Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 September 18



Category:Cult suicides

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The result of the debate was keep. Kbdank71 16:20, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * cult suicides


 * Nominator's rationale:
 * Object This category survived a CfD less than a month ago. It is also inappropriate to depopulate a category prior to a CfD. ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 23:46, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Object, likewise -- Lonewolf BC 04:50, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep The subject is certainly notable, and it is hard to know what else to call these without being long-winded. Johnbod 01:51, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per Words_to_avoid. Wryspy 22:58, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * WP:WTA is a style guideline, not a content policy. Is that the only reason to delete it? ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 23:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. The statement by Cgingold less than a month ago in the previous CfD is so well written that I'll copy it here: Category is properly named, serves a valid navigational function, and is not being abused. It's certainly true that we don't want the term "cult" to be casually strewn about. So use of the word in the title of a category demands careful scrutiny. However, proper and careful use of the term is not prohibitted. The purpose of Words to avoid is to reign in casual and/or POV-pushing use of the term. In point of fact, each of the articles that have been placed in this category pertains to one of four specific cases of cult suicides, all of which are uncontroversial in terms of being so designated. If ever there was clear-cut validation of the term "cult", it was by the very suicides that made these particular groups so notorious. In addition, there are quite a few articles which legitimately use the word "cult" in their title, along with half a dozen other subcategories which also use the word in their title. This category has existed for nearly a year, and hasn't attracted any inappropriately tagged articles. I see no reason to delete it. (To which I say: "Keep per Cgingold") - ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 23:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, per Will Beback. Nomination is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the guideline, which is about tendentious use of "cult", not about its application where that is uncontroversial. -- Lonewolf BC 04:34, 20 September 2007 (UTC) Further, I think that this CfD is an abuse of process:  The same nominator tried only a month ago.  Surely some reasonable span of time must pass before taking another shot.  Or can someone just keep trying till they get the answer they want? -- Lonewolf BC 04:42, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, per Will Beback and Lonewolf BC. However, the category's purpose might be clearer if it was renamed: I initially thought that it referred to suicides which attracted a cult following, such as that of Ian Curtis. I know that the current name matches that of the lead article, but I wonder whether it would be better to rename them both to something like "Mass suicides involving religious cults". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment - Wow, you learn something new every day! (never heard of Ian Curtis before) I have to admit, it never occurred to me that there might be an entirely different way of construing the term "Cult suicide" -- "suicides which attracted a cult following"?? Good grief. (no pun intended!) Howsoever, I'm not sure that the alternate interpretation would occur to the average reader -- unless they were under the influence (of BrownHairedGirl, I mean... :) Cgingold 13:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd support BHG's renames, but (added) have now switched to prefer Carlos's suggestion below. Johnbod 14:44, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: I agree with Cgingold about the name. "Cult suicides" is quite well understood to mean bulk suicides by cults, not single suicides that became "cults" (in a somewhat different sense), so I see no good cause to change the name of the category  -- Lonewolf BC 17:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep - Oh, my poor head. I thought I must have fallen into a time warp or something when I came upon this CFD. Why on earth are we having this discussion all over again? Nothing has changed, and it was properly decided the first time.
 * Request - Can somebody who was not a party to the original CFD please close this new CFD as a "Speedy Keep", if there is such a thing? Cgingold 13:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment: This seems like an appropriate place to draw attention to Sfacets's ongoing campaign to expunge the word "cult" from Wikipedia, based on what I am sure is a misconstrual of the "words to avoid" guideline. The guideline, as I read it, is meant to curb the casual or tendentious use of "cult".  However, Sfacets is acting as though the guideline disallows even the judicious use of "cult", where it is uncontroversially fitting. -- Lonewolf BC 17:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I seem to remember unhelpful attempts to remove it in technical contexts like the religious practices of the Ancient World - I forget who. Johnbod 17:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay, trying to stamp out those kinds of uses would also be bad, but is not what I am referring to as regards Sfacets. I mean that he wants to expunge the use of "cult" for modern groups even in cases where the group has earned and largely caused the negative connotations of the word, and is uncontroversially regarded as a cult among reliable sources.  The Peoples Temple is perhaps the most outstanding example of such a group, though there are a handful of others. -- Lonewolf BC 16:20, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Rename to something like Category:Mass suicides by religious sects. Notable concept but "cult" should be avoided. I do recall this coming up (not a long) while back. Carlossuarez46 20:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's better! Johnbod 20:13, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Comment - I really do feel very strongly that this CFD should be speedy closed as an abuse of the CFD process, as has been noted by several editors. However, if a renaming is to be considered, I emphatically reject the notion that use of the word "cult" must be avoided. If that were to be deemed off-limits even in the case of mass suicides, then I really fear for the future of plain, non-euphemistic language. In principle, I would have no objection to renaming to Category:Mass suicides by religious cults -- but I would much prefer to see that happen as the result of a new CFD specifying that as the objective. However, I would strongly object to any renaming that drops the word "cult" from the name of the category. That would be tantamount to a declaration that any use of the term "cult" is impermissible, and would amount to "linguistic cleansing". Cgingold 13:10, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I concur. -- Lonewolf BC 14:42, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Abuse of the CFD process? Do you have any grounds for this accusation?  S facets  14:47, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm simply referring to the fact that several of us have objected to opening another CFD for this category when only one month has elapsed since the previous CFD. But if you're offended by the term, I will rephrase my objection. Cgingold 15:27, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


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Category:Works by women writers

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The result of the debate was close, relisted on the 24th. Kbdank71 16:17, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * works by women writers


 * Delete', an ill-conceived notion to divide ' along gender lines, a non-defining characteristic. -- Prove It (talk) 16:03, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - Works by women writers have been and are separate subjects for study, and considerable scholarship has been done on the subject. This has been outlined in numerous prior cfds.  This category has been around and being used for 6 months, and is part of a comprehensive categorization scheme relating to women writers. I also note this was created as a subcategory of Women Writers, and was not turned into a subcategory of Works by Author until ProveIt did so (and it is fine as such a subcategory, but the language suggesting it was created as such is inaccurate).  A Musing 18:16, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - overcategorization by sex. While it is true that literature by women is the subject of academic study that doesn't mean that categorizing every work by every woman writer as a work by a woman writer is tenable. Otto4711 19:04, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep and reorganise. This is not a division of, which indeed should not be divided by gender - all the members I checked were in that too. Category:Women writers has a number of non-biographical sub-cats and articles, and a new supercategory Category:Literature by women or similar is needed, of which both this and a bio-only Cat:Women Writers should be sub-cats. To Otto I would point out that this only categorises at the "Works by" level; not at the "every work" level. Johnbod 20:07, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Might want to look at the category again. It has Works by, Books by and Novels by subcats, along with Category:Feminist literature (huh, first time I'd heard that only women have written feminist literature) along with many, many articles on individual works. I strongly disagree with the notion that a Literature by women supercategory is necessary or desirable. Otto4711 21:01, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, it categorises only at the highest existing level for that writer. Johnbod 22:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep, for the reasons given elsewhere here. I strongly agree with Otto4711 that Category:Feminist literature should not be a subcat (though a 'see also' cross-link might be useful for navigation) Dsp13 10:43, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep. There is plenty of evidence that "Works by women writers" is a significant area of study, on which a substantive head article could be written, and this is clearly part of a comprehensive categorization scheme relating to women writers, to which a numbe of editors have devoted a lot of scholarly effort. I think that the category could do with some more work: its scope needs clarification, and it seems to be unresolved whether it it should include article on individual books, or merely serve as a container category for "Works by X"-type categories. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment it should not be a subcat of Works by author. If we keep this there should at least be a companion Category:Works by male writers. I tend to think this is over categorization, also if we are having both then the category name should thus be Category:Works by female writers to avoid linguistic problems surrounding the meaning of the english word "Men". ::  Kevinalewis  : (Talk Page) /(Desk)  09:50, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - on further though I can see few advantages of such a categorization on sex. :: Kevinalewis  : (Talk Page) /(Desk)  15:04, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I have now created the category Category:Literature by women, and agree it should probably be removed from Works by author, where it was only added by the nominator. That is a different issue from deleting it altogether. Johnbod 18:28, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Definitely two separate issues. :: Kevinalewis  : (Talk Page) /(Desk)  08:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete OCAT, there may or may not be differences between works by men and by women. Do transsexuals' works pre-transition differ markedly than those afterward. There are lots of anonymous works - can those who are experts at what differences there are between works written by men and women tell us which sex the anonymous writers are? Of course not always - assumptions may be made based on stereotypes or subtle hints but the experts cannot be sure so the differences cannot be so defining to make categorizing proper. Carlossuarez46 20:20, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


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Descriptive Lists

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight 0001 20:26, 23 September 2007 (UTC)


 * descriptive lists


 * Delete. This meta-category category doesn't seem to know what it wants to be a category for: lists of articles, or lists of subjects that don't have their own articles. At any rate, it's virtually unpopulated and incorrectly capitalized. -Sean Curtin 04:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong delete. Far too vague to make a category which is useful for navigation, because it inevitably contain articles whose contents are unrelated. In concept, it's more like a maintenance category, but I can't see any use for it maintenance. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) \u2022 (contribs) 07:37, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete - per ? -  Onnaghar  talk ! ctrb 16:49, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete An obscure category. Tbo 157   (talk)    (review)  22:10, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete: too vague to be a proper meta-category, and virtually unused. Most lists on Wikipedia could be described as descriptive, yet most lists are already adequately categorized.  Xtifr tälk 06:20, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


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Norfolk County, Ontario

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The result of the debate was upmerge all. After Midnight 0001 20:24, 23 September 2007 (UTC)


 * major communities in norfolk county, ontario
 * medium communities of norfolk county, ontario
 * minor communities in norfolk county, ontario


 * Merge all into Category:Communities in Norfolk County, Ontario, as subjective. Or just sentence-case and change of to in. -- Prove It (talk) 03:46, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - as it is a way to tell the difference between a hamlet, a village, and a town in Norfolk County. That way, a person who is thinking about moving to Norfolk County can find the right community for him/her. GVnayR 03:59, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * A person thinking about moving to Norfolk County wouldn't make that decision on the basis of an encyclopedia article. And incidentally, considering that they're all part of the single incorporated municipality of Norfolk County, and none of them are incorporated as separate municipalities in their own right, none of them are "towns" or "villages". Bearcat 19:31, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Upmerge per nom. Excessive subdivision by arbitrary criteria of a fairly small category. GVnayR's purposes could be served by a list of communities by population size. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) \u2022 (contribs) 07:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Upmerge - per nom.  Onnaghar  talk ! ctrb 16:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Upmerge per nom; arbitrary and POV division that isn't consistent with how any other Ontario county's communities category is organized. Consistency trumps personal preference here. And furthermore, the population of an unincorporated community can only ever be a semi-educated guess; Statistics Canada simply does not publish that kind of data. Bearcat 19:31, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


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Category:Dannii Minogue

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The result of the debate was delete. After Midnight 0001 20:21, 23 September 2007 (UTC)


 * dannii minogue


 * Nominator's rationale:


 * Delete - per overcategorisation  Onnaghar  talk ! ctrb 16:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. I think that with two subcats and three articles, this category is on threshold of viability. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:42, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete as per Overcategorization. Tbo 157   (talk)    (review)  22:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom & ample precedent. Carlossuarez46 20:20, 20 September 2007 (UTC)


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Mixed and Non-religious settlements

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The result of the debate was no consensus. Kbdank71 16:10, 24 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Propose deletion of the following categories:


 * Nominator's rationale: Per my reasoning above, they overcategorise based on a trivial intersection of two unrelated concepts.  Tewfik Talk 10:06, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep - it seems absurd to single out religious localities but not acknowledge the other side of the coin either. Israeli localities are pretty much divided into these three groupings, while there are a minority of religious towns in Israel, most moshavim and kibbutzim pretty much segregate themselves by either relig., mixed, or non-relig. ALL communities in Judea, Samaria, and the former Gaza and Sinai started out like the moshavim and kibbutzim which were specific groups of like-people who decided to endure the hardships of creating a new locality from scratch and enduring this effort together. This goes equally for people who strive(d) to maintain a 'secular' lifestyle as it does for the religious, and certainly not different than the people who live in Ariel or Adora who specifically insist on living in a mixed environment as well. While 'mixed' seems natural and the default, a non-religious entity is nothing less notable than the religious counterpart and perhaps even more so, a settlement ideaology not based on religious reasons be it settlements on the border of Lebanon or in the Jordan Valley. --Shuki 19:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Within the scope of the original 2 noms, it may be reasonable to create a Category:Israeli communities as a parent for the Israeli religious communities cat and the articles in the two cats listed here. The reasoning being that all of them fit that designation, with the one sub-cat being used for the prominent distinguishing feature. - J Greb 23:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment Shuki, perhaps an upper level and  would work, as they avoid the overcategorisation problem, though they, like a, would need to be limited to strict inclusion based on criteria like that you described here.  Tewfik Talk  09:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The word communities seems vague and might would also include communities in general, not only cities, towns, villages, etc. There is an Israeli community in LA, NYC, and other cities in the diaspora. WP usually shuns 'Israeli this and that', 'Bolivian this and that', and the convention is '___ in Hungary', for instance. Granted we have a major conflict with those people wanting to put Ariel (for instance) in the cities in Israel cat, in order to be clearer, could you please suggest the final proposed outcome? Will all settlements go back to the I.set. cat, and also be added to the suggested 'religious' cats? It would mean adding hundreds of Israeli localities to the cats as well. --Shuki 19:34, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The point is that localities should have religious status categorised in a manner that is not linked with either the size of the localities or their political status, since the current situation constitutes an arbitrary intersection and overcategorisation.  Tewfik <sup style="color:#888888;">Talk 09:01, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Andrew c [talk] 00:41, 18 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Upmerge to Category:Israeli settlements. Seems like a bit of overcategorization to separate into these categories. Both are fairly sparsely populated.-Andrew c [talk] 00:43, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep - per Shuki -  Onnaghar  talk ! ctrb 16:47, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Israel-related deletions.   —Eliyak T · C 01:34, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Upmerge per Andrew c. Vegaswikian 22:46, 23 September 2007 (UTC)


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