Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/2007/January/8


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the stub template and/or category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was speedy rename

I propose to rename this category: 

When I was a new user with this group you helped me to create 2 stub categories, one for North American mythology and one for South American, however, on South American I accidentally forgot the "N" at the end of "American" Goldenrowley 02:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a done deal. Alai 08:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for helping! Much appreciated! Goldenrowley 15:36, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the stub template and/or category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was rename/rescope to Category:Ceramic art and design stubs

I propose to rename this category:  I became aware this week of a few comments that the "ceramic stub" is unclear, that ceramics have industrial and applied uses uses, not just art, over on the discussion page at ceramics (art)... looking at the ceramics stub, the parent is ceramics (art). When I nominated it lastyear, it was because we badly needed  some art categories and this holds the large bunch of ceramic art and pottery stubs. I think this is the best solution. Goldenrowley 02:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * As the permcat is just, I don't think the "and pottery" is appropriate. I'd be OK with a rename to  or .  Maybe a rename of the permcat would be in order too, though, as ceremics vs.  is a tad subtle.  Alai 08:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Hello. As I am new to Wikipedia I hope you will excuse me if I use the incorrect terminology. However, renaming as "ceramic art and pottery" is a mistake. At best this could be considered tautology, but even worse is that it may confuse some that pottery is wholly distinct from ceramics, whilst it is of course a type of ceramic. Why not just use ‘ceramic (art)’? Disambiguation using parentheses seems sensible, and I suggest the following: ceramic (archaeoloical significance), ceramic (art), ceramic (domestic), ceramic (engineering), ceramic (commercial production), ceramic (materials)
 * Thanx,Theriac 15:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Change scope. I disagree with the proposal, although I do understand the thinking behind it. "..and pottery" is not appropriate as indicated by Alai, and in any case, pottery is a type of ceramics, not distinct from it.
 * The discussion has arisen because it has become apparent that there are many ceramics-related articles which are not covered, or are only very debatably covered, by the present ceramics-stub as long as it is only art-related. If the stub is amended to ceramics-art-stub, or left as it is, there will need to be a large number of subjective decisions about which individual ceramics producers make "art" and which do not - a POV can of worms. I would strongly object to renaming Category:Ceramics to what was suggested, by the way, and for the same reason.
 * Rather than renaming the stub to make it narrower, thereby leaving many articles with no available ceramics-related stub at all, I suggest instead leaving the name as it is and linking the stub also to the main article Ceramic and the Category:Ceramic materials, which then makes it wider in application and removes the potential for the existing "is it art? is it not art?" controversy.HeartofaDog 18:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * (added) In other words, the ceramics-stub should be re-scoped to be applicable to all ceramics-related articles, not only to articles dealing with ceramics-art (which is proving a tricky thing to define).HeartofaDog 18:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


 * "Art" is obviously a charged word as regards the boundary with "mere decoration", etc, but there's little confusing either of those with tungsten nitride, etc. (Not actually marked as a stub anyway, as it happens.)  What about a disambiguator (throughout) along the lines of "(arts and crafts)"?  (As opposed to Arts and Crafts.)  Alai 19:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That would probably help quite a lot. The difficulties appear primarily when dealing with commercial manufacturers of ceramics / ceramics factories - rather than adding Category:Ceramic materials (I do take your point about that), how about linking additionally to Category:Ceramics manufacturers? That AND the "arts and crafts" suggestion should cover the bases. HeartofaDog 21:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't much mind what it links to, and category-page scoping statements can be as exhaustive as one wishes, but ideally stub templates should strive to be the proverbial "soul of wit", and be reasonably brief. Would "(art and design)" perhaps be a more comprehensive disambiguator?  If on the other hand we go with an all-embracing everything-about-ceramics category, that could work too, but for consistency the permcats would ideally be changed around, so that  is the top-level for everything, and not just the "ceramic artifacts", which could maybe go into a more specific-sounding category.  Alai 00:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of an everything-about-ceramics solution very much - otherwise, as we've been seeing, however you try and split it isn't quite right because it overlaps into so many different areas. So that sounds good to me, and those categories would benefit from a systematic overhaul.HeartofaDog 00:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * SUPPORT:  or  both suggested by Alai. No offense HeartofDog, but I decidely at this time oppose changing the "ceramic stub" into something that covers all ceramic-made objects. It may have ceramic as its parent, but thats only because there was no "ceramic art" or craft category to link to, if there was, I would have linked it already. But if we wish, we can form the permanent category fairly quickly.... To clarify further, this Ceramic stub is in the Stub Table of Contents as a subcategory or child of art stubs but these children of art sometimes branch into crafts ... most notably the textile arts are also considered a craft, but they havent yet branched into rudimentary object articles. Art stubs are divided by art mediums (hence painting, sculpture, textles, glass, metal, paper,woodworking, etc. It has reason to stay an art category as there are over 60 articles at least on ceramic art and pottery (or, slighly refocusing, as art and craft), and further adding topics dilutes the classificitaion limits. Taking a parallel example: On sculpture art category, should we include rocks and bricks, and call it "things made of rocks"? Or the craft of metalworking, shall we say airplanes are made of metal and it is easier if we put all things made of metal together?? By the same token if we refocus what was hoped to be a ceramic art stub into "things made of clay", then the stub is no longer helpful to Wikipedia art editors. (in other words, if this stub category did not already exist, I would want to create it one day). There are lots of things in the world made of clay, dishs are made of clay, so are sinks and toilets, roof tiles and other construction materials. Putting them all together is useless to me, to someone else maybe not but I dont see a point for it, if so, group them under "material" section and maybe call it ceramic-material-stub. I'd rather see Jasperware with some very badly designed other art pottery,  than see it grouped with roof tiles. Goldenrowley 05:19, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment(no offence taken!) I can see Goldenrowley's reasoning, but it's too narrow, and I don't buy it. The parallels with sculpture and metalware are IMO not close enough. There is no difficulty at all distinguishing between sculpture and rock; and metalwork is easily sorted by the metal being worked (ie, precious or base). There is however every difficulty in allocating the products of a series of porcelain and pottery factories between art and not art. My view is therefore still that both ' and ' are unworkable, for the reason already given, which is that there is a vast range of ceramics articles (ie, all those relating to factory production of ceramics) to which it is impossible to apply them objectively or meaningfully.
 * After all, this whole discussion was triggered by a well-informed editor (1) who objected on good technical grounds to ALL factory-made ceramics being termed "art" - including Wedgwood, Sevres and Chelsea. Goldenrowley thinks (2) that some are art and others aren't, which seems reasonable until you try to define which are which. I think (3) that any factory-produced ceramics with any kind of aesthetic design input may as well be called "art" in the sense of "commercial art". Any of these views may be right or wrong, but the point I'm making is that there is no general agreement on the subject, which is why the present stub doesn't work when applied to factories and needs a more radical change.
 * As I am not looking at the world through art-coloured glasses I have no problem at all having all ceramics-stubs in together - it seems to me logical and unambiguous. However, if that's not acceptable for artistic reasons I would have no problem with:


 * Change scope / Support Alai's other suggestion - the design element brings in the commercial manufacturers of (eg) decorative ware or tableware who are debatable or excluded under the arts and crafts version, but presumably the definition of design is such that it would exclude sanitary ware, drainpipes etc. I hope also that it is still close enough to "art" to be useful to Goldenrowley and pals. ALTERNATIVELY create a second stub:, to cover all commercially produced ceramics, artistic or not. Obviously there would be considerable overlap, but both the arts and commerce factions would at least then have something with which to work from their different perspectives.HeartofaDog 16:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I can also support "Cat:ceramic art and design stubs" if we want to reach a consensus. Goldenrowley 21:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC) / adding this may be actually a great idea, "design" covers manufactured designs, it also infers the designs of "brand names" and most collectible ceramics have either artist names or "brand names" and brand stamps on the bottom. It will thus include pottery which almost always have a designer stamp on bottom. Goldenrowley 20:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I like it too! HeartofaDog 02:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.

Abkhazia-stub /

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the stub template and/or category above. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any).  No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was delete

As per all other stub types for disputed territoriees, this will prove far more of a headache than it could ever be worth. is not over-full, and is oddly populated by loads of geo stubs, several bio stubs (not divided by subnational region except in very rare circumstances), typography and linguistics stubs, and party stubs. Annoyingly, this new stub has been used to replace, not supplement, the former stub types, which will mean considerable work even if this stub type is kept. It shouldn't be, though. Delete. Grutness...wha?  05:39, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The grab-bag contents are less than satisfactory, but note that Abkhazia is de jure a first order division of Georgia (in fact, an "autonomous republic"), so this is how the Georgian stubs would/will be split if/when that happens, regardless of the sovereignty dispute. But since even the grab-bag is undersized, I'd prefer to either simply delete this, or to re-sort to upmerged -stub and -geo-stubs templates (which has the merit of enabling semi-salting of unproposed repopulation of the separate category).  The -bio-stub is more marginal, for the reasons Grutness alludes to.  Alai 06:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete like any similar case. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 06:47, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Delete as per Grutness. Ldingley 15:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Khoikhoi 22:08, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Delete per all. --Kober 08:00, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I was the one to create this stub, so let me explain myself. First of all, I am sorry that I did not follow the procedure. Frankly, I did not realise (really) that this could be controversial. I see how that does not really matter and that controversial or not, procedures serve their good use and are to be followed, but here we are, so:

-Firstly, the procedure that I followed was: I went through all the articles in the Abkhazia category, and to all which were already stubbed, I added the new tag. I further added a stub-tag to all articles I encountered which consisted of only a few lines or which seemed to consist of nothing more than one piece of text copied from some source. Furthermore, I added tags to articles on individual characters of the Abkhaz Alphabet which already were stubs, I figured that these articles partained to Abkhazia due to being related to the Abkhaz Alphabet article. I did not also create Abkhaz geography and biography stubs because the total number is indeed not that large and I thought it a concern for a later date. I did not delete Georgian stubs, I don't know whether that is what any of you believe.

-As for the reason for having Abkhazian stubs in the first place. The Abkhazian conflict knows two points of view. One point of view is that Abkhazia is part of Georgia, the other point of view is that Abkhazia is an independent state. NPOV is official policy on Wikipedia, so we need to represent both points of view. To say that there can't be such a thing as an Abkhazian stub because it belongs to Georgia, de jure, is to voice a Point of View. There is no objective basis on which one can say that Abkhazia belongs to Georgia. (UN, international community etc. are irrelevant, their position is still only an opinion, not fact.) Objectively, Abkhazia's status is disputed. And as such, it's stub articles should either carry both Georgian and Abkhazian tags (my original idea, though a tad redundant), or one neutral tag (with a map or both states' flags).

-As for not granting disputed regions tags in order to prevent edit wars: this would truly be sad, wouldn't this equal taking the easy route just to evade controversy? It is not true that unrecognised states do not get stubs as a principle. There exists a tag for Taiwan or ROC related stubs (Template:Taiwan-stub). It is exactly such a stub that I wish for Abkhazia also. While Taiwan is recognised by some 5 hands full of minor states, it is nevertheless internationally unrecognised. It is true that popular atlases may show you 'Taiwan' but not Abkhazia, but that is irrelevant, we are not here to merely follow others, we are here to follow principles. Any principles that apply in the case of Taiwan, apply also in the case of Abkhazia.

Keep. sephia karta 02:26, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Similarly, there is one neutral Template:Cyprus-stub for both states on that island. sephia karta 02:36, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Template:WesternSahara-stub, Template:Transnistria-stub, Template:Palestine-stub + Nagorno Karabakh related stubs carry both Armenian and Azerbaijani tags + Western Sahara's category is within the countries of Africa category ('de jure' it is still Spanish).
 * Abkhazia and South Ossetia seem to have been the exception to the rule so far. sephia karta 03:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Cyprus-stub does indeed cover the whole island - thereby meaning we do not have to have a separate stub for TRNC - the equivalent here is having a Georgia-stub that covers both the recognised nation of Georgia and the unrecognised Abkhazia, thereby meaning we have no need of a potentially problematic Abkhazia-stub. Transnistria-stub has, ISTR been deleted at least once in the past and needs to come back here again by the looks of it. Palestine is accepted by a fairly large number of countries as being a separate territory for most purposes. WesternSahara-stub has long been a problem, it must be admitted. As for being de jure Spanish, that is true, but putting stubs related to it in would be highly misleading, in much the same way that Bermuda does not use UK-stub and French Polynesia doesn't use France-stub - in those cases the massive geographic dislocation of the territories from the country to which they are connected politically does play a part. BTW - apologies for thinking you had deleted Georgia-stub templates from those articles. Grutness...wha?  05:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * But critically, the Cyprus stub tag does not use the flag of Cyprus but rather a map of the island. This in addition to the fact that the name Cyprus in itself could apply to both states makes for a neutral NPOV stub tag. The Georgia stub tag does employ the Georgian state flag, and the term Georgia only applies to Abkhazia according to the Georgian POV.
 * I don't understand why it is such a problem to have a neutral stub category for Abkhazia, if we can also have e.g. a stub category & tag Template:Quebec-stub. Quebec is not an independent state, and no one claims otherwise, nor is it geographically dislocated from Canada, and still it has its own stub, because it happens to be an interesting political and cultural entity. Seperate stub tags can be justified on the same grounds for Western Sahara, Taiwan and indeed Abkhazia, and this does not imply either recognition or unrecognition of resp. the SADR, the ROC or the Republic of Abkhazia. Similarily, even the seperate stub tag for Transnistria, or hypothetical seperate stub tags for the Republic of Abkhazia or the ROC do/would not imply recognition or unrecognition of those states, they merely assert that these are political entities which things can be related to. These and other unrecognised states may be illegimate in the eyes of many, but that does not change the fact that encyclopedically, they are real existant things. It would be POV to exclusively tag all Abkhazian stubs with a Republic of Abkhazia tag, or all Taiwanese stubs with a ROC tag, but that is not what I or others want. What I want is to prevent the opposite, that all Abkhazian stubs are exlusively tagged with Georgian stub tags.
 * So, what I propose is a stub category Abkhazia, which is both within the category of Georgian stubs and within the category of Abkhazia (itself again within the category Georgia and also within the category of unrecognised states). Subspecification into geographical/biographical/historical stubs is upto the guidelines of the stub project. The stub tag would replace any Georgian stub tags present in Abkhazian stub articles not directly related to Georgian political institutions, Georgian individuals, Georgian history, etc., to avoid duplicity (as the Abkhazian stub tag would be neutral, bipartial). Seperate stub categories for the political entities of the Republic of Abkhazia and the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia are not introduced until/unless the number of stubs is large enough to warrant this (as per the stub project's regulations).sephia karta 14:22, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * As i read your remarks, its very easy to detect POV and biased approch to Abkhazia problem, what do you mean by "the Republic of Abkhazia " ? There is no such "republic" officially and according to international law, its de jure status is within the borders of the Georgian state, wheather you like it or not. Your stub is definitely a POV approch, which only further aggravates the very delicate issue on the status of that separatist enclave. Transmistia stub is also a mistake and it should be deleted accordingly. Abkhazia does not posses any means of state or unrecognized state, 70% of its population is driven out by force, the "republic" is run by dengerouse militaristic regime. By the standards of UN, OSCE, and the international law on the territorial integrity of the state, Abkhazia is recognized officially under the Georgian jurisdiction. Chechnya stayed de facto independent for a while; however, the region is back in de jure control of the Russian federation. Therefore, it’s not productive to create stubs which will cause further dispute and undermine the NPOV integrity. Ldingley 20:37, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I have argued why my approach is NPOV. Please explain to me what part of my reasoning is flawed rather than indiscriminately labeling it POV.
 * It is factually inaccurate to state that "Abkhazia does not posses any means of state or unrecognised state". Apart from recognition, Abkhazia does posses all the properties of a state that can be expected for a population of around 150,000. It has a government, parliament, elections, a civil society, a military, flag, anthem, you name it. You can disagree as much as you want about the right of existence of that political entity that calls itself Republic of Abkhazia, but you cannot deny it's existence. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and therefore it must show the world as it is, not as it should be. You and I likely agree on the criminality of the North-Korean regime, but we cannot deny its existance and Wikipedia does treat North Korea as the state that it is, despite the numerous crimes it has commited.
 * Even the UN, the OSCE, while they agree that Abkhazia should be part of Georgia, acknowledge the fact that the reality of the ground right now is different. If it weren't, there wouldn't be a conflict to solve. sephia karta 00:19, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * We shouldn't have templates that will be the subject of edit wars. Any template relating ot a disputed territory has a very high risk of such a scenario. Valentinian (talk) / (contribs) 17:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC}
 * But you don't know that there will be edit wars. There were some edits shortly after I initially created the tag, but it has been stable since. And I for one, knowing that the issue is delicate, intend to first propose changes on the talk page from now on, should I hav issues with the tag. Also, while the topic of Abkhazia is controversial, I wouldn't say there have been any edit wars as of late over it.
 * Regardless, where does it say that we can't have templates that might cause edit wars? Wouldn't adhering to that principle equal avoiding controversy at the cost of other principles?
 * And as I've pointed out, other disputed territories, despite the very high risk you claim, do actually have their own templates, so I really don't see the argument here.sephia karta 14:40, 15 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep. - Patricknoddy 5:35pm, January 14, 2007
 * Delete per all. -- Clevelander 23:00, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the template's or category's talk page (if any). No further edits should be made to this section.