I don't think we can make an exception. A regent and a queen regnant really are something different, and I do think it's misleading to lump them together as "rulers"... Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 20:12, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
 * in any case I do not expect a further 1-on-1 discussion will sort any effect. The most obvious step forward is simply proposing the split at WP:CFD. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:08, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @Marcocapelle Thanks. Will do. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:09, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Alright, here is my first CfR: Categories for discussion/Log/2023 June 16. I've also created Category:Female satraps, I never knew those existed! The 4th and 3rd century BCE are gonna be a bit more complicated, I'll nominate them separately as CfSs. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 19:21, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
 * so far, I am positively surprised about the large proportion of queens regnant. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:30, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * So was I. In some cases it is not entirely clear, especially with Egyptian queens, but if they are categorised as 'female pharaohs', that counts as a monarch and thus a queen regnant. If the article expresses some doubt as to whether she was 'reigning in her own right' or something, I give her the benefit of the doubt, just like we usually do with men whose status as monarch is not entirely clear.
 * A common pattern is that in a patrilineal system of succession, a queen consort turns into a woman regent once her husband dies and their son has not yet come of age. This pattern appears to exist throughout history across planet Earth, and is one reason why women were often in a unique position to be regents for several years before the male heir apparent came of age. The position of Queen mother (Africa) is often so powerful that they might as well be considered queens regnant, even upon their son's accession to the throne as the new king (especially in the case of Eswatini).
 * Another common pattern, also found in these categories to my surprise, is that a queen consort turns into a queen regnant in her own right upon her husband's death, and not just a regent for their underage son. This happens in many ancient Egyptian and Greek cases. The power of monarchy shifts from husband to wife rather than son. This shows once again that agnatic primogeniture is an 11th-century Western European invention that did not exist before there, nor elsewhere, and has never spread across the entire world. (And especially in Africa the earliest dynasties appear to have been matrilineal rather that patrilineal). Our assumption that a queen consort can never become a queen regnant is repeatedly refuted when we carefully study the lives of these ancient (and early medieval) dynastic women.
 * Especially in Ancient Greek cases, many women were apparently co-reigning with their husbands rather than powerless consorts; coinage often shows them depicted together with symbols of royal power.
 * The only women we unfortunately need to exclude are those who were only queens consort, or ancient Greek tyrants, as the Category:Ancient Greek rulers precedent decided we should not categorise tyrants as "monarchs". They were often one-generation or two-generation usurpers of power, and while some female tyrants "inherited" this power from their deceased husbands, it's too little to speak of a monarchical system. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 08:09, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Irish emigration
It seems people are trying to ignore that someone leaving Ireland in 1910 was a British immigrant, in key ways that someone leaving in 1925 was not. Combine this with the odd vies that we should get rid of emigration categories, just I guess because it is better to have fewer categories. Except that is not a reasonable argument when 1922 and before emigrants were British and after 1922 they were not. The issue is also in some way those leaving Ireland in 1799 were not leaving Britain, but in 1805 they were. Thus the people there from 1801-1922 were British in ways they were not before or after. The trucky thing is clearly someone living in Dublin in 1925 was not British, unless they were a British national abroad. The move backward from 1801 is trickier, since Ireland has been ruled by the government in London for hundreds of years. This becomes key because if someone lived in England until 1805, then in Ireland from 1805 until 1840 and then in the United States after 1840 they are either a British or Irish emigrant to the US, but clearly not a British emigrant to Ireland. If they lived in Irekand until 1845, then in Manchester England from 1845 until 1860 and then in the US from 1860 on they are either an Irish or British emigrant to the US, but not an Irish immigrant to Britain. If they moved rrom Ireland to Manchester in 1970 they are an Irish emigrant to the United Kingdom. If they then move to the United States in 1985 I am not sure what to call then, and probably wiuld just call then an Irish emigrant, an Immigrant to the United Kindom and an Immigrant to the United States. The 1845 mover cannot be an immigrant to the United Kingdom because he started in the United Kingdom. When places are unified it becomes very hard to say when soneone is jyst a temporary resident, and when thry are a national. The standard view in Hawaii is that only people with ancestry that can ve traced back to the Kingdom of Hawaii are Hawaiian. A person if Euro-American descent even if all 4 grandparents were born in Hawaii is not Hawaiian. To try to prentednd there were no political changes in Ireland in late 1922 and treat leaving there before and after the same just does not make sense. All the more so because lots of people actually did the multi-stage migration I mention, and figuring out who is Irish and who is British is going to be vety tricky. The current way of assigning them all British and allowing some subdividing makes sense. At some level I think the idea to upmerge everything to British emigration for people leaving the UK, and ending seperate Welsh, Scottish, English and Irish sub-cats makes sense. The problem is that it would need tk be done while sorting out emigration before the United Kingdom existed, or at leadt before Great Britain was formed. I just sense people prefer messy names for now. The current structure places those who were in some sense British under that heading, and makes it so we do not free associate post-1922 emigrants from the Republ7c of Ireland as British.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:30, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The by nationality and by country mess
I think you are right that by nationality can mean country of residence. Sometimes with occupations it might matter if we cat by place of birth, by place where the occupation was done or both. If someone was born in Germany, came to the US at 5, and first wrote a published work at 18, or was born in Germany, moved to the US at 21, and first acted at 25, then does it make sense to call them a German actor or German writer. What if they come to the US at 32 and then start acting, or something else, only do it in the US, but remain a German national. Probably case by case and we can put in both cats. German actors and American actors. I think we accept these cover both people in a place doing a thing and nationals of a place doing it elsewhere. Then there are the deaths cats, where we just cat that person x died in place y, we do not care where they were other than when thry died. On the other hand an American who goes to Spain for 2 months during which he writes a book does not become a Spanish writer, and Alex Guiness does not become a Tunisian actor just by being filmed in Star Wars in Tunisia. If Alex Guiness had gone to Malaysia for 2 months to play in a stage production of Bridge Over the River Kwai he would not be a Malaysian actor. However at some point if he acted long enough he would be, even if he still spent the off season in Britain. I am not sure the point was, and it might be if that was what made him notable we would accept even one show, but if he mainly had acted in Britain it is a different story. With filming if we have an actress who goes to film on location in India for an American funded film we might consider it differently than an Indian funded film. One film might not make it, but if she did 6 American funded films in Italy that is probably still not an Italian actress, but if all 6 films have Italian funding, directors etc, if she is an American actress in spaghetti westerns, than maybe at that point she is an Italian actress. Even if one film was actually made in Switzerland, but with an Italian director and Italian funding.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:51, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

People from Ireland before 1801
I saw that discussion. One thing with People from the Kingdom of Ireland, is that we do have an article Kingdom of Ireland, which by being a specific state has both a start and end year of its existence. I think we often follow the names of people from x to articles on x, so I am not sure why in this case using that format when we have an article with x as its name, it is considered so unacceptable.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:52, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Horse farms in Europe


A tag has been placed on Category:Horse farms in Europe indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and removing the speedy deletion tag. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 20:42, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 June 3
I just closed this as purge and rename, but can you clarify what the categories would be renamed to?<span id="Qwerfjkl:1687978195197:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  18:49, 28 June 2023 (UTC)


 * for example, renaming Category:Argentine classical liberals to Category:Argentine liberal politicians and purge economists to a global Category:Classical liberal economists. Marcocapelle (talk) 20:42, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * For the record, a lot ended up purged to Category:Liberal theorists instead. – Fayenatic  L ondon 22:44, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

ANI Notice
There is currently a discussion at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding lack of civility in WP:CFD. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 03:56, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Akane Yamaguchi
Hello. Help improvements. Thanks you. 2402:800:6344:6610:E9CA:3119:3C88:9387 (talk) 05:24, 12 July 2023 (UTC)


 * You need to stop spamming Users talk pages. Untamed1910 (talk) 05:25, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Ping
I was working my way through this to close it.
 * Categories_for_discussion/Log/2023_June_28

And you mentioned pinging you : )

If you're brave enough to re-format the nom to be "by decade", I won't turn down the assistance : ) - jc37 20:28, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * That should be easy in Excel... – Fayenatic  L ondon 22:45, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * If it's still there later, I'll go ahead and do it. I usually do those things using a word processer and some creative use of "replace". - jc37 00:06, 14 July 2023 (UTC)


 * of course! But just to be sure, do you mean only by decade or other targets too? Marcocapelle (talk) 05:01, 14 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Merge to Category:Parks established in (decade) and buildings and structures as nominated; and "protected areas" as discussed, as well.

Thank you very much : ) - jc37 08:40, 14 July 2023 (UTC)


 * see below. The biggest amount of time went into creating the decade categories. Marcocapelle (talk) 15:35, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you very much! : )

That would have taken me this side offorever lol - jc37 18:09, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Notification of request for Arbitration
You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Arbitration/Requests/Case and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. As threaded discussion is not permitted on most arbitration pages, please ensure that you make all comments in your own section only. Additionally, the guide to arbitration and the Arbitration Committee's procedures may be of use.

Thanks, RevelationDirect (talk) 21:42, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Viceroys in Ukraine
In discussions about the category "Viceroys in Ukraine" you stated that Ukraine did not exist then. What do you mean by that? There are many maps of 16th and 17th centuries that show Ukraine. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 00:46, 21 July 2023 (UTC)
 * In his poem Poltava, Imperial Russian poet Alexander Pushkin talks about the exact something that "did not exist then". He does not talk about borderland, but rather about particular place. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 04:14, 21 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I should have said "did not exist as a state or administrative division". Marcocapelle (talk) 05:42, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

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SmallCat dispute case opened
You were recently listed as a party to a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Arbitration/Requests/Case/SmallCat dispute. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Arbitration/Requests/Case/SmallCat dispute/Evidence. Please add your evidence by August 4, 2023, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Arbitration/Requests/Case/SmallCat dispute/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Dreamy <i style="color:#d00">Jazz</i> talk to me &#124; my contributions 12:55, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

2000s assassinated politicians by nationality
Hi. I created the Category:2000s assassinated politicians by nationality. I was populating it by creating subcategories but when I was going to create Category:2000s assassinated American politicians, I stumbled on the closed discussion Categories for discussion/Log/2023 May 30, in which you stated that "The conclusion of the discussion above is that Category:Assassinated American politicians does not need any diffusion." Given that now it is a different context in a worldwide set and not focusing on American politicians as was the case with said discussion, I was wondering what are your thoughts regarding creating again "Category:2000s assassinated American politicians" and about "2000s assassinated politicians by nationality". Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 03:27, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * please revert the creation of Category:2000s assassinated politicians by nationality and subcats. If there is consensus that it is not necessary to slice down Americans, then of course the same applies to every other nationality. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:08, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Because I am the author I could request speedy deletion. Just let me get a second opinion. @Fayenatic london, thoughts? Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 17:57, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, that CFD rules out all intersections of assassinated politicians by country and time. Thanks for your willingness to cooperate. – Fayenatic  L ondon 11:56, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok, I will proceed to request a speedy deletion. Thanks. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 19:00, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * there are still 11 subcats in Category:2000s assassinated politicians by nationality. Can they all be speedily deleted too, or do they need to be merged? This depends on whether you added them as an extra category, or moved the pages down into the new categories from one or more other parents e.g. . – Fayenatic  L ondon 08:10, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Category:2000s assassinated politicians by nationality was mistakenly speedy deleted when it had not been emptied yet first. This leaves a lot of red linked pages which have to then be removed so I restored the category so this can be dealt with. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 18:23, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think that User:Liz's message above was meant for you. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:30, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I updated accordingly my speedy request. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 23:09, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Fayenatic london, @Liz, I am still not used to the terminology delete, merge, my apologies. I think the Category:2000s assassinated politicians by nationality and its subcategories need to be merged into 2000s assassinated politicians and Category:Assassinated <Foo nationality> politicians. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 22:55, 27 July 2023 (UTC)


 * below is how it would look at CfD. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:04, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Afghan politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Asia and Category:Assassinated Afghan politicians
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Angolan politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Africa and Category:Assassinated Angolan politicians
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Democratic Republic of the Congo politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Africa and Category:Assassinated Democratic Republic of the Congo politicians
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Dutch politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Europe and Category:Assassinated Dutch politicians
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Indian politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Asia and Category:Assassinated Indian politicians
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Iraqi politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Asia and Category:Assassinated Iraqi politicians
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Israeli politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Asia and Category:Assassinated Israeli politicians
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Ivorian politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Africa and Category:Assassinated Ivorian politicians
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Pakistani politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Asia and Category:Assassinated Pakistani politicians
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Palestinian politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Asia and Category:Assassinated Palestinian politicians
 * Propose merging Category:2000s assassinated Serbian politicians to Category:2000s assassinated politicians in Europe and Category:Assassinated Serbian politicians
 * I have added this scheme to the speedy discussion. Thanks for the guidance! Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 19:40, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that was useful. As it turned out, all the articles were already in the target categories, so deletion would have been the same as merger. But it's always safest to merge, in case any editor had removed the parent categories from an article. – Fayenatic  L ondon 05:51, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Category creator
Hello, Marcocapelle,

I'm hoping you can help me as you are a regular at CFD and know much more about the norms of what is currently considered acceptable categorization than I do. We have a longstanding editor who creates a lot of categories with really generic titles. You can see their contributions here. I came across them because they tend to create a bunch of empty categories that sit for a few days until they are filled so they show up at the Empty Categories list and I tag them CSD C1.

Some of the names are so general, I can't believe that we don't already have an existing category on the subject but they always seem to find articles to place in these categories that they create. I'm hoping that you or another category knowledgeable editor could just look over some of their category creations and let me know whether they are duplicates of existing categories or if this editor is really finding a lot of new categories that are serving a purpose on the project. If I'm wrong on this, that's perfectly okay. It's just that with most category creators I know, well, their creations are very specific, targeting a year, sport, nation/country, event, gender, occupation, etc. and don't create categories like Category:Biology in fiction, Category:Videocassette formats, Category:Migration policy or Category:Biostasis. Over the past year, I've left this editor talk page messages but I've found that editors who've been active for a long time (in this case, 17+ years), don't really pay attention when someone critiques their editing. Any way, thanks for any insight you can provide. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 21:25, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
 * thanks, some of these look odd, I will take them to CfD and let us see what happens. Marcocapelle (talk) 04:20, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Manual category work
Thanks for the ping : )

And please don't be shy about doing that. If you see anything that you think I could help with please feel free to ping or drop me a note. If in doubt about topic or interest-level, pretty much any topic listed at User:Jc37/Userboxes (and then some lol).

I read a lot on Wikipedia. But I've been trying to (mostly) take a step back a bit from cfd process. Whle I understand that some see it as a backlog, it's also an opportunity for non-admins, or those who don't normally hang around CfD, to learn the process, and participate. Jumping in the deep end of the pool, as it were : )

That said, I have a set of hands like everyone else, and as long as I'm not stepping on toes, or getting in the way of others' fun, I'd be happy to pitch in and help : )

(There's a part of my brain telling me that I may live to regret this offer lol, as I have no doubt some of your talk-page-stalkers will take me up on it as well, but how will we know till we broach the idea? : )

Anyway, thanks again for the ping, I'll take a look at that now while I eat dinner : ) - jc37 22:05, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Smallcat evidence
I was reading through what you wrote. And I think you're right on this.

Merging of course has always been an option, but way back when, XfD really had a much more "deletion" tone. I remember many times in discussions, myself and others trying to make clear that CfD stood for "discussion, not deletion". (That rename in particular was an important shift in tone by itself.)

And I think that has progessively shifted over time for all of CfD, not just smallcat.

I can't remember the last time I saw a commenter say "burn it with fire", for example : )

Anyway, I just thought I'd drop a note. I hope your day is going well : ) - jc37 23:49, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Proposed decision posted for the SmallCat dispute case
The proposed decision in the SmallCat dispute has been posted. You are invited to review this decision and draw the arbitrators' attention to any relevant material or statements. Comments may be brought to the attention of the committee on the proposed decision talk page. For the Arbitration Committee, Dreamy <i style="color:#d00">Jazz</i> talk to me &#124; my contributions 10:53, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

So long, and thanks for all the fish
Looks like ArbCom is going to ban me from Wiki. Just wanted to say that I've enjoyed your work and working with you. Keep up the good work. Laurel Lodged (talk) 19:14, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Draft essay
at User:Marcocapelle/sandbox2 I made a start with collecting texts about smallcat (and made already some minor revisions in it). My goal is to publish a text like this as an essay in order to provide CfD non-regulars sufficient background to participate in the discussion about it. We should seek participation from non-regulars, at least that is my take-away from Arbcom. Do you agree? (Not with the whole text, but with the general idea.) Marcocapelle (talk) 21:44, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * No, I disagree that this is the right next step. I think we need to rewrite the editing guideline to give a numerical threshold. ArbComm wrote "Use of such numerical thresholds, even if phrased as a 'rule of thumb' or similar such phrase, in CFDs is therefore not supported by the guideline." Honestly, that's one of the things me and BHG agreed on actually, although we applied them differently. I can't honestly go in cold to every nom not knowing if i think 2 or 20 would be small. I'm thinking an intro sentence that "Categories are generally considered small if they have fewer than five items."  I would also change the header to match "Small with no realistic potential for growth". I have other suggestions, but a narrow rewrite would satisfy ArbComm.I'm not opposed to the essay, but the actual text should be comprehensible since even us experienced editors struggle. What do the rest think? RevelationDirect (talk) 23:15, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Crap, I just saw your link and actually read your essay after I already dismissed it. I agree with it and it's urging to fix the guideline. (Sorry for my initial hasty reply.) RevelationDirect (talk) 23:19, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I like the compilation you've made! It's useful documentation for a future new criterion. I think FoF #1 demonstrated there is no consensus on a numerical threshold, so that should probably be scrapped. For the rest, do we all agree on the following text?
 * A category with very few items may be upmerged to its parent category/categories for now, without prejudice against re-creation in the future if it can be more properly populated.
 * We might want to add something like "The purpose of upmerging such Smallcats is to improve navigation." I think we should state that upfront, otherwise editors might not understand why and how to apply it. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 23:19, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The other WP:OC editing guidelines are about the nature of a category so deletions should be permanent, barring DRV or returning to CFD. SMALLCAT is about what articles are currently around and what ones appear later so this makes sense. I think ArbComm was against unwritten numerical thresholds as a sort of case law, not modifying the guideline to add a limit. RevelationDirect (talk) 23:23, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * That is fair. They only said it wasn't currently part of the guideline. They didn't say it was impossible to amend the guideline and add such a numerical threshold anyway. Although I personally do favour a numerical threshold, I think jc37 is correct that any threshold is vulnerable to WP:GAMING, and I don't see how we can prevent that. How can we establish a gaming-proof numerical threshold? Once we solve that, I think we have unlocked the key to a good, new OC criterion.
 * Incidentally, I added a link to User:Nederlandse Leeuw/Examining the phrase a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme, which I also just updated with a copy of the text of FoF #1. I guess that's okay now that the decision seems pretty final. I might also add some other related examples of people disagreeing with BHG what it means (e.g. Bearcat in 2018, which has been submitted as /Evidence during the case). Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 23:49, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I was thinking of adding something like: "Very few items" is generally understood to be fewer than 5, but this threshold is not strict. Context should be taken into account, and this number should not be gamed. E.g. editors may not empty a category out of process just to reduce the number of items in a category below 5 in order to enable its upmerging per this criterion.
 * On the one hand, a text like this is clear about that there is a certain threshold, but gives some leeway that it shouldn't be applied overly restrictively. On the other hand, it's a bit clunky, and I'm a bit worried that it might give certain users... ideas. Yet, by stating explicitly that emptying out of process in order to get an undesired category upmerged is inappropriate, we do set a certain behavioural standard that should be followed (and whoever violates it can be sanctioned for it), so that's good. Thoughts? Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 00:04, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm interested in some institutional memory from on how it was gamed in the past. Users adding or removing marginal articles from a category seems like a minor issue compared to an editor saying "in this particular case 2 articles isn't small in my subjective opinion".  Also, it's clear I'm the only jerk here without an essay so I'll work on that. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:08, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @RevelationDirect Well, LL actually did that a lot in the past. User:Nederlandse Leeuw/Emptying categories out of process (which was also invoked during the case) comes to mind. LL really didn't like "Austria" categories, and always tried to make them "Austria-Hungary" instead. If his proposed deletions or mergers didn't gain consensus at CFD, he just emptied them entirely or with the exception of 1 or 2 items and nominated them again. But really, take a look at the "Case studies" section as a whole. Plenty of examples (mostly pertaining to entirely emptying a category, but making something a Smallcat on purpose is almost the same gaming tactic). Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 00:21, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * PS: User:Nederlandse Leeuw/Emptying categories out of process was another case of LL emptying Austria categories out of process because he didn't like them. For the essay, I've anonymised all the names, but now that LL is getting banned (in part because of his long history of disruptive categorisation actions), I think it's okay to say so. Perhaps people even should know. He's the most notorious ECOOPer I have been able to find as I was writing this essay. ( Which in no small part contributed to me gradually losing my sympathy for him during the case; the other part was his repeated and ongoing incivility, which was worse than I knew, and called out when I saw it ). Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 00:46, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Liz has been using this form Nardog that shows articles removed from a category over the last 30 days: User:Nardog/CatChangesViewer. Increased usage of this might help. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:44, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, definitely! I've found it very helpful over the last couple of weeks. :D NLeeuw (talk) 07:30, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for the ping : )

I've been watching the various smallcat discussions while the case was going on.

Just a couple thoughts -

First, people can be bold and change categories, including emptying them. (While notiing that the interdependency between WP:BOLD and WP:CON, very much applies, such as the explanatory essay of WP:BRD.) However, if they are planning to nominate them for deletion at CfD, they should note that they did do that in the discussion, and should note at least generally "what" they did, out of transparency. And if the cfd is already in progress, then they should be specific in what they did so as to not unintentionally (or worse - intentionally) mislead any commenters. So yes it's allowed, but not as a form of subterfuge. Comparable to canvassing - there are ways that it can be appropriate, but also ways in which it is not. As noted, emptying cats as a way to avoid community transparency can be seen as disruptive.

Second, I think that any smallcat dicussion would be more fruitful if something more foundational was discussed first - the idea of upmerging. That's been happening to prune category trees since before the guidelines were even written. But we really don't have a section that explains that idea really well. We talk about it throughout a lot of guidelines, but I don't think we have a section that specifically speaks to that.

If we can hammer that out, I think discussions about clarifying Smallcat (and really quite a few other guidelines) could bercome a lot easier. - jc37 04:13, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

thank you, it is now on Merge for now. It still needs some very basic editing first, then some sections to be further elaborated. Can you help with this? Just be bold (and in case you think something you add might be controversial, just add a comment in red font color). Jc37 thanks for your comment on upmerging, I added that as a first principle. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:10, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * While I know we all know this is a wiki - but this is also (currrently) an essay, and I don't want to step on toes. Do you mind if others edit the page? - jc37 05:15, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * no, I do not mind at all. On the contrary, it still needs a lot of work, so I hope this can become a joint effort. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:20, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Ok, so I just went through the page again. It doesn't seem so much an essay, as more of a page listing past events. And while some of that can be useful, I'm uncomfortable how much of it looks like an arbcom evidence page. In the past, often such pages are courtesy blanked, for various reasons.
 * (While noting that there's a difference between WP:HUSH actions, and those which are allowed per WP:HA. But it can be a subjective line at times.)
 * I don't think anyone here would intentionally go against Banning_policy, but I think we should err on the side of caution here to not unintentionally do so either.
 * I think I'm going to give all of this some additional thought. - jc37 05:57, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * have you had the chance to give it more thought, or am I asking this (way) too soon? Marcocapelle (talk) 07:23, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes. First, no matter the purpose for the page, anything which singles out individual people probably should be removed. I presume that this is a discussion of content, not behaviour. Leave all the behaviour discussion at dispute resolution.
 * As for the rest, it really depends on what you see as the goal of that page. If the end goal is to see that page a proposal for a guideline, then cool. just rename the page to add the word "proposal" at the end.If it's to be an information page, then cool, though a clearer rename might be in order in that case too. If the goal is to make it an actual guideline (rather than a page describing the proposal for a guideline) then most everything on that page that isn't directly the guideline or direct explanatory text thereof, should be removed.
 * I'm hesitant to start pruning it myself. As you both seem to have put a lot of work into this.
 * I welcome your thoughts. - jc37 07:31, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * thank you! 1. anything which singles out individual people probably should be removed: agree. 2. rename to "proposal": agree. 3. I think there are two goals, not only offering a proposal, but also provide clear arguments in favor of the proposal. Is two goals too much? Or would it be an idea that you mark everything you'd prefer to prune in strikethrough font? Marcocapelle (talk) 21:54, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I also agree with 1. and 2. As I've said below, as well as at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/Small with no potential for growth, I now lean towards the complete abolition of WP:SMALLCAT, and the replacement of it by Merge For Now (WP:MFN). We just need to settle on a specific text, the relevant rationale for that text, and then bring the proposal up for a vote. :) NLeeuw (talk) 22:02, 28 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I feel much the same way as jc37 does. It's not so much an "essay" right now, but a "useful documentation for a future new criterion", as I called it. If it were to become an essay, it should be much more concise. This also applies to my own essay User:Nederlandse Leeuw/Emptying categories out of process; although I've anonymised most sanction precedents, case studies etc., probably a lot of it should be moved to some subpage or sidepage as documentation rather than the main text of the essay itself. I'm also still working on finding out how essays are supposed to be written and formatted, so mine doesn't really serve as a great example. (That's one of the reasons why it's still a user essay and not yet a Wikipedia essay).
 * Also, I think we are working towards a policy WP:PROPOSAL, aren't we? Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 10:33, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Further discussion

 * Ok, I'm open to all suggestions on how to proceed. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:17, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I've filled in some Merge for now, I hope that helps our orientation. The essays are mostly inspired by @RevelationDirect's feedback / note-to-self at the end of the case: There are a lot of smaller sized categories that should be deleted because they don’t aid reader navigation but some of those don’t meet the technical requirements of WP:SMALLCAT. If I could do things over, I would not have !voted any differently, but in a couple of nominations I would have instead cited WP:NARROWCAT, WP:WTAF, WP:BUILDER, and WP:OC generally. I’ll work on being more precise going forward with citing essays and editing guidelines. Instead of WP:OC, I added WP:REALPROBLEM. We should remain aware that 2nd, 3rd and 4th essays are primarily about articles, and don't directly address our rationale for merge for now (MFN).
 * I've been playing around with the "building a house" metaphor a bit for this reason, but that does result in a bit of a different story. E.g. WP:REALPROBLEM speaks of "demolition", while @Marcocapelle wanted us to emphasise "2. Merging is not deletion" (and I tried making a case for that along the lines that I think all of us will agree on). Also, at various points I find myself already setting 5 items as a practical minimum, but we haven't agreed on that yet (certainly @Jc37 hasn't). And yet, I feel we gotta start somewhere, otherwise nobody knows what we are talking about when we say "very few items", and the four of us might not even understand each other.
 * The "building a house" metaphor may also not square well with my "carelessly emptying a box" metaphor for User:Nederlandse Leeuw/Emptying categories out of process. I still understand what we're talking about, but I'm not sure our fellow editors will. ("Wait, what? Are we building a house or throwing items out of a box?!").
 * Lastly, I added some contents to Merge for now, based on my intro of User:Nederlandse Leeuw/Examining the phrase a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme. The position that [the phrase] should stay in the WP:SMALLCAT guideline as it is has been undermined by FoF #1 concluding that it is unclear what it means and how it should be applied, because reasonable editors can reach differing conclusions about it, so that position is no longer tenable. I hope I've described the two other positions in a fair and balanced manner. Ultimately, I think this matter should be decided by some sort of vote, perhaps in an RfC.
 * This does raise a further question:
 * Do we strive to establish Merge For Now (MFN) as a new criterion, separate from existing WP:SMALLCAT criterion? Or,
 * do we intend to replace WP:SMALLCAT with Merge For Now (MFN)?
 * If the "scheme" phrase is removed, we are getting closer to a replacement of the existing criterion than to the establishment of a new criterion anyway. I'm not sure yet. Both Marcocapelle and I are currently assuming that #1 will happen, but many others have been having the expectation that a reform/replacement of WP:SMALLCAT is what is really needed to fix the underlying problems. Curious what everyone thinks. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 15:40, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * In Merge for now I've copyedited some earlier observations from me, the Arbcom but mostly @Jc37 why initial attempts to set a numerical threshold were abandoned, as it risks gaming ("stuffing" by people who want to keep the category, and emptying/ECOOPing by people who want to delete/merge the category). This is the main issue we need to solve if we want to establish a numerical threshold. Even though a threshold seems an obvious solution to me, that gaming might create more problems than the threshold intends to solve. Therefore, jc37's feedback should be studied carefully. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 16:05, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I will add another principle, namely "(Re)creating categories is very easy", for now just as a section title. Marcocapelle (talk) 16:14, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Note: I've added "disputed" at Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/Small with no potential for growth. - jc37 17:03, 26 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that's very considerate of you!
 * I've added more examples and commentary to Merge for now. Marco already showed that "Schools in Elmira, New York" isn't a good example. I've explained why "Catalan-speaking countries" and "The Beatles Wives" are no longer good examples (if they ever were), and why "Moons of Earth" no longer works, regardless of the reason why it was originally invoked and later removed. We're essentially left with "Husbands of Elizabeth Taylor". We really need good examples, otherwise I think we should also scrap this sentence as fundamentally unworkable and unapplicable in practice. If we can't come up with good examples, how are we supposed to apply it in practice? Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:19, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * PS: I think this further evidence that Marco is right that SMALLCAT / Merge For Now is almost always about categories that are just navigationally unhelpful for now in practice, but not fundamentally inappropriate for eternity. A lot of examples of categories which supposedly had "no realistic potential for growth" (and therefore deleted) were actually based on inappropriate WP:CRYSTAL assumptions. They had more to do with the limited imagination of certain editors that there could never be more than [number] of [items], until we found out there could. To tell you the truth, until today I had no knowledge at all about the concept, let alone the article Claimed moons of Earth and the Category:Claimed moons of Earth either. The issue here was apparently not that "Moons of Earth" was a smallcat, but that someone like me was too small-minded to imagine that the Earth could have more moons than, well, the Moon. XD Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:31, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Marcocapelle I've added Merge for now along the same lines of "4. Address "part of large scheme" ambiguity". Both phrases are problematic for very similar reasons, and both have been found by Arbcom FoF #1 to have been open to differing conclusions by reasonable editors. I've added some rhetorical examples why this argument is often based on unsafe but unfalsifiable WP:CRYSTAL assumptions; I hope that is okay? I think this phrase had better go; just like the "scheme" phrase, it makes the WP:SMALLCAT criterion toothless, useless. One can argue endlessly about it (like BHG did), and thus filibuster any deletion of merger discussion of any category, obstructing the CFD process. That's not helpful. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 18:32, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Added Merge for now and Merge for now. I complained about the arbitrariness of this sentence at ANI, but at the time nobody responded. We should critically examine it. My conclusion is that it makes no sense, and should be removed. Combined with the removal of the bad examples of no potential for growth, and the "potential for growth" and "scheme" phrases, that leaves only the following text:
 * Examples: Husbands of Elizabeth Taylor
 * Avoid categories that, by their very definition, will never have more than a few members.
 * Note also that this criterion does not preclude all small categories; a category may be kept even if only a small number of its articles actually exist at the present time.
 * Apart from the only example which is still correct, that doesn't leave many. Even something seemingly obvious like "Capitals of Fooland" may be more complicated than they seem, if that may include historical capitals of Fooland and not just the 1 city currently designated as the capital. Even a country which was founded yesterday may decide to move its capital tomorrow, and again next year, and again next year. Of course there is "potential for growth". Is it "realistic"? Well, lots of countries are currently moving their capitals as we speak, so in that sense, of course it is realistic. There are almost no categories which by their very definition, will never have more than a few members, simply because we've got no WP:CRYSTALBALL and can never say "never" about lots of things.
 * Finally, the last sentence just lacks any justification now. Why should we keep such a category? Just because the text says so? And what is "only a small number"? As long as this is not defined as a numerical threshold, this phrase can once again be exploited as a catch-all clause that can be employed to filibuster any CfD. That's not helpful.
 * For the first time, I'm leaning towards a complete abolition of the entire WP:SMALLCAT guideline, and its replacement with a new Merge For Now guideline. Nevertheless, we need to resolve the WP:GAMING risk first if we want to make it successful. I suppose one easy practical way to reduce that risk is for all CFD regulars to install the User:Nardog/CatChangesViewer.js script. That way we can detect it if anyone has been stuffing or ECOOPing a category in order to game the nomination. This script didn't exist back in December 2006. It does now. We may not be able to prevent all gaming, but we can more easily detect it. What do you think, @Jc37? Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 19:35, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

A question
I have not followed the discussions about SMALLCAT in detail and find the current discussion overwhelming. Please reassure me of one point: Will the proposals under discussion still allow the creation of a new category containing just one article, when that category is part of an existing hierarchy? I quite often find that the person on whom I am writing an article (or adding categories to an existing article) is, apparently, the first graduate of the University of X, or member of staff of the University of Y, on whom we have an article. Or perhaps it's the first collection of short stories from country Z. In these cases I create the category, modelling it on the existing category for a similar institution or country, sometimes creating the necessary parent categories in the tree while doing so. These categories are all open-ended, with potential for growth, but as created will contain just one article, for now, although being part of parent categories which include many more articles. See, for example:
 * Category:Chancellors of Walter Sisulu University
 * Category:Jamaican short story collections
 * Category:Museums in the Outer Hebrides
 * Category:Nigerien architects
 * Category:University of Borås alumni

Will these creations be allowed, or will it be suggested that they should be "merged for now"? If it is proposed that they should not be created, where can I see the reasoning for this? Pam D  15:24, 29 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi @PamD. I appreciate your contributions, as you know. :) Long story short: there are currently 2 proposals going around:
 * Merge for now. Under this proposal, every category should have at least 5 items (pages, articles) at all times from creation. So the categories you mention would be upmerged to their parents until there are enough pages for a subcategory.
 * Merge for now. Under this proposal, there is no strict minimum, so those categories could theoretically be okay, but you could still be facing endless case-by-case discussions about whether this or that category is too "small" or "large enough", and about how much "realistic potential" it has. It would still be best to play it safe, and not create new categories until you've got a substantial number of articles to put in them (at least, if you don't like those discussions too much ;) ).
 * Both have pros and cons. (Personally, I favour A, but I can see the points of B). You can read a more general rationale about how this is intended to work here: Merge for now. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have, or take feedback on board. Cheers, NLeeuw (talk) 16:38, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Nederlandse Leeuw In that case I will strongly oppose the proposal in whatever forum it comes up for discussion. Where there is an established hierarchy of categories, I see no reason not to create each new category, for which there is a member, within that hierarchy. You think we should wait for the 5th Nigerien architect before creating a category? The creator, or categoriser, of the 2nd potential member of the category will not know about the previous potential member, and so on. Do they have to trawl through all African architects, counting those from Niger, to see whether the category can now be created? If someone is interested in the design professionals of Niger, or the architects of Africa, why should they not be able to find the, as yet, only Nigerien architect on whom we have an article, listed as such? I see no benefit at all from postponing the creation of these categories. Pam  D  17:56, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Alright, then we shall have to agree to disagree, because I see no benefit in creating lots of 1-item categories. NLeeuw (talk) 19:40, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Nederlandse Leeuw I sometimes wonder what the point is of categories as a whole. But if we assume that Category:French architects has a purpose, it must be that it helps the reader who asks "What articles has Wikipedia got about French architects?" So, why not also help the reader who is looking for Nigerien architects? I see no difference. And today there is one such, tomorrow, or next year, there might be two, or ten. I really do not understand why anyone wants to remove such categories. Pam  D  23:20, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Category:Nigerian architects is well populated though. Let's use a different example: Category:Architects from Paris is very well populated city category and Adrien Fainsilber is a famous French architect who is from the town of Le Nouvion-en-Thiérache with a population of 2,500.Now, if I created Category:Architects from Le Nouvion-en-Thiérache, I would be adding to the existing set of Category:French architects by city and we couldn't say there was no growth potential. After all, there might be a bright pupil from there in architecture school right now who will become notable in 30 years with some great commission. But the growth potential seem unlikely. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:58, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @PamD I sometimes wonder what the point is of categories as a whole. Well, Marcocapelle and I have attempted to explain that at Merge for now. The main reason why a category for biographies of Nigerien architects may not be viable yet is that Nigerien people by occupation in general are underrepresented on English Wikipedia compared to French architects / people by occupation in general. This is for complex reasons - which I presume to be well-known structural biases, similar to the gender gap - beyond just the fact that France has 68 million inhabitants and a continuous history as a state for over 1,000, whereas Niger has only 25 million and only existed as a state for a couple of decades. To sum up these complex reasons: language barriers, socio-economic development and cultural proximity (all three of which are to a greater or lesser extent a legacy of colonialism). It's not easy to address these structural biases, and I'm glad that you are doing your part in addressing them.
 * On the other hand, there are also plenty of examples of categorisation run amok. Categorisation for the sake of categorisation, instead of navigation. Readers and editors should just be able to find what they're looking for quickly. CFD exists in order to continuously help them accomplish that goal. That's because we've decided for technical and practical reasons that anyone should be able to create a category, but not everyone should be able to single-handedly delete, merge, or rename a category. That would cause way too much chaos.
 * The other day, I was looking for a random example of overcategorisation. I clicked "random article" 2 or 3 times and soon found an excellent example. Funnily enough, it also involves French people by occupation:
 * Category:Musicians by nationality, genre and instrument containercat, 25 C, 0 P
 * Category:French musicians by genre and instrument 1 C, 0 P
 * Category:French folk musicians by instrument 1 C, 0 P
 * Category:French folk singers 1 C, 3 P
 * Category:French folk-pop singers 0 C, 8 P.
 * Really? Apart from the question whether "singing" is even an "instrument" (wonder which shop I could buy a dozen of those?), why have we got a WP:NARROWCAT tree which combines "nationality, genre and instrument", and then proceeds with 2 redundant layers, then an under-populated layer with only 3 pages and then a poorly-populated, final subsubsubsubcategory with only 8 pages? Which reader benefits from this detour circus? Which reader is thinking, "I'd like to know more about French folk-pop singers, so of course I'm going to type "Category:Musicians by nationality, genre and instrument" into the search bar."? To answer your last sentence with my own thoughts: I really do not understand why anyone wants to create, maintain, look up, and navigate such categories, much less argue we shouldn't simplify the category tree by upmerging redundant layers or tiny categories which don't help people find what they're actually looking for. Cheers, NLeeuw (talk) 04:02, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @RevelationDirect Yes Category:Nigerian architects is better populated than Category:Nigerien architects. But if the latter category is not created at the time that the article Mariam Kamara is created, or categorised, then when will it be created? The creator of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, articles on Nigerien architects will note that there is not an appropriate category, will (in a dystopian future) be deterred from creating the category, will categorise them as Category:Nigerien designers and Category:Architects? (The latter has a rubric saying " It should directly contain very few, if any, pages and should mainly contain subcategories.", and includes only 4 pages, just one of which is for an individual - a person whose nationality is not stated in the text of her article.) Do you believe that Mariam Kamara should be in Category:Architects? Pam  D  07:35, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, if there are not enough articles to populate a potential subcategory, I think those articles should stay in the parent category where I future editor can review them later to see if there are enough articles at that point to justify a subcat.Our different perspective may be more around how we think categories get created though. I don't think the vast majority of editors who create a new article ever create a category. (There are a few of us who just do categories but we're so small in number to be irrelevant.) My perception is that most people who create categories and articles do so at different times, and look to the parent categories and see what subcategories are possible.BrownHairedGirl might have done the most with both so I looked at one of the noms from the ArbCom case and, with the first 3 listings, the new categories all contained articles that were created years earlier and were moved down from the parent category. (BHG edited at such an industrial scale that we should be cautious with just 3 data points though.) I think this is the typical approach.If other people create categories differently, I'd love to hear other perspectives though! RevelationDirect (talk) 12:04, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @RevelationDirect When I create an article, I add categories. If need be, I create new categories in existing hierarchies, as in the examples I've given. Sometimes I categorise articles created by other editors, and, again, create missing categories. In all these cases, the category will start life with just one Member, but it will usually have at least two parent categories. I don't imagine this category-creation behaviour of mine is unusual. It might indeed be interesting to look at single-member categories to see in how many cases the creator of the article and category is the same editor. Pam  D  21:18, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I just realized I misread "Nigerien" as "Nigerian" above. Struck a sentence above to correct that. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:13, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Late to the Party
I really appreciate this discussion and I created my own notes on SMALLCAT but, before you click that link, let me warn you it's not as refined as Marcocapelle's. I had assumed we would be refining SMALLCAT not replacing as is proposed here or deleting it as contemplated. I'm open to these other approaches though so long as one condition is met: the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Overcategorization/Small_with_no_potential_for_growth#:~:text=Also%2C%20subcategories%20of%20Category%3AWorks%20by%20creator%20may%20be%20created%20even%20if%20they%20include%20only%20one%20page%20and%20they%20conform%20to%20the%20other%20guidelines%20applicable%20to%20categories. last sentence] of SMALLCAT would need to be tacked to the end of WP:NARROWCAT to avoid chaos with the works by artist categories. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:23, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Just read the section on this in the WP:MFN and my concerns here are practical not philosophical. The exemption is odd to me but it's been there for a long time. I don't think this is worth the community's time to fix and I also think dropping it will make it harder to reach a consensus for any changes to SMALLCAT. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:38, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Whether within the existing guideline or a new one, we need to be careful we're not only playing inside baseball and only writing it for the regulars. The editing guidelines should be clear to someone who has not been to CFD before so I think it's imperative we create a numerical guideline even if it's qualified: "A category with less than five articles is generally considered small." We're much better off if editors read the guidelines and avoid creating unhelpful categories in the first place! I also think such a threshold would make it easier to allow editors to recreate categories deleted by SMALLCAT (or WP:MFN) without going to DRV or CFD. "Do you have 5 articles to add now? Then go for it." - RevelationDirect (talk) 02:26, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * maybe late but certainly not too late :-) I wholly agree on all three points, with the caveat that the third one still requires to define the concept of a large established tree. If you will, please integrate this in the draft proposal. We are not yet in the process of consolidating anyway. I have just changed the introduction text slightly ("proposal under construction") and added two principles sections (about large established trees) but without elaboration yet. Only by next Saturday I will have the quietness to write bigger chunks and think it over more thoroughly. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:42, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @RevelationDirect I'm glad you're joining us! I also agree with your point about keeping it simple and understandable for everyone. What do you think of Proposed texts A and B (Merge for now? I expect the unambiguous and objective numerical threshold (which many of us would like to fix at 5) of Proposed text A to serve that goal best. I very much prefer moving away from subjective and vague words such as "small", "large", "established", "overall", "clear", "obvious", "evident", "accepted", "scheme", "realistic", "potential", "by their very definition", and "(a) few". They seem to help nobody, but do cause a lot of confusion, disagreement and irritation.
 * @Marcocapelle I presume by "large established tree" you mean "large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme"? Then I think you could merge Principles 6 and 7 (4.6 and 4.7) into "The problems of WP:SMALLCAT as formulated" 2 (3.2).
 * Also, would the overall structure of Merge for now make more sense if we switched sections 3 "The problems of WP:SMALLCAT as formulated" and 4 "Principles" around? It makes more sense to me to talk about History/background first, then the principles of categorisation/CFD (how it should work), then the problems of WP:SMALLCAT (i.e. how it is failing to make categorisation/CFD work the way it should), and then how our Proposals seek to solve the problems of WP:SMALLCAT by going back to the Principles. (You may notice that I'm linking the Proposals back to the Problems). But I don't much mind either way, because some of the Principles we are proposing are new, and post-date the 2006-present development of WP:SMALLCAT. :) NLeeuw (talk) 06:38, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * PS: While I don't necessarily oppose the exemption of Merge for now, it does lack justification right now, something we need to address (Merge for now). If it can be justified, great! If it can't, then let's seriously reconsider whether it was a good idea in the first place, or just some odd tradition that we have introduced some time long ago and we have simply maintained over the years, out of habit, for its own sake, because we don't know how else to do things, and we're afraid of changing things for the better. The most relevant arguments I have seen so far are:
 * WP:DIFFUSE: A category may be diffused using several coexisting schemes; for example, Category:Albums is broken down by artist, by date, by genre etc. Metacategories may be created as ways of organizing schemes of subcategories. For example, the subcategories called "Artistname albums" are not placed directly into Category:Albums, but into the metacategory Category:Albums by artist, which itself appears in Category:Albums.
 * WP:OCEPON: Individual works by a person should not be included in an eponymous category but should instead be in a sub-category such as Category:Novels by Agatha Christie.
 * But they also don't explain why. There is no justification why we should do things that way, other than that the text says so, or that we've always done so. There are lots of one-album artists who otherwise produced only singles, or one-single artists who otherwise only produced albums. Especially for artists, bands or musical groups which are notable, but haven't produced at least 5 items of a particular type of thing (singles, albums, or EPs), I think listifying their discography into their main page is a better solution than lots of underpopped cats merely because we've always done so, or the texts say so. 39 out of the first 200 subcategories of Category:Albums by artist alone contain only 1 item each. See also my case study on Counterfit albums (April 2011), where it turns out that the WikiProject Albums also wasn't clear on what counted as a "guideline" and what didn't.
 * Incidentally, can anyone explain to me the difference between a WP:Metacategory and a WP:CONTAINERCAT? Aren't both Category:Fooers by bar-type cats that should only contain subcats? Cheers, NLeeuw (talk) 06:52, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I thought the point of this was to true up what the guideline does to match the current consensus but I haven't heard any objections to the works by creator exception in CFD. (That may be circular though, as it's the one part of SMALLCAT that is crystal clear.) All the other changes we're discussing are pretty esoteric to most editors and would largely not change the outcomes of CFD nominations or be very disruptive to existing categories. Dropping the works by exception line would open up maybe tens of thousands of categories to deletion though and that may bring new editors into our world after the fact.I'm conceptually in agreement but think this should be a later follow up proposal. But that should also involve us doing initial outreach to the Biography, Music, Books, and other WikiProjects to gauge their perspective since we may not appreciate the full impact. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:43, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Changes per today
in the previous two hours I've done a couple of things, listed below. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:53, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

In the principles
 * Added text to #5 and #6
 * Deleted #7 which was duplicate as one of you pointed out correctly.

In the proposals:
 * Separated base text (with rationale for base text) versus numeric threshold variant texts (with rationale for numeric thresholds) to #1 and #4 respectively
 * Inserted #2 as a more explicit proposal
 * Rewrote #3 in order to contains actual proposals
 * In #4 swapped A and B (since the new A is the base text)
 * Rewrote #5 in order to contain actual proposals
 * I haven't come yet to #6 to rewrite it in order to contain actual proposals

Furthermore I have added a couple of comments for you in red font color, which are suggestions to remove or shorten the text.
 * You've honestly put a lot more thought into this than I have. A couple feedback items:
 * "Proposal for large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme" I've struggled with how to define how far out the scheme goes, i.e. is this particular branch well populated.. I discussed this here on #3 but I don't have a good answer.
 * Principle #6 I don't think I agree that navigational categories are for the benefit of the category creator. That being said, that could be reworded as for the reader and I think it would have the same effect: would a reader expect a category to exist for every country or whatever. If so, it' aids navigation. (That would still provide a secondary benefit.)
 * I'm not quite taking a Wikibreak but am going to start checking in maybe weekly, so my responses may be delayed. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:28, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion
Now that it's an essay, you may want to move this discussion to the WP:MFN talk page, so that it can be archived there, and all this hard work doesn't get lost to history. - jc37 18:35, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea. - RevelationDirect (talk) 00:53, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Category:Military history of the Turkic peoples has been nominated for merging
Category:Military history of the Turkic peoples has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 23:17, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Anniversary of Precious
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:59, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Different approaches
Following ArbComm, we definitely all were trying to figure out how to follow up on the underlying content dispute:
 * 1) Rewriting Smallcat: I assumed some narrow rewriting would be in order, along these lines
 * 2) Removing Smallcat: Jc37 requested input on whether the editing guideline should be retained
 * 3) Merge for Now: Marcocapelle with help from Nederlandse Leeuw created the WP:MFN essay, the output of which might compliment or replace SMALLCAT.

First of all, I'll note that I'm an honest to goodness moderate here! Secondly, I'm open to all three: the current guideline does not have value, it could be reformed though, and I would like to see a Merge for Now formalized. I just appreciate having these discussions on such friendly terms with all of you as well as other editors.

If Jc37's proposal does not reach consensus, I'm not sure if it would make more sense to gain consensus to initially go with a limited rewrite of SMALLCAT or to go big with the MFN proposal. Something to think about. - RevelationDirect (talk) 01:47, 5 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Well, I've been looking at the various MOS and guidelines regarding categorisation of "created/creative works". And I think that a unified guideline could be assembled from the disparate pieces of P&G's and WikiProject MOS's, scatterd all over Wikipedia.
 * I would rather see that happen then fall into the rabbit hole of creating exception lists.


 * I also think a section of page clearly explaining for those not versed in categorisation about the idea of intersections, trees, and UpMerging, and diffusion, etc. also would be a good idea. The guidelines in WP:CAT reads a little too technical (inside baseball), I think.


 * And the ideas behind CFD need to be better explained - how what happens at CFD aligns with broader Wikipedia policy, and show that it isn't just a walled garden cabal (as it's been called) pulling the strings. But rather how editing categories fits into the broader policies of BOLD and CON.


 * I think we probably need to inject a bit of "why" into the guidelines.


 * If Smallcat isn't deprecated the best that we all can do is lead by example and just not cite it any more. I noted why in the discussion. Prejudging is not the Wiki-way. And it really sets us up for falling afoul of WP:BEFORE, among many other issues, that I think we just weren't noticing. Or at least I wasn't until the arbcom case. Going back and looking at over a decade's worth of CFD discussions was rather "something".


 * But that's all merely my opinion and read on things. I have no doubt everyone else has theirs as well. And perhaps through WP:CON, a way forward can be found. - jc37 02:16, 5 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I value all the things written here, and all the efforts made here. But due to several factors including my recent warning and (positive!) developments in off-wiki life, I would like to step away a bit from the discussions that are currently going on. I might have already given a bit too much input, and I feel like at present, my active participation in these processes may not be conducive in reaching a successful outcome. Feel free to keeping pinging or tagging me if you'd like me to vote on something important, or value my perspective, though; as long as you understand I might not give much input for the time being for the reasons stated. Good day to everyone. NLeeuw (talk) 17:19, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

Please answer
Hi, can you answer me here: Categories_for_discussion/Log/2023_September_10. Cheers Marcelus (talk) 08:18, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Thoughts on landmarks categories
Hi there, what are you thoughts on doing something about the Category:Landmarks by city tree? In practice, the landmarks in question are overwhelmingly just buildings and/or structures in a given place. In my opinion, this causes unnecessary overlap. I'd appreciate your thoughts as a key contributor to the categories for discussion. Thanks!--User:Namiba 16:18, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
 * occasionally there are natural "landmarks" in these categories as well. I think "landmarks" mostly coincides with "tourist attractions". Marcocapelle (talk) 19:13, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Removing women ruler-categorys

 * Hello Marcocapelle, and thank you for your work. I see you are removing "Category:7th-century women rulers" from a lot of articles, and I think you might be overlooking something.
 * For example: you have removed the "Category:7th-century women rulers" from Chimnechild of Burgundy and replaced it with "Category:7th-century queen consorts". A queen consort is not a ruler; she is just married to a ruler. Chimnechild was indeed a queen consort. However, she was also a ruler, because she served as regent for her minor son. The "Category:7th-century women rulers" can not be replaced with "Category:7th-century queen consorts", because a queen consort is not a ruler. Chimnechild should have both categories, because she was both a ruler and a queen consort, but those are two separate things.
 * The same problem is in Romilda. She was indeed a duchess consort. But she was also a ruler, because she was a regent for her minor son. The "Category:7th-century duchesses" can not replace "Category:7th-century women rulers", because a duchess is not the same thing as a ruler.
 * Can I please ask you to adjust this, and be more careful with the categories in the future? Otherwise, women-ruler-categories will be emptied on women rulers.
 * Thank you. With my best wishes,--Aciram (talk) 17:51, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
 * the article Chimnechild of Burgundy does not mention anything about being a regent; the article Romilda of Friuli is in fact in Category:7th-century women regents. Marcocapelle (talk) 19:09, 17 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, I see now I was a little hasty to clump together Chimnechild with the others, but I see now that there appear to be a nwe category and that you replaced rulers with regents. I did not notice that as I should have. Then all is well. Thank you for point that out.--Aciram (talk) 22:14, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

.

Gardners in British Indis
We have a lot of in British India categories. I think the theory is that these include a lot of British nationals who were long resident there, and sometimes people who were from modern Iran or Iraq long resident there. I think the earliest like Writers in British India may be from when we tended more toward of than from. I can see both from and in being good names for this category. However I think with the garners cat we have conflicting parent cats, enough British India categories iluse in that a system wide discussion on this might be justified.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:39, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Ethnic Albanian people
I am thinking that the Albanian people category should be limited to subjects or nationals of the nation of Albania that was formed in 1912. I am thinking we should then have a Category for people who were ethnically Albanian, but not subjects or nationals of that country. Then a further Category for people "of Albanian descent", who have known ancestors who were Albanian, but are not themselves Albanian by ethnicity. I am not sure we have any cases where we have all 3 such categories, but I think Armenians and Greeks are other cases where such a scheme would work. This will create a lot more categories, especially potentially occupational categories. Does this seem to you like a set of categories worth creating. I think the rules for both placement and creation of these occupational categories will be more stringent than that for nationality categories. In most cases we have only descent and nationality categories, and the ethnicity categories we have normally do not refer also to nationality. However I think this is the only way to categorize people accurately.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:33, 17 September 2023 (UTC)


 * I am thinking to avoid Category clutter we would be wise to say someone cannot be categorized as both an ethnic Albanian and an Albanian by nationality. So we would have Category:Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Ethnic Albanians from Greece, Ethnic Albanians from North Macedonia, etc., but not Ethnic Albanians from Albania. Also Ethnic Albanian writers would not include any writers who were nationals of Albania. The 2 possibly tricky cases are, do we include writers who were nationals elsewhere who then migrated to Albania, and do we include writers who were nationals in what is now Albania and then became subjects of Albania when it was formed. My gut is to say we treat Albanian nationality as a preemptive Category, so if you ever had it you do not belong in the Albanian ethnicity category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:38, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Category:Military personnel of the Kingdom of England has been nominated for merging
Category:Military personnel of the Kingdom of England has been nominated for merging. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Mason (talk) 04:07, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

Category:Jews in Ottoman Syria has been nominated for renaming
Category:Jews in Ottoman Syria has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Mason (talk) 21:13, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Category:10th-century women rulers
Hello, Marcocapelle,

This category is tagged for speedy deletion but isn't empty. Apparently, two different editors object to your removing two articles from this category. I guess they should have been at the CFD where this was all decided. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 13:05, 23 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi Marco, thanks so much for all the manual work you've done for sorting out all these categories! I've been quite busy in real life lately because I've got a new job (and I like it!), so I haven't been as involved in manual sorting as I intended. I'm glad you were able to do that without me, though! Just one question: I noticed you didn't create Category:10th-century empresses consort and populated it (with Dương Vân Nga, Theophano (born Anastaso), Adelaide of Italy, Zoe Karbonopsina, Empress Li (Later Han), Shulü Ping, Xiao Yanyan). Did you forget it? If so, would you like to still do it, or shall I do it? If you had a reason not to create it, what was it? Cheers, NLeeuw (talk) 11:54, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I accidentally skipped an entire section:-( Done now. See also this discussion. Marcocapelle (talk) 13:05, 24 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I weighed into that discussion; I'm not sure what Dudley is getting at, because the sources seem pretty clear. We'll see. NLeeuw (talk) 13:49, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Category:People of the Kingdom of England has been nominated for renaming
Category:People of the Kingdom of England has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Mason (talk) 00:38, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Category:17th-century people of the Dutch Empire has been nominated for renaming
Category:17th-century people of the Dutch Empire has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Mason (talk) 21:11, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Query
Hello, Marcocapelle,

I stumbled upon Category:1886 establishments in the Ethiopian Empire and found in Category:Establishments in Ethiopia by year that we just have a two categories I can easily find that associate with the Ethiopian Empire, the rest are categorized with Ethiopia. So, do these two categories (one of which is empty) need to be changed to refer to Ethiopia or do we need to change other categories to align with Ethiopian Empire? I'm not familiar with the history of this region but I thought you would know if the subject area has come up at CFD before. Thank you. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 19:14, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Oops, spoke too soon, there is also Category:1730s establishments in the Ethiopian Empire and Category:1880s establishments in the Ethiopian Empire. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 19:19, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

Isis page categories
Hi @Marcocapelle. On the Isis page, I noticed that you "Removed deities parent categories of goddesses." Is there a reason for that? For clarity, I'm not questioning the decision. I'm familiarizing myself with the function of categories, so I'm genuinely asking if there is a protocol that I wasn't aware of, or if your edit was more of an aesthetic decision. MiddleOfAfrica (talk) 23:23, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
 * WP:SUBCAT: "Except for non-diffusing subcategories, pages for sub-categories should be categorised under the most specific parent categories possible." Which makes perfect sense, otherwise you coold add these articles to Category:Africa, Category:Earth and Category:Mythology too. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:08, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, Thank you. And thanks for the link as well. MiddleOfAfrica (talk) 14:44, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Category:1886 establishments in the Ethiopian Empire
Hello, Marcocapelle,

You tagged this category for a CFD at Categories for discussion/Log/2023 September 26 but you don't seem to have filed a discussion for this category on this page. Liz <sup style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #006400;">Read! Talk! 05:20, 29 September 2023 (UTC)


 * it seems that you deleted two discussions from a CfD page, see here. If it was an accident, could you please revert your action? Thanks User:Liz for notifying. Marcocapelle (talk) 05:39, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, it was certainly accidental. I have no idea what happened there. My apologies. Restored. -- Necrothesp (talk) 07:17, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Category:2023 fires in North America
Hello, Marcocapelle,

The deletion of some fires by continent by year for North America (2020 to 2023) approved by you (CFD April 24) has meant that North America is now out of step with Asia Africa and Europe which have fires by year by continent: Asia and Europe have fires by year back to 2000, and Africa has fires by year back to 2020. See e.g. Category:2023 fires in Africa

Hence I propose that “fires by year” categories be added for all continents back to 2000, which would mean adding “fires by year” categories for North America,  South America as well as Oceania. I am interested in Oceania, and propose to start on Oceania “by year”. The 2020-2023 categories for Oceania, North America and South America should be added now to include new 2023 articles.

Hugo999 (talk) 04:02, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

CfD nomination at
A category or categories you have created have been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at  on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Edward-Woodrow •  talk  21:23, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Move review for Category:18th-century people from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by occupation
An editor has asked for a Move review of Category:18th-century people from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by occupation. Because you closed the move discussion for this page, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the move review. Marcelus (talk) 19:49, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Engineers from the Kingdom of Prussia
The category Engineers from the Kingdom of Prussia now has 6 articles. I think this is a much better name for 2 reasons A-because "Prussian" alone makes it ambiguous with the earlier ethnic Prussia group that were a Baltic language speaking group in what was later known as East Prussia and B-because the boundaries of Prussia often changed, we can tell if someone was definingly a national of Prussia, but it is another step to say whether they referred to themself as "Prussia".John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:31, 17 October 2023 (UTC)
 * The Scientists from the Kingdom of Prussia article has over 100 articles in it. So I am not sure why it would be merged as underpopulated at all. I am now up to 8 articles in engineers from the Kingdom of Prussia. Since many engineers were military engineers, the specific country they lived in is almost certainly defining. We also have the issue that German engineers are currently borken out by state in Germany they lived in, but at least some are categorized under a state that did not exist until after they died.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:11, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Is movement within a colony empire emigration?
This seems to be a disputed question, so much so we have multiple CfD decisions that contradict on this very idea. A category for French people in French Polynesia was deleted on the argument that was not defining. However one for emigrants from Great Britain to the 13 colonies was upheld as defining. In that case it may have just been an attempt to change the word from emigrant to migrant, not even to delete the category. We do not have one for Puerto Ricans coming to areas that are fully in the United States, but I am not sure that has ever been discussed. Sometimes it feels like the consensus approaches if the place is currently unified politically in some way movement is not defining, but if the connection has been severed, movement is not defining. I think that is a very ahistorical way to approach this. I would agree that movement currently between Alaska, Hawaii and the mainland US is not defining. I do not think at any point there is a need for a movement to Alaska for the lower 48 states cat, and I am thinking that post-annexation movement from the mainland to Hawaii is probably not worth having a category for. Within empires you have so many different levels of colonies that I think we have to avoid over statement. I would say that within modern Australia movement between the various colonies is not defining, and I have to wonder if movement from the Colony of Queensland or Colony of New South Wales to the Colony of New Zealand really is enough to categorize by. In 1880 would people see such as any more a movement than moving from the Colony of Queensland to the Colony of Tasmania. I would say if the "colonies" are physically adjacent to the mother country, movement is not defining. So movement within the Russian Empire, the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, or the Ottoman Empire. However after 1805 Egypt is de facto indepdent so I think movement after 1805 from other parts of the Ottoman Empire to Egypt we can class as emigrantion from the Ottoman Empire to Egypt. What that means from those who move from Izmir or Istanbul to Cyrenaica I am not exactly sure. I would say we also need to consider size, and if we have 5 or less articles on people doing it, do not make a category on it. However figuring out how many articles we have on people doing something can take a lot of effort, and it is hard to know how to group them early so it is possible to go back and find them. We might also ask if the people doing so are a defined group. I think it needs to be considered on a case by case basis, but I could definately see arguments for creating categories that cover the movement.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:06, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I would not think that movement within the British West Indies would be categorized as emigration, even if at the time the person was technically moving between British colonies. I do think that movement from the British West Indies to British North America, at least after the United States becomes independent, could be considered emigration of a sort. I am not sure we have enough people who moved from the British West Indies to British North America before the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867 to make having such a category worthwhile, but I do not think "these people are not emigrating" would be a reason to not have a category. I would not think we would need emigration categories for within the 13 Colonies, or from the 13 colonies to other mainland or near North America locations under British control (Ruper's Land, Canada (after 1763), Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Bermuda, Florida (after 1763)). It might be worth having a category for those who moved from the British West Indies to the 13 Colonies, and 1 for those who moved from the 13 Colonies to the British West Indies though.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:36, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

The Kingdom of Prussia mess
That is all I can call this. We currently have Category:People from the Kingdom of Prussia

that has as sub-cats both Kingdom of Prussia and Prussian categories. I really wish I could figure out how to appeal the very broad edit limits that were placed on me that captured Category issues, even though the discussion thry started from had nothing to do with categories, but I have not been able to. What we need to do is either decide that Prussian people specifically applies only to certain meanings of Prussian, and to make all the categories use that name, or to apply the Kingdom of Prussia form to all articles. I had forgotten that the Immigrants to the Kingdom of Prussia cat had not existed before and went to recreate it. On the other hand only 2 people participated at all in the Category discussion, 3 if you count the non-administrative close, so treating it as a huge consensus I was going against seems over the top. I am really trying to avoid escalation in this matter. I have changed the one edit I did to the new Category, and have said I sincely apologize for the disruption I caused. I really wish Wikipedia was a place where correcting a mistake quickly like I did here would mean the issue would go away. However I think it will not. I think we need a clear decision on what terms we will use related to Prussia. Personally I think the fact that in the 19th-century there was a Province of Prussia within the Kingdom of Prussia makes the term too ambiguous. I know some think the continuance of Prussia as the Free State of Prussia from 1918-1945 makes the Prussian naming more useful. I do not think we want to categorize the people immigrating to the unit of Prussia in this category all the way down to 1945.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:37, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
 * We have both an article on Prussia which assumes that the primary use of the term is for the state that existed from 1525-1947, and also Kingdom of Prussia, which existed from 1701-1918. There is also Brandenburg-Prussia. That exists from 1618-1701 and is described as a "historiographical domain". It looks to me like current scholarship would suggest we refer to Brandenburg-Prussia as having subjects etc. In the 1618-1701 time period, and that referring to pre-1701 Immigrants to Prussia might be a bit overly narrow, at least after 1618. I am not sure there are any good answers on the mess related to Prussia. I am thinking we may need to find a forum larger than Cf D to discuss this.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:56, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I just realized in August 2022 you successfully proposed renaming a Category named People from Prussia to People from the Kingdom of Prussia. There were only 3 participants there. That Category may have started out naned Prussians. The fact that this previous precedent seems to be ignored further down the tree is very interesting to me.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:10, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Invitation to Cornell study on Wikipedia discussions
Hello Marcocapelle,

I’m reaching out as part of a Cornell University academic study investigating the potential for user-facing tools to help improve discussion quality within Wikipedia discussion spaces (such as talk pages, noticeboards, etc.). We chose to reach out to you because you have been highly active on various discussion pages.

The study centers around a prototype tool, ConvoWizard, which is designed to warn Wikipedia editors when a discussion they are replying to is getting tense and at risk of derailing into personal attacks or incivility. More information about ConvoWizard and the study can be found at our research project page on meta-wiki.

If this sounds like it might be interesting to you, you can use this link to sign up and install ConvoWizard. Of course, if you are not interested, feel free to ignore this message.

If you have any questions or thoughts about the study, our team is happy to discuss! You may direct such comments to me or to my collaborator, Cristian_at_CornellNLP.

Thank you for your consideration.

--- Jonathan at CornellNLP (talk) 17:48, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

More on Prussia
I just realize we have both the category People from the Duchy of Prussia and Ducal Prussian people. Since People from Prussia by century is a subcat of People from the Kingdom of Prussia, I moved the 16th century categories to People from the Duchy of Prussia. The article on Brandenburg-Prussia seems to suggest we may need People from Brandenburg-Prussia. Although maybe having people from the Margrivate of Brandenburg and People from the Duchy of Prussia categorized under the Brandenburg-Prussia Category is enough. However from 1648 the Duchy of Cleeves is also part of Brandenburg-Prussia. I am not sure we have enough articles on people from there to make a unified Category worth it. One possible review would be if we limited People from the Duchy of Prussia and People from the Margrivate of Brandenburg only to people who it makes sense to categorize them pre-1618, and then used People from Brandenburg-Prussia for people who it makes sense to categorize them in 1618-1701 years, would we have more or less Category overlap? The structure is Heather causing.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:29, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Colony of Bajamas people
Most people in the Colony of the Bahamas were neither Indigenous or British in orgin. Most were of African descent. Beyond that there is a difference between a person born in the Bahamas whose family still has connections to Brirltain and thry regularly go back, and one whose family has been resident in the islands for decades. Weather we have enough articles to specify this distinction I am not sure. Some of these British people in British place categories I created by moving people who were in British e patriates in X. Calling a British person resident in a British colony an expatriate seems very odd to me. I maybe should have just moved these people in to the various cats for each colony. I think that is what I have done more recently. Starting about June I adopted a set of procedures that have lead to me trying to avoid creating duplicate categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 08:13, 27 October 2023 (UTC)


 * This edit was done in 2021. We only have 17 people directly in Colony of the Bahamas people. All the subcats are government officials who often were only there a short time. The merger seems very needed. Even if there are a few more articles this is no where near the point where a division by this sort of status is needed. At least not until we get a lot more articles on people notable in the Colony of the Nahamas.John Pack Lambert (talk) 08:24, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Geochemists
I noticed that there are only 2 articles in the category Geochemists from the Russian Empire. I think that the category would best by me upmerged to Chrmists from the Russian Empire. In the process I noticed that many of the 24 subcategories of the category Geochemists that are by nationality are very small. I think 5 have only one article. I am thinking this is a case where we should merge to the general geochemists category and to chemists and any other applicay by nationality subcatery. This fine of splitting categories is not aiding navifmgation.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:22, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

19th-century photographers from the Russian Empire
I do not think we need to subdivide photographers from the Russian Empire by time frame. Photography only develops in the 19th century, and in the Russian Empire mainly after 1850. The category is under developed, but has had members who also ended up in Soviet photographers. I put a note about this on the category talk page. I have to admit I am not sure aby by century subdivisions are needed for the Russian Empire. It existed 196 years, and generally we ask for at least 3 by century divisions. With the Russian Empire really only 2 are reasonable. Be that as it may for some categories, I see absolutely no reason to divide photographers that way.John Pack Lambert (talk) 11:01, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Astronomers from the Russian Empire by century subcats
There are at most 39 articles in the cat structure Astronomers from the Russian Empire. 1 is in the 18th century subcat, a person who lived until 1812. Then 4 are in the 19th century subcat and the other 34 are in the main category. I do not think a by century subcat structure is needed.John Pack Lambert (talk) 11:13, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

British North America
We have Category:Emigrants from British North America and Category:Emigrants from British North America to the United States. I have not created any other sub-categories as of yet, and I hope people avoid creating a sub-category that is too small. My review is only back to 1849. With most of British North America by population becoming Canada in 1867, and by area almost all by 1871 or so, the emigration category may not be that large. Possibly the next biggest sub-cat will be Category:Emigrants from British North America to the United Kingdom, however deciphering who is that and who is really an Expatriate from British North America in the United Kingdom or a returning home Expatriate from the United Kingdom in British North America, maybe called British expatriates in British North America or British people in British North America, and how we can discern which of the 3 an individual belongs in are not easy questions. We need to ensure we do not place categories on people where it is non-defining, non-defining movement between areas that are all under the same governmental structure is quite common, and so we need to avoid categories that are mainly going to capture it. I think we are best off for emigration purposes only dividing Emigrants from British North America by destination country, and upmerging all the specific local colony categories into the parent, but I am pretty sure others would think that the distinction between the various colonies is major. The biggest problem with that is while the terms "Canada West" and "Canada East" are used, they were politically unified as the United Province of Canada from 1841-1867, and Canada East is in many ways culturally the most distinctive colony, but politically it is not distinct in the time frame when we are likely to have the most articles.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:20, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Kingdom of Prussia
It appears that current historiography tends to refer to the political unit that existed from 1618-1701 as Brandenburg-Prussia. In 1701 Brandenburg and Cleves, which were separate areas under the joint Brandenburg-Prussia government become part of the Kingdom of Prussia. So the area immediately nearly triples. It is I believe 1707 when Silesia is added. So the Kingdom of Prussia is much larger by 1715 than even Brandenburg-Prussia was in 1690.John Pack Lambert (talk) 23:06, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Jānis Ilsters
I will admit that maybe my first edit ilon this article was too much. However my second article merely added him to Russian Empire categories. This was reverted on the argument that just because someone lived all their life in the Russian Empire they do not belong in such categories. To me this argument would destroy the very reason we created such categories in the first place. We have the People from the Russian Empire form, and all the other people from x form because these categories are meant to capture all nationals, be they citizens, subjects or what ever else they are called. The whole point of this form is in part to end the unending debates about what exact national identity is best attached to a person. My most recent edit left other national identities alone, and merely added the fully verifiable fact that he lived in the Russian Empire. It was reverted on the grounds that the Russian Empire us nit mentioned in the article. This just does not make sense to me. If I had an article saying someone was born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1805, mentioned other places in Tennessee, and then that the person died in 1869 in Nashville, Tennessee, and that they were a writer, and I put them in American writers based on that fact, would someone revert me because the article did not explicitly say that he was an American? I have mentioned on the talk pagehe also would fit in the People from the Governorate of Courland Category. I am trying to not create a full fight because I know I will be told that it is Aldo not mentioned in the article. If I try to revise the article to clearly satly where he was born was in the governorate of Courland when he was born, I will probably face revision on that. This is exactly the type of situation that caused us to decide on the People from the Russian Empire form, because it merely states where thry were subjects if, not what they were. If we had clear evidence that Ilsters was an expatriate of another country, I would accept merely placing him in Expatriates in the Russian Empire. However there is no evidence if that and less reason to think that. He was a national and subject If the Russian Empire, who wrote in the Latvian language. We use the from the Russian Empire form because there were lots If people in the Russian Empire who were not at all in any way Russian, but their shared being in the Russian Empire makes them a u ified group. If I did place him in the People from the Governorate of Courland Category it might not be reverted, but I am just not willing to directly see.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:50, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Anne of Austria
I wanted to create a category about the Category:Cultural depictions of Anne of Austria, since she has appeared nearly non-stop in novels, films, and television series since the 19th centuy. I noticed that the parent category Category:Anne of Austria was strangely underpopulated for a powerful regent. I added Anne's personal palace, several organizations which she either founded or financed, her diplomatic treaties and meetings, and a papal conclave where she vetoed all the pro-Spanish candidates. Can you see whether I missed anything? Dimadick (talk) 16:34, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Deaths in the Russian Empire
The person going after this tree seems to want to say that we should class deaths in the Russian Empire per the modern country they occurred in, and ignore the fact that when the person died it was in the Russian Empire. I thought the whole idea of deaths by country was that it was according to the country then. So a death in San Diego in 1835 would go under deaths in Mexico, etc. I thought this was the understood way we classified such things. At least if it was a type of death in San Diego for which we had a subcategory for deaths in Mexico. Am I totally wrong? Do we want to classify all deaths whenever they occurred according to existing modern boundaries? The tangent he went on about not referring to people from the Russian Empire and just calling them all Russians Aldo seems off, but it has no direct bearing on deaths since we categorize people by where the death happened not by wghat nationslity they were. So if someone who was an American shot himself on a two day trip to France, and died that moment, he would go in the suicides in France category period. That is hiw these categories work right?John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:11, 9 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I also just noticed that Tuberculosis deaths in Bangladesh is a category with one article, on a person who died in 1873. That is 98 or so years before the formation of Bangladesh.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:03, 9 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Please don't misgender me. I use she/her pronouns. I appreciate you checking with other people about your understanding of category. However, I also think that your description of my discussion about defining as a tangent suggests that you really don't understand how defining works or how it's really essential for categories. Mason (talk) 02:13, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Deaths by country
If what you say is true, that the country of death is not defining and only the subcats that intersect type of death and country of death, then we should probably put container Category labels on each death by country category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:35, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Deaths by country
If what you say is true in regards to the deaths by country only being container categories than we should probably place notices saying such on the parent categories. Currently deaths in France has 28 articles directly in it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:41, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

Deaths from cancer in the Russian Empire
I was able to get this category to 8 entries. John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:56, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Wallachian innkepers
I have to admit I am not seeing why we want to divide a category with 15 articles by anything. Not every occupation needs a by nation subcategory. I am also thinking for innkeepers what us defining is where the inn is, not where the person is from. This is not like the modern multi-national hotel system. The innkeepers become essentially local even if they migrate there. I am also a little worried that some will try to add too many people. Also do we actually have a clear way to say x person was an innkeeper, y person was. That said, Peggy Eaton's father may count as an inn keeper. John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:48, 10 November 2023 (UTC)


 * depending on the Wikipedia article, the place that Margaret O'Neil was raised, that was operated by her father, is called either a hotel or a boarding house and tavern. We need to be careful to categorize occupations based on what they are, not what they are called.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:54, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
 * looking at the article on Chester Harding (painter), it is not looking like his being an innkeeper was defining. We are not suppose to categorize people by every job that might be name drooped in the article. We are supposed to limit categorization to jobs that the person did a significant amount or time, or that doing them made them notable. So a 1 term member of a state legislature, or even one who died in office halfway through his first term at 66, who had never run for any political office before, and been a farmer for over 50 years, still goes in the politician Category. So my guess is we do not currently have 15 articles on innkeepers for whom the career was defining. There are maybe 2cmore people who it is not clear why they are there.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:05, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Navigating JPL's out of process category spree
I don't know what to do about JPL's recent out of process category spree, where he emptied 16 categories for children's authors. He's convinced himself that he can empty categories with 1 page in them. Most of them are women writers, and wrote for at least one of them "Better conformed to ERGS". I'm at a loss. Mason (talk) 03:46, 13 November 2023 (UTC)


 * It is a clear violation of ERGS rules to have someone in the category Colombian women children's writers and not have them in Colombian children's writers. The ERGS non-diffusing rule says that for every time we have an article in a gender related category by occupation, we need to have them in a non-gender related category for that occupation. There is also a last rung rule. No category should have as its inly sub-category an ERGS category. Based on this I think 1-there is not enough sub-categories of Children's writers by nationality to justify having subcategories for women's children writers at all. We would be best upmerging them all to Women's children's writers and Children's writers by nationality, ensuring that thry remain in the applicable women's writer cats by their nationslity, which all these edits did. 2-We really have no benefit from having very small children's writers by nationality. All these edits endured the person remained in the relevant footman writers cat. I will admit I probably should have sought support for this, but no one was removed from all by occupation, women's writers by given nationality, or given nationality and writer trees. These all end up being too narrow of categories for us to need. I really think we should upmerge at least all Children's writers by nationality categories that do not have at least 4 articles. No article was removed either from children's writers or from the given writers by nationality tree.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:54, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 28 of the 110 categories under Children's writers by nationality have under 5 articles of direct content. Since all 28 of these categories only have a gender specific sub-cat, if they were formed correctly using ERGS rules, then all have or fewer articles. This seems to small to justify. The most extreme is Thoma Çami, I added him to Children's Writers from the Ottoman Empire. I did an extensive search though all nationalities that might include Ottoman Empire residents to see if I could find more content. I found no other potential cases and concluded this was not a good Category. Since I had just created that category that day, I removed the article from that category, and moved it to a more general Writers from the Ottoman Empire Category, only to have my action reverted. This makes me feel trapped. I was trying to be responsible and not leave an undeveloped Category that lacked growth potential. John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:06, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I am sorry that you feel trapped that I bundled your category in with the rest. At the time, I didn't realize you had made it. I appreciate your efforts to remove an unpopulated category that you had created. I'll revert the revert for the ottoman empire one, as that seems functionally different.
 * But please understand that you can't just unilaterally delete long standing categories out of process. But please understand that you can't just empty categories that you feel are in violation of EGRS. It is disruptive. It looks like you are trying to circumvent categories for discussion  and the appearance of that does not reflect well on any ban appeal.

As I have offered before, I am happy to nominate small categories on your behalf if you ask me to. But please stop gutting small categories that you did not make. Mason (talk) 00:48, 14 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Category:Angolan children's writers
 * Category:Angolan women children's writers
 * Category:Beninese women children's writers
 * Category:Children's writers from the Ottoman Empire
 * Category:Colombian children's book illustrators
 * Category:Colombian women children's writers
 * Category:Dominican Republic children's writers
 * Category:Jordanian women children's writers
 * Category:Macedonian children's writers
 * Category:Nicaraguan women children's writers
 * Category:Salvadoran women children's writers
 * Category:Saint Lucian children's writers
 * Category:Senegalese women children's writers
 * Category:Singaporean children's writers
 * Category:Togolese children's writers
 * Category:Uzbekistani children's writers

Confederation of the Rhine did not include Prissia
Someone pointed out that one of the articles in the Suicides in the Kingdom of Prussia involved someone who died at the time that the Confederation of the Rhine existed. However Prussia was not part of the Confedeeation of the Rhine, so this is not relevant. Beyonsmd this, we do not categorize deaths by nationslity, but by country. We categorize by where the people died, not by nationality. If an American person dies in a car crash in Belgium caused by a drunk Swedish motorist, that goes in Auto-related deaths in Belgium, or whatever the exact name is, not in the American auto-eelated deaths or Swedish auto-related deaths. Although if he survived the collision, is transpirted across the border to a French hospital, and thrn dies of the injuries in the accident, I know have a headache, but think that it goes in auto-related deaths in France, and if we want it otherwise we need to formulate category names as deaths caused by anto-accidents in Belgium to make it clear they are by place of accident not place of death. The point is that death categories are by country, not by nationality. It does not matter what nationality a person is when they die, it matters only where they die.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:42, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
 * which article is this about? Marcocapelle (talk) 05:28, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
 * hmm, suicides in the Kingdom of Prussia has one person who died in 1822 and the other in 1854. So I am not sure why anyone brought up the Confederation of the Rhine.John Pack Lambert (talk) 07:25, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Trivial cat and death categories
The guidelines under Trivial cat say that we should not among other things categorize people by "the place of a person's death". If that is so, then how do we justify having so many categories under say Category:Deaths in the United States. For exaple we have 9 articles directly in Deaths in Tennessee, I am not sure how we could argue any of these are not by place. I also think both deaths in Arizona Territory and Deaths in New Mexico Territory need to go, I created them and am tempted to just empty them, but that might be disruptive. However if we have decided the place of death is trivial, I think we need to take a long hard look at all our deaths cats, and I see very little justificaton for any of them. Even with suicides, if we do think we need to subdivide suicides in some way, maybe we should go to classifying them by the nationality of the person committing suicide and not do it by the location if which the suicide actually occurred.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:38, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * I just realized for about 10 states we have both a Death in that state and a deaths in that state category. I think we want to scrap all the Deaths in X state, merge any justifiable sub-cats to Death in X state, and remove any direct articles. Even the disease-related deaths and infections-disease deaths categories should probably become contained categories, and only deaths under specific diseases should be categorized directly. There it would be decided on a case by case basis if the intersection of that specific disease and death is defining enough that we would have a category for it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:42, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * my first thought is we should containerize all of them (apart from list articles). Marcocapelle (talk) 17:30, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
 * There are some articles that are specifically about the death of person x, or murder of person x. This include articles like Death of Igor Stachowiak, or Death of Caroline Mwatha, so the rules for placing those articles may be odd. Then there is the deaths in Belgium category, where it has articles at present by they are all the articles on Belgium in a specific year. They may mention notable people who died that year, but it seems an odd placement to but 1937 deaths in Belgium as an article under the category Deaths in Belgium.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:27, 15 November 2023 (UTC)


 * A few of these articles directly under deaths in a given place may be there because they were upmerged when a more specific category was upmerged, without considering whether the articles would be placed well in the higher level target.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:28, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Turkish philosophers by century
I thought we had decided we should not use by century categories with only 2 just to split current people from dead peiole. This would indicate we would not split by century sny nationality that existed only after 1900. So I woykd think Turkish, which connects people to the currebt nation state of Turkey, should not be split by century. The same with some in Africa that only emerge in the 1960s or with colonization. It would not make sense to have Zimbabwean categories by century, when there is no Zimbabwe pre-1980 or so for example.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:22, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

An attempt to block my editing
There is now an attempt to block my editing Wikipedia for 3 months because I made a comment on an editors talk page pointing out that Tonga was not formed in 1870, but has existed since at least 1845. This is because in August 2022 when I was blocked for article deletion related discussions they banned me for all participation in some general forums. However the topic ban there only related to article deletion discussions. This seems crazy. I made just as extensive comments related to other categories to other users. This ability to impose individual sanctions with no relation to actual behavior, but as an ever expanding block on some users from doing anything seems pretty extreme. I am very depressed, discouraged and disheartened about this. Especially since there is no warning at all, just a massive disproportionate response and a call to ban me for literally three months. The editor does not interact with me at all, he just goes straight for punishment. This is so discouraging. I was trying to be collegial and engage with the complex issue of when countries come to be, and all people can see is punish, punish, punish.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:42, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Hochstetter page suggestion for edit
Dear Marcocapelle, as a long-time editor, would you kindly check these two new Hochstetter research papers and include them if/where you see fit on his page? As one of the authors, I naturally cannot do this and the Public Interest would be served by having his page up to date with his new paradigm. Thanks and Regards, Rex Bunn https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374195763_Ferdinand-von-Hochstetter's-November-1860-Folio-of-New-Zealand-survey-data-and-the-location-of-the-Pink-and-White-Terraces https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374531244_The_Eighth_Wonder_of_the_World_in_New_Zealand_Seismic_studies_confirm_the_new_Hochstetter_paradigm 122.148.162.95 (talk) 02:33, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

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Quick word
Sorry about the very quick and rather rude response to your "Oppose" for my speedy rename! Sometimes, I respond before I can even process the reply. It's a really bad habit of mine. My apologies. Omnis Scientia (talk) 22:21, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Question about Category:Politicians
Hello Marcocapelle. I have a question. Do you think Category:Politicians should be treated as a topic category, a set category or a combination (WP:CAT)? This is related to the recently closed discussion but no one replied to that pointer. Regards, Thinker78  (talk) 00:05, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * a combination. Marcocapelle (talk) 03:52, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I believe this is related to . Best,<span id="HouseBlaster:1701917489605:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> <b style="font-family:Courier New;">House Blaster </b>talk 02:51, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Category:As a service has been nominated for deletion
Category:As a service has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. —Alalch E. 22:07, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

CfD nomination at
A category or categories you have created have been nominated for possible deletion, merging, or renaming. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at  on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Qwerfjkl talk  10:54, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Films about siblicide
It looks to me like 10 of the films in this category, at least, are about killings of college students connecred with a soroity or fraternity. Another was about a killing of a group of cheerleaders, but I removed it. I do not think they belonged under the old title either though.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:16, 12 December 2023 (UTC)


 * None of the films seem to have any lack of categories. The "films about" tree seems to at times excessively categorize all films, no matter how little the film is about the thing in question.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:17, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Viceroalty of Peru
The Viceroyalty of Peru included what became the Viceroyalty of Rio dela Plata until the later was organized in 1776. Prior to that it included much of modern Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay and Urguay. I am not sure how the boundaries compared with the modern border with Brazil, and much of southern Chile and Argentina and maybe some other areas were effectively not under Spanish rule, but Buenas Aires at least for much of that time was, I believe there was a brief British occupation, but we generally ignore such brief occupations when formatting categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:27, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Spanish people of the colonial Philippines
for what it is worth 1 article here died in the Spanish East Indies, the other in Spain. I am not sure we can really tell emigrants from expatriates within a unified political regime. There is a reason why British people in colonial India (which probably would be better named British people in British India, we do not want people who were only in French India or Portuguese India, etc), mixes together British people born there, British people who went there and stayed till death, and British people who weren't there for significant time and then came back. In other colonies, like New South Wales or Massachusetts, so much of the population, especially in the early days is British people there (well Massachusetss Kingdom of England people), the categories may so closely overlap with the population itself, that thry are as bad as splitting Han Chinese people out. In the Philippines this is more why we do not have an Americans in Hawai, or maybe more doable Americans in the Twrriory of Hawaii Category. In the 19th century the Spanish East Indies were a province of Spain. There are huge distinctions, but in 1910 there were huge distinction between Hawaii and the actual United States. I do not think emigrant or expatriate quite describe people going from Spain to the Philippines, and for now we are probably best off just saying the people were subjects/residents of the Spanish East Indies. There is a clear difference between someone moving from Spain to American or independent Philippines and someone moving from Spain to the Spanish East Indies that are a Spanish province. What next, is someone going to try calling Kipling a Pakistani emigrant to the United Kingdom? I also have to say I find it odd we have a People from Colonial Puerto Rico Category that acts like Puerto Rico in 1880 was a Colony but in 1920 it was not. Modern Puerto Rico might not fit being called a Colony, maybe, but to say it stopped being a Colony in 1898 seems at a minimum pushing a hard to defend POV. I think it would be far more neutral to call the Category People from Spanish Puerto Rico.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:48, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Place of burial
If place of death is not defining enough to categorize by, then why is place of burial? I am suspecting that what we would say is that some places it is notable who is buried there. Even then I think that would be better handled by a list than by a category. Even if we keep the categories, I am thinking we should have far fewer. I think we should limit burial categories at the most to only by cemetery, and make categories above that level groupings of cemetery by burial. I think we should make categories like Burial in Michigan container categories, and maybe if we do not to keep them rename them to indicate more clearly that they are meant to group cemeteries not individuals. We do not have a category "alumni of high schools in Michigan", we only categorize people by the high school they are alumni of when we have an adequate group of alumni to form a category, I think we should use the same approach to burials.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:30, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

British North America
British North America included multiple colonies in what is now British Columbia, as well as skall ones in the Maritimes. The Prairie area it is not clear what to call what was there. Also, because ot was a politically unified area, movement immigrating there, or before emigrating from there can often be non-defining. I am sure for sone people the only thing we can categorize well is movement across the border of British control in North Anerica. I am beginning to wonder if it makes any more sense to have Immigrants to the Province of Canada that it would to have Immigrants to New York state or immigtants to Dakota Territory. Or Immigrants to California, Immigrants to New Mexico Territory and so on. Most immigrant categories reflect movement from one country to another, or at least involved Territories controlled externally but with clear boundaries and no contiguousness like Puerto Rico or French Polynesia. While British North America was not sternly controlled, I do not think the various colonies are really defining enough to have sub-cats. The Thirteen Colonies were not centrally controlled, but we have many categories that group people from all of them, and the only cases where we do not for emigration I believe are English emigration, and even then only to Massachusetts Bay Colony. 13 colonies needs to only apply to them under British rule, the New Netherland and New Sweden related colonies are something else. The Massachusetts Bay Clony category is justifiable mainly on size grounds. On the other hand in 1635 almost all residents of Nassachusetts Bay Colony over age 5 were Immigrants from Egland (at least from the Kingdom of England which also included Wales), so I am not sure it is worth having the Category at all.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:32, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Jewish Americans
So just opening this by saying I am NOT canvassing (I was accused of this once before when it wasn't my intention).

Okay so I have been working on the American Jews category for over a month now. I was actually thinking about creating one category for Category:Jewish American filmmakers to add screenwriters, composers, directers etc. into it. I'm also in favor of expanding Category:Jewish film people (though renamed) to add non-Americans.

But since it is at Cfd, should I halt that or can I continue with it? I've told my view which is keep the categories in part because there are other similar ones AND it helps in categorization. I actually think Category:American Jews by occupation should be expanded because the 20th and 21st century Category:American Jews by century are overpopulated because most notable Jewish Americans tend NOT to fit in the other categories.

Just asking for your opinion on this. Omnis Scientia (talk) 10:28, 21 December 2023 (UTC)


 * thanks for asking! Personally I wouldn't really favor if you'd go ahead because I consider Jews to be an ethnoreligious group and most of these occupation categories are unrelated to religion or to specific ethnic issues. But on the other hand, if you would go ahead, if would not be out of process because the process is that you don't need anyone's endorsement to start a new category, you merely run the risk it gets CfD'd. Marcocapelle (talk) 11:49, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that these categories are to be made if they help with categorization, especially if they get too big (and Category:20th-century American Jews is quite large). Naturally, I'm not in favor of making one for every occupation but enough that people can navigate more easily through them. If that makes sense. Omnis Scientia (talk) 12:10, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
 * My approach is that I make them IF there are corresponding categories for other ethnic groups in the United States (e.g. Latino and Hispanic Americans or African Americans). Omnis Scientia (talk) 12:11, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

People from Kosovo
I am getting the feeling no one knows for sure what demonym to use for people from Kosovo. I suspect we need to stop pretending anyone does, and rename the Category to People from Kosovo, and follow suit with its subcats. I have a feeling some of the terms are too ethnically loaded for anything else to work.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:32, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Spanish people of the colonial Philippines
I do not think this category is named right. I think we should use "in" not "of". It is a quasi-expateiate category. My bigger issue is that "colonial Philippines" could be said to include the Philippines under American rule until about 1946. We have a similar problem with "colonial Puerto Rico" categories. Yes, the US never actually used the term "colony", but control of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, and Hawaii for that matter, was clearly colonial, especially from 1898-1910. The same can even be argued for some mainland Territories. While 1930s Philippines and modern Puerto Rico are less explicitly "colonial", the reason for the category breaks is not a change in form of government, but a change in controlling power. This especially applies to Spanish people there. A Spanish person in the Philuppines from 1912-1935 could be argued to have been in the "colonial Philippines" in a defining way, but that would be in the American Philippines. Things would get even more fun if we had a Colonial Yap category, since that was a Soanish, then a German, then a Japanese, and then an American colony before becoming independent in about 1976. This strongly points to a need to name categories to reflect the names used at the time. Likewise I do not think we want a "People from colonial New York category" that would include people who only were resident in the Dutch New Amsterdam Colony, nor would we want "People from Delaware colony" to include people who only lived in New Sweden. This is why I think Peolle from the Spanish East Indies is the beat category name. Yes, we have virtually no notable people from the Spanish East Indies outside what is today the Philuppines, but by using that name we make it clear what we mean.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:40, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Fiction by time of setting
Does it make sense to treat the contents of 2001 a Space Odyessey and a novel written in 2023 set diring the events of 9/11 as if they have anything in common just becsuse thry are both set in 2001? I think all worls set in the future the year of setting is arbitrary, and to act like this is griupable with works set in the known past is midleading. It might be possible to write an article of "works set in 2001" that discusses how thd prtraysl of the year chsnged over time, although you would need to publish such an article elsewhere and then create a Wikipedia article from that,unless people have (it might be useful to havd a broader scope than 1 year). However I do not think that it is a reasonable grouping. Essentially any year has 3 setting groups. Works written before that year that predict it (I believe "Looking backward" predicts or hopes on 2000 as well), fictional works written in that year, set in the present, and works wriiten later set in the past. Sometimes you grt works that are remakes that are still set in the same year from the past. In a few cases you even have works that start out set in the present, but when they are redone they keep being cast in the present of that work. Guys and Dolls comes to mind. The Music Man is an example of the first phenomenon. Of course, the majority of fiction has less than clear time setting. Most is basically set in the present it is created in. I do not think it makes sense to merge future, present and past set works into one great whole. With future set works it might actually matter more how far in the future the work is set from the creator, than what time period the creator places that work in. In fact some works have very odd time settings because of the mix of how they are created and published. Any long running comic book like Batman or Superman has an unworkable chronology. John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:44, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Merry Christmas!
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Happy holidays!
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P Aculeius (talk) is wishing you Seasons Greetings! Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's Solstice or Xmas, Eid, Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus or even the Saturnalia, this is a special time of year for almost everyone!

Spread the holiday cheer by adding to your friends' talk pages.

P Aculeius (talk) 13:08, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Happy holidays
<div style="border-style:solid; border-color:#FF4646; background-color:#F6F0F7; border-width:2px; text-align:left; padding:7px; border-radius:1em; box-shadow: 0.1em 0.1em 0.5em rgba(0,0,0,0.75);;" class="plainlinks">Happy Holidays text.png Hello Marcocapelle: Enjoy the holiday season&#32;and winter solstice if it's occurring in your area of the world, and thanks for your work to maintain, improve and expand Wikipedia. Cheers, Qwerfjkl  talk  22:39, 25 December 2023 (UTC) Spread the WikiLove; use {{subst:Season's Greetings}} to send this message <span id="Qwerfjkl:1703543994534:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt">— Qwerfjkl  talk  22:39, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

John Sullivan Deas
John Sullivan Deas seems to be a clear candidate for "people best described as emigrants to British North America". He moved to an area that was I think the Colony of British Columbia. The eact form of British rule in that area was often changing though. It clear was not Canada,at the time that entity ended about where Ontario does today. This move was in 1862. It would not be until 1870 that Canada extended to the West Coast. We should name categories in ways that are not anachronistic.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:43, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Immigrants to the Colony of New South Wales
I am beginning to doubt if this category makes sense. It seems that the vast majority of articles we have in Colony of New South Wales were immigrants. Most came from the United Kingdom, at least originally. Many stopped in India, New Zealand or another British possession on the way. A few made short stops in the United States. A few others on various South American countries. I am beginning to think this is too common to bother categorizing by. I know I started such a category, but I am not sure populating it is worth while. I am thinking that Colony of New South Wales people is on course to be too large to be useful, although the politicians sub-cat has potential to keep things in check.John Pack Lambert (talk) 06:52, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Category:Persecution of Christians in Iran has been nominated for deletion
Category:Persecution of Christians in Iran has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. GnocchiFan (talk) 12:50, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Colonial Florida
I think we face a problem that British Florida and Spanish Florida at times included areas much beyond the modern limits of Florida. In the late 16th-century Florida rwached up the coast to Virginia for a short time, and it had long presence in coastal Georgia and North Carolina. The Brirish colony of Georgia was essentially created by didplacing Spanish coastal presence. This was light coastal presence, but it did exist. On the other hand in the 1750s you havd Muskogee people in what is now the Florida panhandle who is no way were part of Spanish Florida. I do not know if we have articles on any people so incvolved, but it is an issue. In 1763 things shift the other way. British Florida takes in Biloxi and other firmerly French coastal areas, including some of modern Louisiana. Natchez I believs is also functionslly in British Florida. Natchez is disputed between Spain and the US from 1783 on, but until about 1811 West Florida, including parts of modern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama is a functionally Spanish place. French Florida also did exist. I think the most logically solution is to create French Florida, Spanish Florida and British Florida categories and needed sub-cats, and place article in the ones that apply.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:04, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Category:Railway stations scheduled to open in 2023


A tag has been placed on Category:Railway stations scheduled to open in 2023 indicating that it is currently empty, and is not a disambiguation category, a category redirect, a featured topics category, under discussion at Categories for discussion, or a project category that by its nature may become empty on occasion. If it remains empty for seven days or more, it may be deleted under section C1 of the criteria for speedy deletion.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and removing the speedy deletion tag.  Cards   84664   01:56, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Forien-born
Does foreign born mean "born outside foo"", or does it mean "born as not a nationsl of foo". I am not sure it would be defining under either definition. We would want to know which it means to even consider keeping such categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:42, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Fictional black people
There are some people in fiction who are described as black, but who are humans not connected with the earth, but in fantasy and quasi-factastic settings. Lando Calriusian comes to mind the fastest. The two actors who played Lando were African-American, but the character is not. I am not sure this would be enough to justify the Category, but we need to keep in mind some number of fictional characters either have no known ancestry, all we have to go on is their appearance, or they have ancestors that in no way connect to real things on the earth.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:54, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

People from Wyoming Territory, etc.
I think it is best not to use the, except with Territory of Orleans and Territory of Hawaii (although I do think we should use Hawai'i). The same I think applies to universities. One says "I went to the University of Michigan" but "I went to Wayne State University". I think you only need an article when you have Territory at the front of the name. Per out article is seems that the formal names were "Territory of New Mexico", "Territory of Wyoming", etc., but that in almost all cases, except Orleans and Hawaii, the main usage is New Mexico Territory, Wyoming Territory, etc. I think using "the" makes these clunky, especially since we already have "people from" at the start. "People from New Mexico Territory", "Peiole from Wyoming Territory", etc flows well enough.John Pack Lambert (talk) 00:27, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

occupations from British North America
Since you have already been notified of this, I would just point out I have made some relevant comments related to these nomination on my talk page.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Report on former countries and colonies people category names
I am about to put a report on the category names for people by former country and colony on my talk page. You might find it of interest.John Pack Lambert (talk) 14:13, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Canada before 1867
Upper Canada and Lower Canada only existed until 1841. After that they were combined into the Province of Canada. People generally referred to the part of the province that became Ontario (there was some of Ontario in Rupert's Land) as "Canada East", and the part that became some of Quebec as "Canada East". The boundary changes to modern boundaries significantly post-date 1867, so Canada West and Canada East just name change in 1867. My impression is they did not exist as political units though. This book https://books.google.com/books?id=UEhWpAgl2l8C&pg=PA229&dq=%22British+North+American+people%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjQo_mbycKDAxVCpIkEHT4HBz4Q6AF6BAgGEAM#v=onepage&q=%22British%20North%20American%20people%22&f=false suggests to me that modern scholars use "British North America" to refer to the area as a whole.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:31, 4 January 2024 (UTC) pre-Confederation Canadian businesspeople" and "pre-Confederation Canadian politicians". I am not sure what their current scope is. Whatever they are it is not as horrible as the "American colonial" categories that seek to unify things in French, Spanish and British colonies (and maybe Swedish and Dutch as well) that became the United States. This is literally rhetroactively imposing decisions in 1848 and other times before they were made (and maybe even in 1898). The current standard in historiography and related disciplines is to refer to places by either their contemporary designation, or a designation that allows modern readers to understand the scope of the place involved coherently. Treating the founding of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and especially the founders of Santa Fe, New Mexico, as if they have a connection with founders of Boston more than those of El Carmen, Nueva Leon, just because of boundaries that were created by war and treaty over 2 centuries later is one of the most ludicrous things I have ever seen. We have a category American colonial people and it opens with this odd statement "These categories include people who were notable colonists in the regions of North America which would become the United States, that were in British (Thirteen Colonies), Dutch, French, Russian, Spanish or Swedish colonies." There is just so much wrong with that. A-we should be categorizing people by political alligience, not by origin. So a person like Pocahontas, who functioned as a part of the society of Virginia Colony for part of her life, should go in a category for People from colonial Virginia. On the other hand, a Shawnee who lived his life outside the direct control of the colonial government would not go in such a category, but the issue needs to be based on being a part of a society. 2-I think "colonist" is just too loaded a term. 3-Even if we could improve the wording for those parts, this whole idea is just crazy. Especially with Russian in there, we are imposing the results of things long after the fact on an earlier time period.John Pack Lambert (talk) 13:32, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * My general experience is that it is hard to tell if references to "Canada" before 1867 mean "British North America" or just the Province of Canada/Upper and Lower Canada. I did read some letters from someone who lived in Canada West just before he joined the Union Army, where that is the term he used. Much stuff about the Canada deals with Canada then. Pre-1891 there is no political unit at all called Canada (the Province of Quebec exists from 1763 until 1791), so references to the American Revolution in Canada need to be parsed differently. However the War of 1812 basically all happens in Upper Canada, maybe a little in Lower Canada, or not in Canada by any definition. The Underground Railroad is usually said to have ended in "Canada", but since it is most active 1841-1861, that generally is a direct reference to the "Province of Canada", or at least can be. I have David W. Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass. The term "British North America" is not indexed, the first reference to "Canada" occurs on p. 190 in reference to Douglass' 1847 move to Rochester, New York in which it is said was a "significant haven for refugees on their way to Canada". Does the author mean the Province of Canada, or is Blight using "Canada" to refer to the modern boundaries? It is not clear, but the people involved are going to the Province of Canada at least initially. We also have to bear in mind that common name is not the always controlling factor, especially for category names. Categories are supposed to group articles by something that holds them together, not by shared name. The most obvious examples are that in the US at least basically during the whole existence of the Soviet Union, but I can document this with my 1967 worldbook, the term "Russia" was used as a synonym for the Soviet Union, and "Russians" as a synonym of "people from the Soviet Union". This will not do for categorizing things. Also, I have an atlas from 1911 that has a page entitled "Turkey in Europe". "Turkey" was the common name for the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and early 20th century. We do not use it to categorize things connected with the Ottoman Empire, and do not call such people "Turkish" because that would be unworkably confusing. For what it is worth we have categories on
 * I just added Pierre Grenier to the Medical Doctors from British North America category, and to the People of the Province of Canada category. He was notpreviously in any medical doctor related category, but the article says that he was. So a pure deletion of these categories would at least in some cases remove people entirely from the relevant occupational tree. I am starting to think at least for the Province of Canada there might be enough people in the writers, medical doctors and lawyers trees that having such categories would be justified for that location specifically. Lawyers especially since it matters a very large amount where a person was a lawyer.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:45, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I also think it is very out of process to go over these three categories but totally ignore the pre-confederation Canada politicians and pre-confederation Canada businespeople categories.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:47, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Polymaths by nationality
It looks like there was actually a previous CfD discussion that deleted these categories before.John Pack Lambert (talk) 16:23, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

of v from
I noticed that someone is trying to argue that "from" means the person was born in a place. I thought this was an overly narrow use of the term, and clearly not what we want because mere birth in a place alone is not normally defining. I just came across the article on Levi T. Griffin and noticed it states he "was a politician from the U.S. state of Michigan." This despite the fact that he was born in New York, so it is clear that many Wikipedia editors feel you can be "from" a place that you were not born. On the other hand using "of" to mean "from" is really confusing because "of" can also represent non-locational connections, thus a "historian of France" would normally be one who studies France, not by definition one who lives in France. I took a course from a "historian of France" (at least one, maybe 2) who was not a "historian from France", and while I have taken courses from "historians from the United States" who were also "historians of the United States", I have also taken course from "historians form the United States", who were only historians of China, France, Germany etc. at least if "of" is used as indicating subject of study. Some "of" formations are mostly going to connect to the location, but enough are ambiguous I think it is best we use from, at least in any case where a demonym is confusing, unclear, built using a compound name, rarely if ever used, or disputed.John Pack Lambert (talk) 21:15, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Polling places
The potential mess here is worse than the number of polling places in 1 year. At one point where I lived we used 1 place for most elections and another for school district elections. Because of the rule of once a category applies, always, that means that any place that has ever been used as a polling place, can vmbe in the Category forever.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:11, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 December 28
Does Category:Fictional characters from the future look good to you? Not sure I created it quite right.<span id="Qwerfjkl:1704471221753:User_talkFTTCLNMarcocapelle" class="FTTCmt"> — Qwerfjkl  talk  16:13, 5 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I added it to another parent category and to two WikiProjects, but in general it looked perfectly fine. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:28, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Revolutionaries from the Russian Empire
I am thinking that a revolutionary is defined as a person seeking to create a revolution against an existing government. So it matters a lit what government they are waging war againdt. Many in the Russian Revolutionary category died in 1916 or earlier. Others left the Russian Empire and never came back. Some who did come back were happy with the new government and so only wages revolution against the Russian Empire. I am thinking though that things get so messy during the Russian Revolution, that a general title of "Revolutionary" makes no sense. I think we would best be served by limiting Revolutionaries from the Russian Empire, to those who clearly can be deacribed as revolutionaries based on actions taken before the start of 1917, although maybe we should say they have to have been involved in the 1905 revolution or earlier, then have a "People of the Russian Revolution", for people who fomented that event, then have "Revolutionaries from the Soviet Union" and then limit Russian Revolutionaries to post-1990 people. I am not sure if would even have 5.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I just found Mullanur Waxitov who was involved in the 1905 Revolution, so I think I was justified in placing him in Revolutionaries from the Russian Empire. He was already in Tatar Revolutionaries, which along with Bashkir revolutionaries are sub-cats of "Russian Revolutionaries". I am not sure that is coherent parenting at all. What is clear is we have people who we have articles in eho were involved in the 1905 Revolution against the Russian Empire who were not ethnic Russians. Some of these things look like "These people come from what is today Russia, so we will call them Russia based on that and ignore political boundaries, self identity and anything else but modern borders". That is not a very good way to do categories. I have seen people who died in the 19th-century placed in Pakistan and Bangladesh categories for similar reasons.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:58, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Then the category has people like Vladimir Antonov-Saratovsky in it. He was sent to prison for revolutionary activities by the government of the Russian Empire in 1908. Being a revolutionary is 100% about opposing the current government. There are few categories that more clearly link to the current government.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:38, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

More on revolutionaries
I wonder if "Revolutionaries against the Russian Empire" would be a better name. At the same time I do not think we have any coherent way to split rebels and revolutionaries. A lot of the people in English Revolutionaries are described as rebels and in the rebels category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:36, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Heads up that you may be making errors with mass edits
E.g. adding the CfD template twice: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category%3AAmerican_ice_hockey_players_by_state&diff=1195107854&oldid=1195107849 I haven't investigated other edits, but at least this one was evidently a goof. ―Justin ( koa v f ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:04, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * thanks for the heads up. This was apparently listed twice in the CfD nomination. Multiple editors were involved in this nomination, so it may have become a bit messy. Fortunately it does not have fatal consequences because once the discussion is closed the bot will remove all CfD tags. Marcocapelle (talk) 10:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Sure: better two notices than zero. ―Justin ( koa v f ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 10:30, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

BNA Lawyers
I’ve not been involved in CfD before - now that the discussion is closed, do you want me to do the merge as I outlined? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 00:11, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * that would be great, yes please. Marcocapelle (talk) 07:12, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The discussion didn’t address the doctors and writers in much detail. I’ll take a look at them as well, but if I have any questions will post them on the working manual page. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 12:38, 13 January 2024 (UTC)