Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Templates for deleted categories

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 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was no consensus. North America1000 18:59, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Templates for deleted categories


User_es-0, User_it-0, User_kg-0, User_kk-0, User_rw-0, User_st-0, User_zu-0 are all templates of incomprehension, whose categories were either explicitly or implicitly banished with prejudice in 2007 (or here for rw-0). User_cu-N is for Wikipedian native speakers of the long-dead Old Church Slavonic whose category was nuked here. I may be back for more.... Le Deluge (talk) 04:38, 22 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Speedy keep/procedural close: I don't think this is the right venue for this discussion. WP:BABEL seems to indicate that they support incomprehension userboxes, even if there's a long-standing consensus against categorizing such users. If and when a discussion happens at WT:BABEL that concludes incomprehension userboxes are unhelpful as well (a lot of people seem to use them) then we might consider deletion. I would have no objection to deleting certain silly ones (e.g., native comprehension of long-dead languages), but I think they'd have to be subject to their own nom. —/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 06:56, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually this is the correct place to me as WP:MFD explicitly covers "Userboxes (regardless of namespace)". The location of these templates are irrelevant but this needs to be better formatted. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:20, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, my point is it seems that Le Deluge is arguing that the entire swath of xx-0 templates should be deleted rather than just those which were listed above. I think the problem is (1) there appears to be a longstanding consensus that these are fine even though the cats were not (as articulated at WP:BABEL), and (2) the nom is malformed in that it doesn't list all the templates being named. Anyhow, if my speedy keep isn't actioned, my !vote is keep based on the longstanding consensus that xx-0 userboxes are helpful, and that deleting just these would disrupt the entire babel userbox hierarchy. I would, however, be amenable to an argument that we should merge all the xx-0 through xx-5 and xx-n templates into a single xx template that takes parameters (i.e., you'd use ). —/M endaliv /2¢/Δ's/ 13:43, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * For clarity - my intention is to resolve the contradiction where we have template pointing at, and closely identified with, categories that have been deleted by overwhelming consensus. I came across these because the categories do not exist, either because they were deleted (es, it, rw) or were never created in the first place, so they are extreme examples of the genre. But the fact that even "big" languages like Spanish and Italian have only one user-0 each rather belies the suggestion that there's a "lot" of users.(Edit - hmm, OK, es-0 has 450 transclusions but only one is in the category, not sure what's going on there) My personal view is that on en.wiki the only one that matters is en-0 and the rest are cruft, but I recognize that editors like their cruft in userspace.  So I'd prefer to delete but could live with changing the template to not categorise -0 users, I just want to resolve the paradox of the status quo.Le Deluge (talk) 14:27, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * On closer examination, the es-0 and it-0 categories were not the result of the templates but by people substing them. But kk-, st-0 and zu-0 do seem to be putting users in categories directly. I'm not enough of a template guru to understand what the difference is, although I wonder if it could be something to do with the need to do a WP:NULLEDIT to get changes in transcluded templates to "take", and it/es have attracted an edit since something was changed with the categories, but kk/st/zu have not. Or is there a lookup table somewhere telling the template that es/it categories were deleted? Le Deluge (talk) 15:02, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * OK, this is making more sense. I was confused because of the it-0 and es-0 categories being assigned by what looked like their respective templates, so I didn't actually check the source code of the userpages involved, I just went straight to the templates. But having discovered they were substing, I've emptied those categories, and the remaining ones are being categorized using usercategory in the templates, so I've been able to empty them by editing the categories out of the templates. So that's my itch scratched, but I think it's probably worth letting discussion continue... Le Deluge (talk) 17:55, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * For clarification, I've listed only the templates that were linked above. I suggest not adding any more and seeing how this discussion resolves itself. If there is support for deletion (or even a support for some deletion, some not, you never know), then propose a new deletion for the remaining ones. It will simplify the closing admin's job since you'd only want to delete those where there is some notice about it. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:41, 23 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete. It seems like when the categories were deleted, these templates were not and while it's possible to support the template sans the category, it seems silly to have any template that alleges a non-use of a language. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:23, 22 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment I listed the English language-0 one at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Template:User en-0. It's somewhat similar than this one but the same issues apply: there's no technical violation to having them. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:49, 23 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete arguments convince me. Legacypac (talk) 04:02, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep These templates are not the only way of putting user pages in the deleted categories. The CFDs referred to all seem to be from 2007, long before the babel system was standardised across wikis. The cats are now part of the babel system, which is not local to English Wikipedia, but is used by all Wikipedias. So if a user page has e.g.  it will be placed in those categories regardless of whether we have templates for them or not. The idea is that a user who is active on more than one Wikimedia project (as I am) should be able to use identical babel boxes on all of them without having to work out which codes are valid locally. Users do want to advertise non-understanding, see for example lij:Utente:Redrose64 or pa:ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Redrose64. -- Red rose64 (talk) 10:34, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Still, just because the template is used across multiple wikis doesn't mean it should be used here locally. I recall a series of templates in Japanese used for Japanese city articles (the mark up was itself in Japanese) that were expressly rejected even though they were part of the same system and used across many other wikis to simply copy over the templates so that all the Japanese city articles had the same background citations and formatting for populations, age information and the like (information that itself is clearly most likely in Japanese). Here, there seems to be a rejection of class-0 babel language categories and I presume templates and since this is English wikipedia, it doesn't seem necessary to have templates that reflect that as well. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 18:36, 23 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Delete. There's simply no need to have these templates on the English Wikipedia. It adds no value, and the argument that other Wikipedias use them isn't convincing. Other projects do plenty of things that we've decided not to. ~ RobTalk 17:20, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep. Good for completeness, and useful when considering that the most uncompleted task is translation of articles from one language to another.  This task will surely involve editors visiting en who have no English.  Unified login accounts also call for these userboxes to exist.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:03, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * en-0 is not included in this, although it is elsewhere, so your second sentence is irrelevant. There's no reason for en.wiki to recognise rw-0 and the like, and it's not relevant to building an encyclopedia in English. Le Deluge (talk) 16:34, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Someone may be involved in translating from rw to here, and if rw-0 they should disclose that. I see possible proper users, so keep.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:57, 10 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep to support unified logon pages, I can easily see someone having a string of these an when a -0 gets hit on enwiki we should be able to support it. — xaosflux  Talk 00:01, 11 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep - users who do crosswiki work use the same set of language userboxes for all wikis, including those where they do not speak the language. Aren't staff and stewards required to have these? It is bizarre to delete these and suddenly break all of those userpages on this wiki, or make crosswiki users waste time thinking about which userboxes they can use on each wiki individually. Deleting es-0, it-0, and fr-0 alone would affect well over 1000 pages astro (talk) 20:37, 15 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.