Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Archive 14

Possible merge?
Would it be better if Category:Singles certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, Category:Singles certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, Category:Singles certified quadruple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America and Category:Singles certified sextuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America be merged into one category entitled Category:Singles certified Multi-Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America? Live and Die 4 Hip Hop (talk) 19:20, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Category redirects
Are category redirects still within the scope of WP:CFD? Last time I checked, they were in the scope of CFD and not of WP:RFD. As category redirects still categorize things (and a bot will recategorize everything in one), it seems that they are still functioning categories, and unlike redirects of other namespaces, the RFDkeep reasons don't seem to apply to category redirects (such as typo-named categories, keeping names of categories as a redirects that were renamed, etc). Category redirects are not cheap, from my understanding of these things. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 10:13, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I just the other day nominated a category redirect at RfD, and that's where I've always done so and always seen it done. So far as I know category redirects have never been in the scope of CFD, but I could be mistaken.  I've nominated categories for deletion before, with a result of delete, only to have someone recreate the category as a redirect.  Assuming the redirect is different enough from the original page (and thus wouldn't qualify for WP:CSD), you're saying if I wanted that deleted, my recourse would be to come right back to CfD and list it?  I disagree, while category redirects are often soft redirects and thus different from normal redirects, they are still redirects and often have totally different rationales for deletion from categories. VegaDark (talk) 19:11, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've seen category redirects discussed at CFD quite a few times. It used to be that to create a category redirect it was supposed to be proposed at CFD, before the bot was set up to move articles over, IIRC. As categories are inherently different from other pages, there are considerations. Category redirects are processed with a bot, and thus are not cheap, since every categorization into one results in bot edits to move articles from one category to another. Redirects are not left behind when a category is renamed, unlike for pages in other namespaces. People do not go around creating common typo redirects in categoryspace, they are commonly deleted at CFD (through a merge request, deleting the misnamed category afterwards). 76.65.128.132 (talk) 05:39, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Add requirement that category creators be notified
I suggest that a requirement be added to the WP:CFD page that category creators must be notified. See also: Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive730. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:11, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This has been discussed a number of times in the recent past. Personally, I used to notify category creators every time I nominated a category. I felt it was the right thing to do. I got so much abuse resulting from doing this, that now I rarely do it. Users wiki-yelled at me regularly and asked me to stop spamming them. And I can't say I really blame them, because I too hate getting notified. If I care about a category and its existence or the way its named, I add it to my watchlist. Thus, if a category creator cares about the category he created, he should add it to his watchlist. There is a requirement that the category be tagged, which serves as notification for all those who place the category on his watchlist, not just he creator. It is the easiest way to notify everyone who might have an interest in the category. Nominating a category is difficult enough, especially for beginners. I oppose any move to place more burden on the nominator for information that others should be able to manage themselves through maintaining their watchlist. (Ultimately, I think someone's going to make a proposal that no edit can be made to any page without first notifying the creator. ...) Good Ol’factory (talk) 04:26, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose - as pointed out above, watchlisting categories you are interested in serves the purpose without any added Wikibureaucracy. - The Bushranger One ping only 06:35, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have seven thousand articles watchlisted and I used to have more. It simply isn't practical to log in every day to scrutinize a watchlist like mine. Support. Marcus   Qwertyus   08:21, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose - per above; also with many categories having been renamed at least once the bot is now registered as the "creator" of many of them rather than the original compiler so the proposal would often not have the desired effect anyway. Timrollpickering (talk) 14:52, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment. This is not a vote. If it were, then deletionists would always win on these type of category deletionist/renamer talk pages. Some people initiating the category deletion/renames may not want the bother of notifying the category creators, because some category creators don't want to be notified. This is a bogus reason not to notify the category creators. I and many others believe that category creators should be notified.

People complain about the lack of participation in category discussions. Requiring notification would help for any type of category renaming or discussion. Getting complaints for notifying people comes with the work. Edit summaries are not a great way to notify category creators. The edit summaries are oftentimes cryptic such as "cfr rename" or "cfd" or "speedy" or such. So the category creators do not notice that the category is being renamed in many cases. Also, many times there are later edits to clarify the deletion notice. So category creators may not ever see any notice of deletion, because later clarification edits may only say something like "clarify."

The root problem is the desire for speedy renames by some category deletionist/renamers. Almost anything that slows them down they try to do away with. They write the rules for the most part at pages such as Categories for discussion and Categories for discussion/Speedy. The associated talk pages are mostly a waste of time for someone like me, since they are populated mostly by fulltime category deletionist/renamers. That is why attempts to get notification of category creators goes nowhere.

Concerning speedy renames, it actually does not take any more time in the end if all category deletion/renames were done via Categories for discussion, and eliminating speedy renames for the most part. It all rotates around to getting done. Doing speedy renames based on article names is going to cause many problems since categories don't always line up neatly with articles.

Notifying category creators does take some time. Maybe a bot could be created to notify category creators. If they were notified then Wikipedia would keep more people donating money. Many people stop donating to Wikipedia due to deletions, and especially speedy deletions. Deletions in general, not just categories. See:
 * - Wikimedia Forum - you may have to hunt for the subsection if this link does not take you directly there.

See also: Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive730 - ignore the closer comment that insults people's motivations. It may take some reading to understand that discussion. But notice that other people soon joined in discussing their problems related to deletions, especially speedy deletions. Many people have discussed the problem of non-admin closes of category discussions. Per WP:NAC. Just like speedy renames, both are resolved incorrectly if done without unambiguous consensus. Requiring notification, getting rid of speedy deletions, and banning non-admin closes would go a long way towards stopping the abuse, the mistakes, and the lack of accountability. --Timeshifter (talk) 17:20, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If category creators are not to be notified, then I believe that interested WikiProjects should be notified instead. I shouldn't have had to and  myself. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:07, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with Redrose. WikiProjects are less likely to take such a nomination personally, and more likely to add value to the discussions if there are good reasons to keep. —WFC— 18:10, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, but which Wikiprojects? See this essay for some of the related problems in making that a requirement. Again, this has been mooted before. Wikiprojects need to do their own work and maintain their own watchlists and not slough off the onus onto other editors. (Regarding Timeshifter's long comment, I hardly think that engaging in name calling or labelling of other editors ("deletionists", "renamers", and so forth) is going to progress anything one way or the other. And non-admin closures at CFD are exceedingly rare, so I think it's overkill to simply ban non-admin closures at CFD based on one non-admin closure that an editor has disagreed with. If "many people" have discussed this issue, I'd like to know what specific cases they are so worried about, because it hardly ever happens. In other words, I don't think it's a big deal one way or the other. The DRV on the specific issue has run its course and it looks like it has been resolved with a simple trout smack, so I think we can move on from it ...) Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:42, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
 * For a process to assert the right to undermine a WikiProject's category system and then attack the competence of its volunteers is incredible. I'd counter it by saying that if a tagger is not competent enough to work out how a category is used, what makes them competent enough to decide whether or not it should exist? Nonetheless, taking into account the logistical point made in that essay, I'd suggest that if a category is tagged with a WikiProject banner, that WikiProject must be notified. —WFC— 07:48, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I reject the implication in your first sentence that a category somehow belongs to any particular Wikiproject. Wikiprojects are just clubs of users who work together—nothing more. Not even those who begin AFD nominations are required to notify these groups, so there is no reason to make an exception for categories. Keep a watchlist and check it. Or make a bot that notifies you when a category is tagged. Just don't make others do the work that you can do for yourself if only you stop expecting others to do it. I'm always skeptical of any suggestion coming from anyone that makes more work for someone else and less for the person doing the suggesting. Besides, any experise which may reside within a Wikiproject will often be irrelevant to a category discussion—as when, for instance, the category clearly falls within one of the provisions of WP:OC. Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:52, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The failure to notify anyone involved with a category (or article, template, file etc) of a deletion discussion is an implicit assumption that everyone who uses the category (or article, template, file etc) is an idiot or troll. Thus, the onus is on the nominator to show that this assumption is not being made. —WFC— 09:52, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No, it's an assumption that people know how to use watchlists and that if they are interested in when a category gets nominated they will add it to their watchlist and check their watchlist. That's the entire purpose of requiring tagging of the category. You're suggesting that we create an extra layer of bureaucracy merely because there are editors who are too lazy to use the current system which has been designed for exactly the same purpose that you are trying to accomplish through other means. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:27, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Consider Categories for discussion/Log/2011 November 16, where one of the proposed moves was to . The talk page for that cat, which is now at Category talk:Rail transport stations in London, has three WikiProject banners. This tells me that those projects are interested in the cat - I don't think that any of them claim to "own" the category; but I'll warrant that the cat was populated primarily by contributors to those projects. Such contributors are likely to have the category member pages (the articles) watchlisted, but are unlikely to have watchlisted the actual category pages, unless they had actually edited it, or like me, they accidentally bumped into the CFD page (and no, I can't remember how I found it). So, the only way that the majority will know is when a bot goes around changing the category on the article page,, and they suddenly think "Hold on - why didn't I know that this was going to happen?"
 * Point is: the only way that WP:LT and WP:RAIL found out is because I told them, and I only found out by accident - I wasn't told myself. -- Red rose64 (talk) 14:15, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * It sounds to me like the solution is to add categories to your watchlist so you can watch them. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:31, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think the requirement to notify WikiProjects is beneficial. If they want to notified the should tag the pages in their scope and subscribe to AAlertBots Article alert reports via banner subscription as 531 other WikiProject have already done so. (BTW WP:RAIL already subscribes, and even transcluded to the project page. Just watchlist WikiProject Trains/Article alerts and you will be notified. The CFD discussion mentioned by Redrose64 was added to this page.) Armbrust Talk to me about my editsreview  15:17, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Comment. I love this: "Wikiprojects are just clubs of users who work together—nothing more." Well, so are deletionist/renamers. By the way, that is not an insult, nor meant as an insult. It is an accurate description of what is being done. The fact that some rude, smug, abusive, or speedy deletionists are despised, does not make all deletionists rude, nor despised. I delete/rename/create categories all the time on the Commons. Hundreds of them.

I observe that Good Ol’factory and some others here have ignored my point that edit summaries are oftentimes cryptic such as "cfr rename" or "cfd" or "speedy" or such. So the category creators do not notice that the category is being renamed in many cases. Also, many times there are later edits to clarify the deletion notice. So category creators may not ever see any notice of deletion, because later clarification edits may only say something like "clarify." So watchlisting alone is not the solution. The deletionist/renamers need to notify people.

I suggest you create a bot to do it. Then the bot talk page can get any nasty replies. Notifying wikiprojects is helpful, but many wikiproject members don't check wikiproject pages daily, or even weekly. Many wikiprojects go through phases of involvement by its members.

The only sure way is to notify category creators on their talk page. It is easy to create a   template to paste onto talk pages. That template should say that notification is required, and if they don't want to be notified they need to put a one-sentence   tag at the top of their page. The template should also link to Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion so people can discuss notification. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:17, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * What you call "deletionists/renamers" is not a close analog to Wikiprojects because they do not purport to organise themselves into a formal group or club. It's an inaccurate analogy—apples to oranges, etc. "I observe that Good Ol’factory and some others here have ignored my point that edit summaries are oftentimes cryptic such as 'cfr rename' or 'cfd' or 'speedy' or such. So the category creators do not notice that the category is being renamed in many cases." That's why there's a diff button you can click on on your watchlist. Just click it and look if you don't know what the summary means. As for later edits being made after the CFD nomination, if you really care about something and you see an edit pop up on your watchlist, you should click on the history button to see if there were earlier edits. These are basics of WP watchlisting that I think most editors pick up on rather quickly. If you want a bot to notify you, that's great—you make the bot. But it's unlikely there will be any enthusiasm for creating new bureaucratic requirements for everyone else. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:29, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * People have hundreds or thousands of pages on their watchlists. People scan their watchlists, not diffs. Marcus Qwertyus pointed out higher up that he has 7,000 pages on his watchlist. Why is it so difficult for you to paste in on the category creator's talk page? If a bot created the category, then you don't do anything. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:53, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have far more than 7000 pages on my watchlist, and I have no problem keeping track of category edits. You can do what you want bot-wise, just don't make editors do your work for you. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:24, 12 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment. It seems to me that it would actually be more useful to notify WikiProjects than to notify creators; notifying the projects would get more interested eyes on the CfD. Would it not be possible to run a bot to automatically notify projects based on the project banners on the category talk page? That way no new effort is required of CfD nominators. It could be optional for the project (either opt-in or opt-out). I'm willing to take a stab at developing such a bot if the idea meets with approval. - htonl (talk) 19:27, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Save yourself - there is already such a bot, , which is explained further at Article alerts. It has already been mentioned in this discussion, in fact (hence the bold, so it isn't missed again).  If WikiProjects tag the categories within their scope and set up an "Article Alert", then members of that project can watch that page – or even transclude it onto their user page as well – to be informed automatically what is happening to articles, categories and the like within the project's scope. That way (1) nobody has to work out who the creator was (when a category is renamed, the first edit will be by a bot in many cases, a human with no interest in the category in others); (2) nobody has to work out who (if anyone) to notify out of the subsequent editors should be informed; (3) nobody has to work out who to notify if any of these people are inactive or blocked; (4) nobody has to notify individual WikiProjects, whether they have tagged the page or not; (5) members of a WikiProject can see at a glance on one page whether any of their categories are up for discussion and if so, can jump straight to the discussion; (6) we don't drown in a sea of bureaucracy; (7) members of a WikiProject do not have to watchlist every category themselves, merely ensure that their project has tagged all the categories they might need to know about.  And yes there is a bot to do that as well... BencherliteTalk 22:28, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Those are some good tools for Wikiprojects, but category creators may not be members of the relevant Wikiproject. There may not be a Wikiproject that covers that category. I am a member of various Wikiprojects, but I don't have time to watch all the many changes that happen to the tens of thousands of pages covered by those Wikiprojects. I have tens of thousands of edits on Wikipedia, the Commons, Wikia, etc.. What I watch daily or every other day are my watchlist and my email. I already pointed out the problem of the cryptic edit summaries, or the relevant edit summary being missed due to later clarifying edits. That is why the watchlist is not enough. So notifying category creators via their talk page is the only way currently to be sure of notifying them. I was just thinking that what is really needed is a modification of the Mediawiki software to allow special entries on the watchlist for CFDs and AFDs. That would solve the problem. See elaboration farther down. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:28, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Support as obviously required out of respect to editors, and in keeping with other delete discussion expectations. Expecting all users to be continuously attentive to their watchlist is unreasonable.  Categories needs to stop being a special, mystical place.  I thought this was discussed and received consensus long ago.  A bot will advise the creator of a category listed at CfD.  Users (especially those who frequently rename or otherwise manage categories, or who are already active at CfD, and bots) may opt-out of notifications.  All that is needed is for someone to write create the bot.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:54, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * "I thought this was discussed and received consensus long ago." It was and it did, but the consensus was that there was no obligation for a nominator to notify the category creator when a CFD is started. If I remember correctly the basic thrust was that if someone wants a bot to do this for their benefit, they need to design it and get it approved. But as User:Bencherlite points out above, a bot system is already in place for anyone who is interested. You have also mis-stated how different CFD is to other deletion processes. There is never an obligation or requirement to notify the page creator. It is considered a courtesy but failure to do it does not invalidate a discussion or AFD result. (Note here for what AFD says about this.) It is this proposal that is attempting to set up CFD as a place that has special rules, not those in favor of the status quo who are maintaining it as a special place. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:15, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think I am remembering something a little further along. We understood each other when it was pointed out that many category creators don’t like to be notified, and that then makes it a little onerous for the nominator to work out whether each creator should be notified.


 * The problem with the Bencherlite solution is that it expects the category creators to do something clever. This is incompatible with the assumption that it is new and occasional category creators that want the notifications.


 * Regarding other deletion processes. At AfD, your link, it says “it is generally considered courteous to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors”.  In other words, it is generally considered discourteous to not notify.  You are arguing the letter of the rule regardless of discourtesy.


 * Timeshifter’s wording is passively worded. I agree with you and others that the onus to notify shouldn’t be on the nominator.  I propose that there be a bot that notifies all category creators who have not opted out.  Would you disagree with this proposal.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:05, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't oppose anyone creating a bot to receive any kind of notifications, as long as the CFD "rule" or guideline on the nominator notifying the creator is no different than those for AFD and other processes. And those who want the bot need to develop it and get it approved, not those who don't care to have a bot or are indifferent. Good Ol’factory (talk) 04:17, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That’s fair. Would you, in principle, support the notion of someone seeking to have a bot written and approved to notify non-opted-out category creators?  For the sake of infrequent category creators who don’t watch their watchlist?  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:57, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't have any problem with anyone seeking to write a bot to do any sort of notifications that they would like to receive. I guess you could put me in the "indifferent" category for that. (Just a side point, but I've been thinking about it and I'm not really sure that not doing something that is courteous automatically means that you are being discourteous. For instance, in my culture, it would be extremely courteous of me to help an old woman cross a street on a pedestrian crossing, but if I encountered an old woman at a pedestrian crossing and did not offer to help her cross the street, I don't think anyone would suggest I was being discourteous.) Good Ol’factory (talk) 05:27, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you are younger than I thought? If she showed any signs of hesitancy or frailty, I would consider it discourteous to not help.  If I were driving, I wouldn't stop, but I think that is because being inside a car tends to make everyone discourteous.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:02, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably just a cultural difference. Anyway, my point is that actions or omissions are not either courteous or discourteous—some are just kind of neutral, even if they are the opposite action of what would be considered courteous. Good Ol’factory (talk) 06:36, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Not a vote, but for clarity Oppose. As far as I am aware no other discussion forum (AfD, MfD, RfD), nor other deletion method (CSD, prod), requires that creators be notified. Most have it rightly as a strong recommendation, with the words:It is generally considered civil to notify the good-faith creator and any main contributors of the ... that you are nominating...". I don't see how CfD needs to be any different. The wording at CfD is currently: Consider adding  to the main article's talk page or to categories that are merge targets to notify users that the category has been nominated for deletion or renaming. I would support strengthening the wording to encourage this template to be used more often. (The information on the notification bot provided by Bencherlite seems like an ideal solution that WikiProjects should definitely utilize). Tassedethe (talk) 01:10, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * That Cfdnotice notice is good, but it is not for the category creator's talk page. There is no info at Categories for discussion recommending that the category creator be notified. Notifying the category creator is mentioned only vaguely as a subclause of a sentence. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:45, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Support as a baby step towards a requirement that all creators of material subject to deletion debate be required. Carrite (talk) 16:52, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Support because it's the right thing to do. Furthermore, the argument that you shouldn't notify the creator of a category that it is being put up for deletion because you don't want to get flak for doing so from upset users is, while understandable, a really awful argument. Have you seen the kind of stuff that the admins that delete articles or files get? Yes, it sucks to get yelled at by, for the large part, people who are either uninformed about policy or who are so emotionally invested in their work that they see a deletion nomination as an attack on their person, but it's a fact of the job. Avoiding notifying people because you don't want them to react badly simply isn't ethical.  S ven M anguard   Wha?  17:49, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the difference here is that the flak isn't necessarily because of the deletion or renaming of the category, but because of repeated notifications (according to Good Olfactory's comment above). While articles can in most cases be renamed without starting a separate discussion, categories must always go through either CFD or CFD/Speedy. We don't require article creators to be notified of move requests. Jafeluv (talk) 08:25, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The difference is that renaming a category is usually the same as deleting the category. A banner can be created for user talk pages. That banner can be listed in the cfd notice. So people can copy  to their user talk pages. As Sven said: "Avoiding notifying people because you don't want them to react badly simply isn't ethical." We are also losing editors because of deletions, speedy deletions, rude deletions, unnotified deletions, etc.. --Timeshifter (talk) 08:47, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * No, 99% of the time there is a vast difference between a proposal to rename a category and a proposal to delete it. Many rename proposals are quite bland and boring—just renaming things to standardize formatting between categories, and so forth. This is a far cry from a proposal to delete, and I doubt even the editors who are most possessive of "their" creations would equate the two processes. And as long as "ethics" comes into the discussion: I don't find it ethical to require users to do work for other users when the other users can quite easily accomplish what they seek by use of a pre-existing wiki tool called the watchlist. Good Ol’factory (talk) 10:27, 21 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Modification of the Mediawiki software. I have been thinking that what is really needed is a modification of the Mediawiki software to allow special entries on the watchlist for CFDs and AFDs. That would help solve the problem. I (and others here probably) have a bugzilla account. See Bug reports and feature requests. Another possibility is to add an entry in Special:Preferences (user profile tab) similar to "E-mail me when my user talk page is changed". A new entry called "E-mail me when an item on my watchlist is being discussed for deletion." --Timeshifter (talk) 22:08, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * What do you think of my proposal? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:22, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. --Timeshifter (talk) 05:37, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * See Bugzilla bug 32952. "Email notification and special-color watchlist notification when articles or categories are up for deletion or renaming." --Timeshifter (talk) 18:09, 10 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Support per Sven Manguard's comment above. And as SmokeyJoe and Timeshifter have said, expecting editors to continuously monitor their watchlists is ridiculous, especially for those with large amounts of pages on their watchlists. --TorriTorri(talk/contribs) 09:28, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm having a logic failure with "expecting editors to continuously monitor their watchlists is ridiculous, especially for those with large amounts of pages on their watchlists." - then why do they have the pages watched at all if they're not actually, well, watching them? - The Bushranger One ping only 10:01, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The word continuously is rather important here. I found the watchlisting process started to breakdown after my watchlist hit five figures. I still find my watchlist useful, but can no longer even skim the whole list every day, let alone catchup if I'm off wiki for a few days. Perhaps if I could drastically trim it to say 12,000 or so pages....  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  11:59, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Support If you want to delete goodfaith contributions you should inform the contributors, happy to see exceptions for contributors who've died, retired or been banned. But the default should be to inform - and I'm afraid this needs to be a rule not just a "should" because otherwise some people will ignore it as optional.  Ϣere  Spiel  Chequers  11:59, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Support, this isn't already the default? Of course, any page creator should be informed when their pages are put up for deletion. These notices aren't spam, and if someone believes that, explain why you sent them. --The Evil IP address (talk) 12:11, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose as requirement, support as guideline. When using Twinkle, there's a checkmark that says "Notify creator if possible." I encourage its use for non-speedy renaming. (Speedy renamings by nature should be trivial, and thus not need the notification.) But what I don't want is a requirement, because I don't think closes should be invalidated on the grounds that the creator was not notified. The category creator is really no more an owner of the category than anyone else. It's a courtesy, and a good one, but it shouldn't be a rule.--Mike Selinker (talk) 15:31, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose as requirement, support as guideline. per Mike. As for me, I always click the notify creator box on TW. As for notifying WikiProjects, I do it from time to time. I've not found there to be much of a response, when I do.Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:45, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Support as guideline / expected norm per the comments above (and I'm amazed that it isn't already). While AFD &c may not have an explicit requirement to notify, there is a strong assumption that doing so is correct and expected; the same should be true for categories. If watchlisting isn't considered a reliable notification method for articles or images, why is it sufficient here? Shimgray | talk | 15:50, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Support as a general rule. There are situations where this is either undesirable or difficult - for example, if a category has been renamed and a non-admin wants to rename it, (s)he can't find out who the original creater was; on the other hand, notifying the account who created the last version of the article is clearly wrong - this user is probably either the closing admin or, neither of who is necessarily interested in it. And frequently a user sees a family of related categories and adds an other one; if the whole group is nominated, this one user is frequently an ininterested party. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 16:47, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This rule will not accomplish sufficient good to outweigh the negativity of adding another rule. Controversial nominations do not suffer from the creator not being informed because they're already drawing sufficient input. Non-controversial nominations aren't controversial. --erachima talk 17:09, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Aside from what I wrote in my essay about wikiproject notification, I disagree with this as a requirement.  As is mentioned above and elsewhere, if you are concerned about a category you created, watchlist it.  Most categories, after creation, are edited very little.  So if it shows up in your watchlist, you know something is going on, and should look into it.  It is up to you to keep track of what you're interested in; it's not up to someone else.  In addition, Old Mishehu is correct about who to notify.  I can't tell you how many times I or my bot are notified about a category simply because I was the closing admin or my bot did the move.  --Kbdank71 04:21, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Can I assume, as I think you indicated to me previously, that you would not be displeased if there were a CfD-notification-bot that auto-notified category creators when the category is listed at CfD, and where you may opt out of all notifications, and where all bots are opted-out by default. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:59, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * My own personal preference would be to have any such mechanism to be opt-in, but yes, you can safely assume that. --Kbdank71 13:57, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If I work out how to write a bot, or get help, I'll see that you are initially opted out. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:10, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Here are some userboxes. It is too much to expect many category workers to give a damn. One thing that may change things over time is community understanding, and support for change. See User:Timeshifter/Userboxes. --Timeshifter (talk) 05:47, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose; I don't think it would be helpful to require this. It's usually a good idea to do it, but that's not a sound basis for mandating it in all cases. The bot proposal sounds reasonable to me too. bobrayner (talk) 18:18, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose this and any proposal like it. Of course it is normally the polite thing to do, but making it an absolute requirement is not a good idea. Persons who create a category and supposedly care about it should be watchlisting them anyway, and sometimes the creator is no longer an active editor so the requirement would accomplish nothing in such cases. WP:CREEP would be another reason. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:39, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose this proposal, notification is good practice and something that should be encouraged, but the mandating of this will just end up with a whole lot of Wikilawyering. Mt  king  (edits)  10:37, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. Userboxes.
 * Comment. I don't think "category workers" should be characterized as not giving a damn. Several users have outlined decent reasons as to why the proposal should not be accepted and others have outlined decent reasons why it should be accepted. But a user's acceptance or rejection of a specific proposal is not a window into the user's soul and it does not reveal what they do and do not give a damn about. Good Ol’factory (talk) 06:20, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Support CFD participation is in terminal decline, and the time debates are left open gets ever shorter. I have over 11,000 pages on my watchlist, and have missed a few nominations. There is no good reason not to do this. Johnbod (talk) 12:54, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Nominator notification for contested
Wouldn't it seem reasonable to notify the nominator of contested speedy nominations? The speedy page gets so many updates and I don't review them all, but I'd really like to know when my own nominations are contested. Since the majority of these nominations are completed without opposition, such notification seems like a reasonable burden to put on those who oppose the nominations. – Pnm (talk) 22:21, 28 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's necessary every time that a nomination is contested, as nominators (especially CFD regulars) often revisit the speedy page multiple times within the 48-hour window, but it may be a useful practice when moving a listing to the 'Opposed' section (assuming, of course, that the nominator hasn't already replied). I'm considering something along the lines of:
 * "An editor has voiced a concern or objection regarding your nomination to speedily rename Category:Foo to Category:Bar. Your thoughts, if you would like to share them, would be appreciated at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion/Speedy page."
 * For notifying CFD/S regulars, a shorter and more direct "someone's objected to one of your WP:CFD/S nominations" probably would work. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:39, 5 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Agree with Black Falcon, you shouldn't place an obligation on the objector. If you nominate something at CfD then you are obliged to make the time for it, to monitor it and follow it through yourself and have it on your watch list. it should be your obligation to spend the extra time, not the objector. Ephebi (talk) 15:01, 11 February 2012 (UTC)


 * An objection should be enough to torpedo the nomination, and when it hasn't been changed after a couple of days, that should be warning enough. Like with the proposal below, this falls under "If you set it in motion, it's your responsibility to keep up with it."--Mike Selinker (talk) 20:01, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Request for adminship
With the goal of encouraging more longtime CfD editors to become admins, I've nominated User:Fayenatic london for adminship. If you have opinions on this request, please add them on the RfA page. Thanks!--Mike Selinker (talk) 20:11, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Add requirement that Projects be notified when associated categories are discussed
A requirement should be added to the WP:CFD page that Wikiprojects must be notified when a related category is proposed for modification or deletion. This would be a duty of the nominator at the time of nomination.

Rationale: By contacting the Project talk page it is more likely that Project editors (who will often know the subject in hand far better than the nominator) will be aware of the change and familiarise themselves with the impact of the change. Placing this administrative burden on the CfD nominator will reduce the disruption that contentious or poorly thought-through CfD nominations cause. By making the nominator think about the relevant Project, it will improve the quality of the CfD proposal.

Tendentious nominations are the category world's equivalent of 3RR but are never censured. An earlier proposal to notify category creators met no consensus, but it raised the idea of notifying Projects when a CfD proposal came about. This has got a lot of merit. The CfD process has been abused for some time by full-time CfD editors. They repeatedly submit categories for renaming or deletion, in the full knowledge that it was previously contentious, while avoiding notifying previous participants in the earlier CfD (whose logical arguments caused a similar proposal to be rejected.) (Per Timeshifter writing here on 7 December 2011: The root problem is the desire for speedy renames by some category deletionist/renamers. Almost anything that slows them down they try to do away with.) IME requests to the nominator to contact parties with an interest in the topic are mostly ignored. When I have had the time to do it myself I have been accused of canvassing! This rudeness causes ill-will. When some of these changes are rejected the nominator may wait for a few months, then try to resubmit the offending categories piecemeal or in small groups which can slip in 'under the radar'. They then claim it as a "standard" to set as a precedent for rolling out those other changes. This sneaky behaviour forces editors away from editing to keep an eye on changes being proposed at CfD. Ephebi (talk) 15:01, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

It is a good idea, in my opinion, to notify WikiProjects (and it's easy enough to do using Cfd-notify) when a proposed change is controversial or involves a large number of categories, but the proposal as written imposes an unnecessary bureaucratic burden. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:12, 11 February 2012 (UTC) Given such blatant votestacking, I can only assume that the proposal here was made in similar bad faith. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:02, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Support, see my comments of 7-8 December 2011. -- Red rose64 (talk) 15:15, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Sidenote: Don't forget you can subscribe and follow project-specific CfD-related matters at Article Alerts! — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 15:48, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it would be easier to have a bot automatically notify any project that has a tag on a category's page whenever any CFD/CFR/CSD tag is placed on it. That way we wouldn't have to worry about the nominator's compliance and can avoid the "didn't follow correct procedure" arguments and resultant ill will that distracts from the substance. If the category does not have a project tag, then I don't think we can reasonably expect notification, unless there's some way to make the bot have subcategories "inherit" project tags from parents. postdlf (talk) 15:55, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * A good point. An automatic alert might seem attractive, but IMHO the problem arises because people are nominating CfDs without engaging with or considering the impact on the projects. I think there may be technical issues in defining the project reliably. Requiring a nominator to a) identify the project and b) insert their own notification will make them consider and communicate with the project's editors. It will start to make nominators more responsible and accountable to editors who will often know much more about the subject and its nuances. For that reason, I expect some of the regular CfD nominators will object to this proposal ;-)  (The work of the CfD regulars in fixing mundane typos or ill-considered categories with be largely unaltered, as they will often lay outside the scope of a project.) Ephebi (talk) 16:25, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose, for three reasons. First, this is not useful in most cases as most category changes are neither controversial nor require special attention. Second, this can be counterproductive : notifying WikiProjects of every discussion would diminish the impact of notifications in those cases where it is really needed, since spamming project talk pages with multiple notifications each week will cause their members to build up a tolerance to and simply ignore them. Third, this requirement is redundant to Article Alerts, which is a much more efficient mechanism that operates on an opt-in basis.
 * By the way: "The CfD process has been abused for some time by full-time CfD editors."[citation needed] :-) -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:17, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose. When it is obvious who would care about a category, it certainly is a nice thing to notify them. But I'm not interested in a policy that requires it. (Side note: It always amazes me when someone conjures a long string of insults aimed at the people he's trying to convince to support his position. It makes it feel more like this is a nomination designed to get CfD editors to reject it so that a point can be made later. That may not be the intent, but it is how it makes me feel when I read it.)--Mike Selinker (talk) 19:52, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Mike, I think that the purpose of this discussion was slightly different. The slective notoifications which Ephebi sent out about this discussion include reference to a current CFD, so it appears that even if this discussion was intended as a genuine proposal, it has been cleverly abused as a cover for some blatant votestacking. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:39, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Whatever it is, it isn't particularly friendly.--Mike Selinker (talk) 23:18, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose required. Happy with "recommended". The people above have said it all. And please no on the automatic alert. For one thing, cydebot (and anyone else who helps out at the /Working page) will get flooded with messages. Categories are "created" when renamed or merged to a not-currently-existing target. - jc37 20:01, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Sneaky behaviour is what Ephebi alleges in the opening post of this discussion. This is the same Ephebi who only a few minutes later engaged in a deliberate exercise of WP:VOTESTACKING by selectively notifying a group of editors who had supported his view in previous discussions, without alerting the discussions that any such notifications had been made.
 * Oppose per Black Falcon. In many cases, such notifications should be encouraged as good practice. However, making them a requirement can add a huge amount of bureaucracy and information overload which is not always appropriate. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:35, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Strengthen the language on WP:CfD that suggests notifying category creators and Wikiprojects. "Requirements" of this nature are problematic, IMO, as they inevitably lead to pointless wikilawyering. However, more extensive notification is needed for CfD. Considering how few categories most of us have watchlisted, it is appallingly easy for people who aren't religiously involved with this page to overlook CfDs that affect categories we care about. The language currently on the page regarding notifications ("See the doc page at Cfdnotice for more information on how to use this template as well as other similar templates that can be used to notify the category's creator or related WikiProjects specifically") is about as weak as a suggestion could be (and it's not even particularly visible on the page). A separate bulleted item that says something like "Consider adding Cfd section name to the talk pages of the category's creator or related WikiProjects to alert potentially interested users to the proposed change" would be far more effective -- and should be added. --Orlady (talk) 21:54, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm good with that.--Mike Selinker (talk) 23:16, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I emphatically support Orlady's proposal. Let's change the Cfd instructions to clearly suggest notification whenever it's appropriate. __meco (talk) 10:23, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Black Falcon's and BrownHairedGirl's comments - and also a trout to the nominator for engaging in what can only be seen as an attempted end-around of WP:CANVASS. Orlady's proposal does have merit, though, and might be considered for implementing. - The Bushranger One ping only 22:35, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose per my comments and extended discussion in the previous discussion above. We just debated this issue and the discussion was closed less than a month ago. There are other pre-existing ways for users to track categories they care about rather than relying on others. One is the user watchlist. Good Ol’factory (talk) 03:23, 13 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose the proposal as written. We don’t make CfD and category management easier by making it harder on the existing participants.


 * Support postdlf’s counter proposal, as was more or less agreed in the previous discussion on nominating category creators. Someone should get a bot written that auto-notifies whenever the category is listed at CfD.  It should notify the category creator, and the talk page of any WikiProject with a tag on the category_talk page, but not notify any user containing the string “bot”, “Kbdank71”, or any user listed on the opt-out page.  The notification should, of course, be small and brief, point to the category and the CfD listing, and point to the opt-out instructions.


 * This would mean that any user should feel free to commence a CfD discussion without having to worry about burdensome notification commitments.


 * Notification should be the same regardless of a nomination to delete or rename.  Rename discussions occur almost always because the new-to-category-editing creator was unaware of preferred category naming schemes, and a single notification per mistake (opt-outable) of the existence of preferred category naming schemes would be a good thing.  I daresay that there is already a sufficent demonstration of consensus support to do this.


 * I also support an old proposal that category creation should be restricted to approved category creators, defaulting to any admin, and probably expand the use of Account creator to enable non-admin access to bold category management. This may necessitate a WP:Categories for creation request page.  I predict that the work at this page will be less than the relief felt at CfD.  It will recognise that while Wikipedia entices anyone to edit right now, categorising the project is a higher level function.  Failing the above, I think that category creation should be hindered by a need to click a checkbox acknowledging some category naming guideline page.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:15, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 * A "CfC" process would make a lot of sense... - The Bushranger One ping only 01:27, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that a CfC process might be a good idea. I think that the idea requires a little more exploration before I endorse it, but my initial thought is that the upsides outweigh the downsides. It could impede the work of some of the tendentious category creators whose antics can take a lot of effort to tidy up, as well as help guide the good faith efforts of editors who are not so familiar with how categories work. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:14, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Oppose. As mentioned here and elsewhere, there are better ways to accomplish the intended goals.  And thanks to SmokeyJoe for remembering that I'd like to be seeded on any opt-out list.  :)  --Kbdank71 19:14, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Mechanisms for WikiProject notification
There is general agreement here that notification of WikiProjects is usually a Good Thing™, and should be encouraged. I share that view, and also share the reservation that it is not always appropriate.

However, the usability of our current notification mechanisms is abysmal: the cfd-notifycannot cope effectively with group nominations, and breaks entirely when the section heading of the group nomination is not a category name. Even for simple nominations, cfd-notify is cumbersome, requiring lots of parameters which need checking ... and when it is done, we do not have a template for recording the notification in the discussion (some equivalent to delsort).

So my initial intention here was propose a drive to improve the usability of the notification templates, and to work with the developers of WP:TWINKLE to incorporate them into Twinkle. My idea was that if there was a WikiProjects-to-notify facility in Twinkle, then the script could automate the whole thing in a neutral and transparent way. No hassle, much more notices.

But the more I look at this, the more I think that any such mechanism is reinventing the wheel. We already have the Article alerts system, a hugely-sophisticated and customisable machine which automatically builds project-based lists of all XfDs. Why duplicate that work by spamming talk pages?

It seems to me that there are three things to be done to improve the ability of Article Alerts to generate awareness of CfD discussions:
 * 1) Encourage WikiProjects to subscribe to Article Alerts, and alert project members to the existence of these alerts.
 * 2) Remind WikiProjects to apply their project banners to the talk pages of categories, so that Article Alerts is war of their interest in the category.
 * 3) Request CfD nominators to add relevant project banners to the talk pages of nominated categories, so that they are included in that project's Article alerts listing

That turns some of the onus over to WikiProjects to be more proactive in taking steps to increase their awareness of XfDs, which seems to me to be a Good Thing™ because it leaves projects free to decide how much they want to engage with XfD. The alternatives, of posting directly to the project's talk pages, look very spammy by comparison. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:18, 14 February 2012 (UTC)


 * I was with you up until #3. Requesting the CFD nominators add project banners can be just as spammy, especially if they don't know which project is or isn't interested in a particular category.  I'm always for opt-in, rather than opt-out.  If a project is interested in a category, they need to put their banner on it.  Otherwise, I like the idea.  --Kbdank71 13:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think you're right that #3 can be spammy. Much better to stick to the opt-in principle, so I have struck #3. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:02, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Category:Eponymous categories, and hiding
This is at least causing some confusion eg Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_February_15, Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_February_4 There doesn't seem to be a method for just discussion so I brought this here.

Question : is it right that subcategories of Category:Eponymous categories - specifically those that are of the form "Categories named after" should be labelled Template:Hidden category (obviously excluding ctageories that are not tracking or maintence categories - ie Category:Arab Spring ?Mddkpp (talk) 11:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Opposed category moves
I would like clarification for the procedures of opposed "speedy moves". Not being a usual frequenter of category questions, I am not sure how these work. But a category I created was nominated for speedy move two days ago. I opposed it, and the discussion continued thereafter , etc. But the category was moved nonetheless today. I had understood opposed category moves would be reclassified for longer discussion and not be maintained on schedule for speedy moves. I know RMs have seven days of discussion, so I thought something like that was going to happen here, and took time prepare my a more elaborate reply, including various alternative proposals to moving, only to find that it was moved already today. Is this procedurally correct? What is exactly the timetable for these things? Walrasiad (talk) 20:58, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that if a speedy category rename is opposed for any reason, it should be moved to a full discussion for 7 days. There may be a case to be made that exceptions should be made for clearly frivolous opposition to a change that obviously will be made, but I would not classify this case of your opposition as one of those types. I'm not sure why it was processed, but I would guess that the administrator who did it felt that the change would inevitably be made with or without a full discussion. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:49, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I did indeed. This was a clear C2C move, and four editors (including Good Olfactory) made that point crystal clear to Walrasiad. There were 20 other categories in Category:Maritime history by country, and all of them have the same format. Walrasiad wanted special dispensation for a poorly thought out category concept, and no commenter agreed with that position. Looking at the overall point, there are times when an objection is made on completely unfounded ground, and this was one of those times, in my opinion. Nonetheless, Walrasiad is clearly quite upset, to the extent of leaving a very long justification on my talk page. He should relist the category, and we can then see whether people agree with me. (If the point is that no objection, no matter how unfounded, should be discounted, then I clearly don't know what admin judgment is supposed to be for.)--Mike Selinker (talk) 23:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I have found, at least of late, that it is often better to just move these types of situations to the full discussion section. The sole reason I say it's "better" is that it avoids the (sometimes very) long, drawn-out process of the sole objector complaining in various places and to various editors about the lack of process and admins ramming through changes, etc. If the full discussion is held, at least one can finally point to consensus and say, "There—see, it's not just me!" But I also agree that if an admin wants to take the heat, he or she has every right to go forward with the intial speedy proposal. In other words, there's no iron-clad rule that says what an admin has to do in the case of an objection, as my comment above may have suggested. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:50, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't mind taking the heat, but if we don't accept that C2C and C2D mean something, why bother to have them as criteria at all?--Mike Selinker (talk) 23:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, yes—I essentially agree on that point, and I wish others could similarly acknowledge the validity of the criteria, even when they disagree with its application in a specific case. There have been a heck of a lot of "I don't like it"-style oppose comments at WP:CFDS lately, which does make me wonder sometimes why I bother even trying to use it as opposed to just going straight to a full discussion. With philosophy categories, I just skip the speedy section altogether. Good Ol’factory (talk) 00:06, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * And in this case, I would have bet dollars to donuts that no objection would have occurred, because the change is so clearly correct. I would not have been right about that, of course.--Mike Selinker (talk) 00:40, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Something appears very opaque to me in this matter, having read the discussion above. Why are there two sub-sections, "Opposed nominations" and "Moved to a full discussion"? What's the significance of the former? I mean, isn't general practice, or even guideline dictate, that an admin should move a nomination into either? That would mean that an admin has already passed a judgment by placing a category in the former section. Is it then an appropriate allocation of resources to have a second assessment as to whether it should be moved to the latter? Obviously there must have been some discussion prior to making the distinction between these two sub-sections that I haven't found yet, but perhaps a short clarification here is possible? __meco (talk) 09:33, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It has just been a recently created distinction on that page for convenience and organization more than anything else. If opposition is announced, it generally gets moved to the "opposed" section. It's then generally up to the original nominator to move it to a full discussion if he wants to pursue it. If he doesn't want to pursue it, it generally sits in the opposition section, and then gets deleted after it sits for awhile with no one moving it to the full nomination. If it does get moved to a full nomination, it can be moved to the next section. Really, both sections are not needed unless the page gets messy with a lot of opposed nominations and lots being moved to the full section. If it makes things clearer, we can just delete the second section. It just became useful about a week ago when there were over a dozen opposed nominations and a bunch being moved to full discussions but a bunch not being moved. Long story short: there's no guarantee that an opposed speedy will be moved to a full discussion. It's really up to individual editor initiative and is done pretty ad hoc. Good Ol’factory (talk) 09:42, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
 * That's clear to me. __meco (talk) 12:35, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

RFC on contested speedy renamings of categories
The instructions at Categories for discussion/Speedy are not clear about what to do when a speedy renaming is contested.

Current practice is that when a listed category is contested, the entry is moved down the page the to a holding area, where some discussion may follow. However, the instructions are unclear about what should happen next. They currently read: ''Contested requests can be removed from this list after 48 hours. If the nominator wants to continue the process they need to submit the request as a regular CfD using the instructions above.''

My reading of this has always been that if any objection is sustained, the renaming cannot proceed through the speedy process. To my mind, this accords with the general principle that a speedy process (such as speedy deletion) is reserved for uncontroversial issues where there is an assumption of consensus for the action. However, another admin recently read it as allowing admin discretion in assesing the objection and any comments made in response to the objection.

I see three options here:
 * 1) To explicitly allow admin unfettered admin discretion in the handling of contested proposals for speedy renaming
 * 2) To clarify the guideline so that it explicitly halts any speedy renaming in the face of a good faith sustained objection
 * 3) Status quo: continue with the current wording

My preference is for option 2. I suggest that the guidance be changed to say something to the effect of:
 * Any editor may contest a proposed speedy renaming. This should be done by moving its entry to the holding area under the heading "Opposed nominations", and adding a brief explanation of their reasons. Other editors may append their comments on the objection.
 * The speedy renaming may proceed only if the objection is explicitly withdrawn, or if an admin assesses that the objection is either frivolous or has been made by an editor who is not in good standing. Otherwise, the contested requests can be removed from this page after 48 hours. The nominator (or any other editor) may then submit the request as a regular CfD using the instructions on how to use CfD.

Any thoughts? Ideas? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Unfettered Admin discretion

 * 1) I'm not sure I would have chosen the word "unfettered," but I think there has to be some ground for admin discretion about what the C2 criteria mean. If it is clear to the admin that something should be renamed because it matches exactly the other names of things around it, then the speedy timetable is warranted. An objection should be considered, but I don't think it should be impossible for an admin to find it wholly lacking in merit and move on. Of course, my belief in that is what caused this whole brouhaha in the first place, so I wouldn't be surprised if many other people disagree.--Mike Selinker (talk) 19:49, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Mike, did you see my extended rationale below? My main concern is that however justified you (or any other admin) thought you were in over-riding the objection, the practical outcome was to cause a lot of drama for you and others. That one got to CFD anyway, so wouldn't it have been easier to just let it go there directly? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:36, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware we were debating what is easy. I am arguing for what I think is correct. Admins should be able to decide things based on criteria we've defined, or there's no reason to have those criteria. Or, for that matter, admins.--Mike Selinker (talk) 23:25, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I think we have a different understanding of what the speedy criteria are for. My understanding is not that they are rules which need to be enforced, but that they express a few points of what is believed to be a stable and widely-held consensus, and help avoid editors having the same discussion over-and-over again in cases where the outcome is predictable. They are essentially a process-saving device, but if that consensus is challenged, I see no process benefit from proceeding with the renaming only to then have 1) a long procedural discussion (whether at DRV, on the admin's talk page, or at ANI) followed by 2) a revert of the renaming, and then 3) the discussion that would have happened anyway (only that by now at least 2 editors feel a bit fed up, and the echoes from the disagreement reduce the signal-to-noise ratio at CFD).
 * Consensus can change, so we need a mechanism for testing it, and that's a full CfD discussion. If an editor is going to challenge a consensus, there will always be less work for everyone in having the substantive discussion with the minimum amount of preceding drama. Also, there will often be some exceptions to a broad consensus, (e.g. is an exception to the "Fooish people" convention), and where those edge cases arise it is again better to have the discussion before the bots proceed.
 * In the case which prompted these discussions, I know that you acted in courteously and in good faith, and in the same circumstances I might have done the same myself. But I looked at the outcome with the benefit of hindsight, and it seems to me that the crucial point here is that an admin decision to override objection ultimately has zero practical benefit. With the benefit of hindsight, can explain what you think was gained by going through steps 1 & 2 above (i.e. the procedural discussion and the revert)? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:43, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Just because this discussion went off the rails doesn't mean the principle of admin judgment is wrong in all cases. Anyway, I've made my point, and we already knew you disagreed with it. Let's see what others have to say.--Mike Selinker (talk) 14:39, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) I think I'll disagree with "unfettered" as well, but the basic concept I do agree with. To me, this is no different than an admin using their judgment to determine weight of argument in closing a cfd.  To give an extreme example, if you have a series of 1000 categories and one of them is different, a speedy request that is objected by someone who has all of 1 edit should be able to be ignored.  Now that editor always has options like DRV, and the admin should always be able to defend a decision as such.  And remember, the vast majority of cases an objection will result in a full cfd. --Kbdank71 21:54, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * 2) I think option #1 is fine with the deletion of the word "unfettered". "Unfettered" means unconstrained, both before and after the fact.  Admins are expected to regularly use discretion and to usually not get it wrong.  Admins are always contrained by consensus, for example.  If someone wants a discussion, at CfD or right there and then, let them have it, if it is reasonable, and the admin will need discretion as to whether the objection is reaosnable.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:16, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) I think it's fine for an admin to exercise discretion in a given case to not move the speedy objection to a full discussion. It's a bit of a once-in-a-blue-moon situation where it might arise, but I don't think any rule that says the admin must always and automatically do anything is a good rule. Retaining flexibility is sensible and will in the vast majority of cases result in the most benefit for WP as a whole. Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:08, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Discussion
Since an RFC proposal is supposed to be brief, this seems like the place to set out in more detail why I support a clear restriction on continuing with a renaming in the case of a sustained objection.


 * 1) My overriding reason is a pragmatic feeling that steamrollers are counterproductive in a collaborative environment, and anything perceived as  a steamroller is counterproductive.  If an editor feels that they have made valid and reasonable objection, and have not been persuaded otherwise, then they are likely to feel that they been unjustly treated if the renaming simply goes ahead anyway.  What's the point in objecting if the steamroller squashes you?  In that case, they may engage the closing admin in a long discussion and/or take their grievance  through a dispute resolution process.  Both those outcomes are much more hassle for the closing admin than simply letting the issue go to a full discussion, and they may have an even worse effect: they may discourage the disgruntled editor from using the established processes, and may even discourage them from continuing to contribute to Wikipedia.  Much better to avoid drama by having the discussion on the substantive issue rather than on procedure, and for everyone to feel that they have had an opportunity to make their case.
 * 2) My second reason is more theoretical: WP:CONSENSUS has always been explicit that consensus can change, and that the scope of an existing consensus may need clarification. If a contested speedy results in a full discussion, that provides a check on whether the nominator is correct in their belief that there is a consensus on how to proceed. If the proposal is upheld (as in most contested speedies I have seen), then there is a useful confirmation that the nominator was on the right track. However, if the proposal in amended or rejected, then Wikipedia has gained by not proceeding with an action which would otherwise be reversed.

One concern I can see about allowing an objector to simply block a speedy renaming is that this power may be abused, by frivolous or vexatious objections. I am quite sure that there will indeed be some frivolous or vexatious objections, but we have dispute resolution mechanisms to deal with that sort of thing, and if any editor persistently abuses the process by contesting speedies which are upheld at CFD it will amount to tendentious editing. The community has mechanisms for dealing with tendentious editing wherever it occurs, so there is no specific need to lock down this procedure to prevent it. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:10, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree that some regulation about category renaming must exist, at least because operations with categories are more resource consuming and eventual reverting would be more costly than, say, reverting a move of an average article. But I do not agree that such restriction should be based on the "sustained objection" principle. For example, in the case of I intervened on time. But surely there were many cases not so lucky, when either any expert user was not online in the critical few days, such users did not watch the category page, or such users are not willing to engage into a flamewar. Although hardly compatible with WP:equality, I think that moving a category should require an approval from at least one user with a significant contribution to one of categorized pages, may be indirectly categorized (i.e. belonging to a subcategory). I.e. without such approval the move has not to be proceeded even is the total absence of objections, and such request will pend indefinitely. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 20:11, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Incis, if I understand your concern correctly, it seems to me that what you want is a much radical restriction on the whole speedy renaming process. Apart from being a lot more restrictive than the current speedy principle (that an action goes ahead unless challenged), your idea of approval by a particular class of editor is a lot tighter than the current full CFD process. I can't think of any other process which privileges prior contributors by requiring their consent, and the whole idea seems to me to be a form of WP:OWNERSHIP. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:41, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * It is not an ownership because no one of many (usually tens or even hundreds) contributors will not have a blocking vote. It is also not an ownership because a slightly-above-the-average skilled user can made his/her own contribution to one of articles in almost every category (note I am not happy with an idea that Wikipedia should allow mass category moves to users with low skills). It is a protection against mass run-by changes which would be inherently tolerant to DoS attacks, unlike "sustained objection". Incnis Mrsi (talk) 21:13, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
 * By "sustained objection", I don't mean somebody jumping up-and-down. I just mean an objection by anybody which has not been withdrawn. Lots of editors watch CFD/S, so if any of them can stop a speedy renaming, any of them can stop a DOS-type attack.-- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:33, 24 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment -- I do not monitor speedy CFDs only full ones. I would suggest that where an editor gives a substantive (i.e. non-trivial) reason for objection, the normal course should be to take the request to a full CFD discussion.  A few years ago there were dozens of CFDs each day, so that a speedy procedure was more necessary than today.  I do not think this would unduly fetter the process.  Admins are by definition experienced WP-ians and we should be prepared to trust them to be able to judge the difference between a substantial and a trivial objection.  Peterkingiron (talk) 17:47, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
 * I wish somebody would explain to me what is the benefit of a good admin judgement when the disgruntled editor can still take to a full CFD anyway. AFAICS, doing the move before the discussion merely risks a lot of work reverting. Please can somebody tell me what that achieves? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 00:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You might as well ask why we have DRV when CFD exists. Disgruntlement is a straw man; people will always have a place to go when they're upset, and they will be heard there. Now, please take a look at these four nominations, all brought over from Speedy after one editor's pointless objection. Under digraphs and trigraphs, no objections to a clear C2D change. Under Sethian, no objections to a clear C2C renaming. Under Bandandu, no objections to a clear C2D change. Under triangulation, only one objection summarized as "this is a stupid name." Who was helped by these discussions occurring? If the admin had felt that he or she could make these clear changes based on a simple read of the surrounding articles and categories, only one person would have had an issue with it. Where he expressed his disgruntlement is merely a side issue.--Mike Selinker (talk) 02:13, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Mike, I don't have any conceptual problem with what happened at these four nominations. The speedy was contested (by an admin with 55000 edits under his belt), it was brought to a full CfD, and it went ahead. No drama, v little hassle.
 * It is disappointing that the objecting editor did not contribute to the full discussion, but AFAICS he appears not to have been notified about it, which is a pity (it would only have taken one edit to leave a note "see CFD link "). Nonetheless, his concerns were displayed at CFD, and the end result is that for the sake of very few extra edits we clearly do have a consensus for the change.  That's a lot better than an admin complaining  that "I was steamrollered".
 * If a full discussion takes place, and there is clear consenus to proceed, then of course an editor can still open a DRV. But if their complaint is that others editors didn't agree with a frivolous objection, the  DRV will be snow-closed. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:22, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment I am by no means experienced with this, but it seems to me the current rules are extremely unclear and whichever way it is decided, the stated instructions should be rewritten to make it clearer. As currently stated, they make it appear that registering a reasonable objection is enough to suspend the timetable and move to full discussion.  And that is the expectation it inculcates. Admin discretion seems to add an element of random surprise, which is not stated as a concrete possibility, and can cause shock and dismay.
 * As for the general point, 48 hours does not seem to me be a lot of time for people to make out their arguments as thoughtfully or as carefully as they'd like - jobs, children, get in the way. The way the rules are written (which may not be their intention, but again it is the expectation they build), an objector is led to believe that opening an initial reasonable objection is enough to halt the ticking bomb, expecing they can return to it again later, when they have more time to dedicate, to lay out their case more fully and carefully, and reply to other points. Unfettered admin discretion means an objector has to immediately compose a complete and complex argument in full, that had better anticipate all counterpoints and wow the admin from the get-go, or else you won't get another chance. If your kid is sick, or the boss is riding you that day, tough luck.  Why the rush? Walrasiad (talk) 02:35, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Washington (state) instead of just Washington
I have noticed that all Washington categorized topics use Washington (state) instead of just Washington. In categories such as Category:Companies based in Washington (state), the disambiguation is unnecessary. The only other possible search term is Category:Companies based in Washington, D.C. which is a natural disambiguation. I see that there was a discussion back in 2008, but per WP:PRECISE, shouldn't the disambiguations be removed? Alpha_Quadrant  (talk)  23:40, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Please see CfD 2008/Dec/28 Washington and CfD 2011/Jan/29 Washington (U.S. state).- choster (talk) 00:43, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I have read those discussions. The 2008 discussions was due to the fact that Category:Washington is ambiguous. When dealing with organizations, there are only two possible Washington terms terms, Washington State or Washington, D.C. Alpha_Quadrant   (talk)  01:09, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The ultimate parent category for things related to the state is, and in categories, it's a well accepted principle now that the subcategories use the same name format as the ultimate parent category. This nicely avoids the endless debates that could be had about when to use the disambiguation and when not to in each of the subcategories. WP:PRECISE applies to article names, but it has never been adopted with respect to category names. Good Ol’factory (talk) 07:14, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Need more eyes at TfD
Since the template populates a category, dropping a note here.
 * ''Templates for discussion/Log/2012 March 2
 * ''Template:JEL code
 * ''Category:Categories which are included in the JEL classification codes
 * ''JEL classification codes

Also, could anyone clueful take a look at Template:tfd? Unlike Template:cfd (et al) it apparently merely links to the WP:TFD page and not to the specific log page in question. It was annoying trying to get to the actual discussion for this (especially since the discussion was relisted : )

Would be nice if it had at least the functionality of the cfd/cfr/cfm templates to link directly to the log page in question. Thanks : ) - jc37 17:25, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia cats
If you lok at the subcats of the subcats, most do not specify Wikipedia articles....
 * Category:Wikipedia article cleanup categories

I would like to suggest that any cat starting with the phrase Articles with should be considered enough to consider it a project category. Other such words are Wikipedia, Wikipedian, WikiProject, Wikiquote, etc. (Note that if we force renames on all these, my read is that some bots may need adjusting.)

Otherwise, all of these probably need to come up for renaming. Is there a speedy criteria that would cover this directly? (B2?) And if not, why not? - jc37 23:37, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

VP Notice
In case anyone is interested. - jc37 23:41, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
 * ''Village_pump_(technical)

Tagging request
Could someone do the requsite tagging for the subcategories of Category:Anime by year of first release and Category:Manga by year of first release. — Dispenser 15:30, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Category reference navbox
I have found this useful for my userpage. Thought I would share : ) - jc37 01:46, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Application or Overapplication of Death Categories to biographies
Currently, just about every biography article of a deceased subject matter categorizes them by how they died. And how someone dies can certainly be notable. For an obvious example, assassination victims are often partly notable for how they died. On the other end of the spectrum, how could dying from a lightning strike possibly influence how you lived your life (short of not golfing in the rain)? There are certainly more nuanced examples in between those two extremes that we would disagree on.

I think the universal application of cause of death is largely a source bias of using obituaries rather than a real consensus that we should make Wikipedia a morbidity report, WP:NOT. I would like to establish a concensus that not every biography needs a cause of death cat. That would allow us to consider individual nominations for deletion on their own merits without falling back to WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS.

What do other editors think? RevelationDirect (talk) 13:05, 9 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think the question should come from the article perspective, but from the category perspective. It's not that some biography articles don't need to have a cause of death category; it's that not every cause of death category may not be valid. Categories should help the user find related articles. Your two examples are fitting to my point - researching assassination is made easier by the assassination victims category, but does the lightning strike category help in any manner? Is the category noteworthy? Does it do any good? Some causes of death may be notable only in conjunction with the person who died (such as in ironic cases, for example), and not wholly on its own. (If heroin overdose is the cause of death, is that always category-worthy notability? Gunshot wound? Heart attack? Drowning?) In that case, it is going to more difficult to decide whether the biography should be tagged or not. Is the category always noteworthy, often noteworthy, sometimes noteworthy, or never noteworthy? Or should we categorize all deaths by X if there's even just a single case where death by X is noteworthy? I don't know the answer to most of these questions, but felt compelled to participate in the dialogue... - UtherSRG (talk) 13:36, 9 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I see these as useful. Many people are notable for the manner of their deaths and there have been many significant controversies about what is killing people (both individuals and statistical groups). I believe that we should be breaking things down primarily by cause of death and the breakdown should be on considered lines, perhaps one of the Diagnosis codes with category redirects from common names. These should be broken down using standard methods when they get too large (and country is a standard method). We can have special categories linked to this tree for occupation and location based deaths (Black lung, Toroku arsenic disease, etc). Stuartyeates (talk) 20:24, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I like the idea of a concrete structure but I've also witnessed a lot of bickering between clinical healthcare, insurance and US government over the appropriate application of ICD9 diagnosis codes. Maybe New Zealand has superior diagnosis codes to go along with the superior healthcare? (-: RevelationDirect (talk) 01:00, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Sound like this could also go into persondata. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:20, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I find the deaths by cause category hierarchy in its current level of resolution and structure appropriate and useful, and I have actively participated in expanding the hierarchy to its present state. I see the possibility which this scheme provides for researching commonalities related to the causes of death that are selected as category-worthy clearly useful in a significant manner. I also agree with, and I have previously promoted, the practice of subcategorizing by location for wider categories, such as cancer deaths, accidental deaths and deaths due to cardiovascular disease, but obviously not for subdivisions of these classes. It should also be noted in this discussion that there is currently an ongoing CfD, Entire "Category:Cancer deaths by country" tree, that if approved would set a precedent for tearing down much of what has currently been built up. __meco (talk) 10:25, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
 * "I see the possibility which this scheme provides for researching commonalities related to the causes of death" Hmm, different people use Wikipedia quite differently, obviously. If someone was interested in researching commonalities related to the causes of death, I'd direct them to Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report or other broad-based research that include people regardless of notability. Doing research on cause of death based on notable people someone takes the time to write an article about means it would be skewed toward sports, political and celebrity people and away from, well, house painters. I assume you meant research more casually than the way I think of it but I would be very reluctant to make even casual epidemiological assumptions based on counting Wikipedia articles. RevelationDirect (talk) 17:41, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, I meant it in the way I, and I'm sure many others, research all sorts of subjects that we come across or which come to mind. That is not to say that someone doing more professional research might not discover interesting clusters that would warrant further investigation. __meco (talk) 11:21, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Speedy renaming criterion C2.D
I have modified the wording of speedy renaming criterion C2.D to clarify that it can apply only to topic categories. Only a topic category can have an 'eponymous article'. The title of a set category will differ from the title of its 'main' article due to plurality – e.g., Economist (singular) and Category:Economists (plural) – or list naming, e.g., List of economists.

What prompted me to make this change was the continuing presence of speedy renaming nominations that involve changing a topic category into a set category, or vice versa. Such changes are, in many cases, reasonable, but they are not the unambiguous and uncontroversial changes for which speedy renaming is reserved. -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:49, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me.--Mike Selinker (talk) 22:55, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Though I wish there were a clearer, yet as succinct, way to phrase it. (BF's comments above are MUCH clearer than the CSD page itself, I think.) - jc37 23:32, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * This makes sense and is probably a necessary clarification, but ... does it mean that if, for instance, we had a category called it could not be renamed to  under C2D on the basis that the article is at Bestseller? (For this particular instance, ignore the fact that you might be able to use C2A here. Similar issues will arise for categories for which you could not use C2A.)  Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:33, 11 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Here is a good example: this nomination. Does this go to a full CFD now? Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:37, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that change, and similar ones, could be made under criterion C2.B, as a disambiguation fix from an unqualified name. An example of the type of change that I think should be discussed would be renaming Category:Rounds to Category:Round (music), which not only adds the disambiguation but also converts a set category into a topic category. -- Black Falcon (talk) 06:05, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. If I understand correctly, the main thing we want to avoid in speedy is somehow converting a topic category to a set category (or more rarely, vice versa). Good Ol’factory (talk) 07:26, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It would be convenient to include trivial pluralizations for existing set categories, which would cover the example immediately above. Mangoe (talk) 15:26, 12 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it would be reasonable to carry out changes of that type – e.g. Category:Economist to Category:Economists – under criterion C2.A. I agree, of course, that such trivial changes need not have a full discussion. -- Black Falcon (talk) 06:05, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

On the categorization of biographies by (perhaps) incidental occupation
In the last several days there have been many CFDs for occupational categories where the people in question gained notability through some other means. For example, Category:House painters contains five members: two union activists, two politicians, and a fellow who tried to assassinate Andrew Jackson. The CFD entry for this category is generating a lot of discussion, and there are at least a dozen other similar discussions underway at the moment, with a lot of other candidate categories waiting in the wings. Some of these categories can be dealt with simply because they are small and because there are parents waiting to receive them, but often enough these categories present the same issue I've described here (for example, Jesus is a member of Category:Carpenters). The problem is exacerbated by various people who drifted from occupation to occupation (e.g. Thomas Lavy, who worked as an electrician among several types of jobs) and who get listed under each.

My personal opinion is that in general these categorizations come under trivial characteristics or intersection. I would prefer that people be categorized under the work that made them famous. The occupational connection between Jesus and Harrison Ford is largely trivia, even if for the latter carpentry did provide an in with George Lucas and meant that he didn't have to fake his work in Witness. I recognize for the union activists and politicians that there is frequently a direct line from their initial occupation to their political activity, but it still seems to me, when it comes down to it, that Samuel Gompers could well have been a plumber or any other skilled tradesman instead of rolling cigars.

At any rate, there are as I said a number of these discussions, and it seemed to me better to establish a general principle here rather than repeating much of the same argument over and over again. Mangoe (talk) 19:43, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * You, ahh, hit the nail on the head when you said "I would prefer that people be categorized under the work that made them famous". If is is done using that characteristic a lot of the categories would disappear for lack of articles. And that is a good thing. Prevents category clutter. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:24, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I wish to oppose this in the strongest possible terms. This dismisses what is for most people the most important part of their waking lives, their occupations, as being trivial. Ordinary mortals work for a living. Some of them become notable, but that doesn't change the fact that they worked for a living, and there is no comprehensible rationale I can see for dismissing what may have been the defining characteristic of their daily lives, just because of what I cannot help but see as class prejudice. This is about giving a well-rounded picture of people as human beings who lived and breathed and worked, not just as tick-offs on a roster. "Joe Obscure, served three terms in the Alaska Territorial Legislature; categorize him for that and only that, and ignore that he was a truckdriver, a Teamster, a Lutheran bishop, and later had gender reassignment surgery, even though all of this can be documented". What people do for a living is not "incidental"; it is their lives. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  20:47, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It's incidental to the reason they are notable, which is what is meant when that is stated. It's not incident to the person as a human being, but since WP is not a directory of every human being who ever lived—hopefully we have articles only about the "notable" ones—so we don't really need to worry about that. You're getting into a far more abstract "everyone is special, everyone has value" type argument—which may have merits, but is not really the focus of an encyclopedia. Good Ol’factory (talk) 20:54, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No, I'm saying that when we decide that some human being is notable for whatever, then their biography should be as complete as we can make it, not just the kind of grossly-inadequate sketchy "they did this thing I found in the papers, so that's all we have to say about them" biographies that fill our page counts. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  21:02, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, and that's fine for the article. But the categories are what we are discussing. We can't categorize everything; we have to choose. Good Ol’factory (talk) 21:32, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The difference is what is important to a person and what is important to readers of WP. The latter is what we as editors should focus on . -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:04, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Mike, I'm in agreement with you that the biography articles are often shells that need to be flushed out with more content, not less, especially in the worker/labor articles we both tend to work in. What I'm not convinced of is that the category structure should also be expanded.  Certainly we have citations to identify people who have glass eyes, whose favorite drink is a martini, who rented a New York walk up, who had a garden in their back yard, or collected coins.  So, if someone had their eye shot out in WWI, it makes sense to mention that in the article. I don't think it makes sense to string that person together with other people with glass eyes using a category though. RevelationDirect (talk) 21:19, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I'm not at all saying that this ought to left out of articles. What I'm saying is that this is making trivial associations. I mean, Jesus, Harrison Ford, Bernie Sanders, Joseph Volpe, William B. Ide — who knew? Sanders life was being a senator; Volpe's was managing the Met; Ide's was settling California, and so forth. They all passed through carpentry along the way, but other than that they have nothing much in common. And they are certainly very different from Norm Abram, for whom carpentry (actually cabinetry) is his defining feature. If I were categorized by all the various things I've done, I could acquire a very long list of categories because of the varieties of my interests; someone who did a lot of different odd jobs could likewise collect a lot of categories. But as for myself, it doesn't seem to me that the fact that I worked in a warehouse for a summer, and before that transplanted seedlings in a nursery, is of any great importance; it certainly wouldn't justify putting me in Category:Warehousemen or Category:Nurserymen. Mangoe (talk) 21:26, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Occupation vs. Trade Union Part of the challenge of documenting trade/laborers/working class people is that they often toil anonymously; that's also the challenge of social history. The people that do become individually notable usually do so through collective action in a trade union or other class conscious organization like the grange or political part.  To me, that means a category like International Union of Painters and Allied Trades would be more meaningful and precise than one like House painters.  That's why I've created Category:International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers but have never used an electrician cat.RevelationDirect (talk) 21:42, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd say that electricians should all go in their professional cat because the life experiences of electricians can have commonalities that far transcend their union affiliation; and of course, not all IBEW members are electricians. But we do need to straighten out the mess where category:Cigar makers includes manufacturing companies, management, and actual cigarmakers like Carmen and Sam. Gompers. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  21:52, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Categories are an aid to user navigation. If there are sufficient articles to sustain a category, the category should stand — regardless of how "important" this or that occupation is deemed. The problem comes in the overuse of categories: some people work at a dozen different occupations in their lifetimes, albeit briefly. Should all 12 categories be included? Probably not. But occupational categories are, by and large, useful things that should not be snuffed needlessly, in my opinion. Carrite (talk) 21:55, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * There is a case for categorising by occupation but there is no case for a trivial intersection of characteristics such as Category:Electricians who committed suicide for instance. The parent Category:Suicides by occupation is also a case of over-categorisation. It is the trivial intersection that we are concerned about in this discussion. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:17, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Alan, I very strongly agree that Category:Electricians who committed suicide and Category:New Zealand electricians constitute excessive drill-down over-characterization and over-specificity; but that should not become an excuse for dumping categories which were defining for the subject's own life, even if not the thing for which they became notable. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  16:23, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Once a category exists, even if for people who meet a specific criteria for inclusion, it is all too easy for editors to add anyone that they think belongs. This creates a maintenance nightmare.  So I view this discussion as possibly offering guidelines on how to avoid creating occupation categories that are likely to have this specific problem.  We have too many people articles that suffer from over categorization.  These articles have so many categories that it is neigh impossible to find anything by looking at the categories at the bottom of the article. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:52, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * In addition to the biographies having too many categories, the categories have too many articles. If a reader is really interested in Category:Electricians or Category:Funeral directors, good luck finding an article that will describe someone who is actually prominent in that industry! RevelationDirect (talk) 02:23, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * It was exactly this reaction that brought me to raise this issue. When these categories began to appear in CFD, what I found was that far and away the most common actual profession for these people is politician, followed by union activist, rugby player, and murderer. A lot of these categories have no member who is notable specifically for practicing the occupation in question. Instead, I found myself searching the articles to see if they even mentioned the occupation in question. Some do not; more commonly there's a one sentence in-passing mention (or a word in an infobox), and the the article passes on to discussing what they are really known for. Mangoe (talk) 05:52, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * If I ever became famous for my activities as a civil service union leader, that would all the more strongly justify my characterization as a civil servant; the same applies to the plumbers, housepainters, electricians, etc. whose lives we are discussing. Samuel Gompers might have still become a powerful labor leader if he'd started as a boilermaker rather than a cigarmaker: but the fact is that he was a cigarmaker - he got his union principals at the bench, and it was a defining aspect of his life. It's certainly more important to know how a person made their living than it is to know which county in rural North Dakota was their birthplace from which their family moved at age 2, or the town in which they lived for five years before going on to the city of which they became mayor; but nobody proposes deletion of the whole tree of Category:People from Podunk, New York cats. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  16:23, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * That's probably because users recognise doing so would be futile given the enthusiastic backing these categories have from various users. That doesn't mean that the "People from Podunk" categories satisfy the principles of what makes a good categorization system. It's never a very convincing argument to justify the continued existence of problematic stuff by pointing to other problematic stuff that have the same or similar issues. Good Ol’factory (talk) 20:49, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm torn on this issue. What I want to see achieved is consistency. The two ways I see to achieve this is to 1) allow all these occupation categories to exist or 2) delete the ones that do not have any worthwhile purpose and aggressively maintain the others. The problem with option 1 is that it goes against existing policies such as overcat while option 2 means that a lot of time and effort is required from a lot of editors to maintain consistency. If categories such as Foo lawyers remain for notable lawyers then well meaning editors are going to add every sportsperson or politician who is also a lawyer, to achieve consistency this type of categorisation would have to be patrolled, otherwise there is justification for Foo plumber for every sportsperson or politician who is also a plumber. Mattlore (talk) 20:34, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Do we need this at all?
Not to side track this discussion, but, setting aside the subjectivity of "famous", why do we need to categorise people by occupation anyway? What harm would we be causing to navigation if this entire tree was gone? - jc37 19:53, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think you'd be hard-pressed to successfully argue that we shouldn't categorize artists, politicians, athletes, etc. Mangoe (talk) 20:13, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * We can categorise the people without categorising them by occupation. We can even decide to categorise celebrities (like politicians or athletes) if that's determined to be wanted. But of what value it is to see a group (a category) of house painters, plumbers, pilots, teachers, divers, etc.? Off the top of my head, the only places that I see this being at least somewhat useful would be those doing work in scholarly areas (like mathematicians), and maybe in the fine arts fields. Sounds to me that this should be like CATEGRS, or awards, where we allow exceptions, but not an open rule. Can you think of any others? - jc37 22:26, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I actually favor dumping the entire, vast, and widely applied Category:Deaths by type of illness tree so I'm sympathetic to being bold to reduce the overapplication of categories to biographies. One occupation is often/usually defining to a person though. It's when we include jobs that they had for relatively brief or undefining periods that we get into trouble. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:43, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Limiting the scope of these categories
There is a degree to which I am sympathetic to arguments being applied to Samuel Gompers; I am willing to accept the principle that, for labor leaders and perhaps some other groups, the other occupation is significant, and thus for example I could be persuaded that a "labor leader by occupation" category tree might be appropriate. However, I continue to disbelieve that the secondary employment of rugby players and murderers is significant, and I have considerable doubts about that of politicians. I'm likewise dubious about categorizing every job of those who took a while to work out their proper vocation. Therefore while I still would prefer as an overarching principle that people not be categorized under occupations in which they were not notable, I would also admit the possibility of working out certain field-specific exceptions in which people notable in one field would be categorized under that field according to secondary occupations. Mangoe (talk) 17:24, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Many politicians didn't set out as such. It is documented that people like David Cameron studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at University, so politics was clearly his first-choice career; but this is not always the case - consider Sonny Bono, Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and others. Should we remove the latter two from subcats of Category:Film actors? -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:34, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * No, of course not. They are notable as such without regard to their later political careers. It's the people who wouldn't have been notable if they hadn't changed careers who are presenting a problem here. Mangoe (talk) 20:15, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You are assuming that they changed careers. My canonical example, Carl Minkley, was a housepainter all along. He was just a housepainter who served in the legislature and was intermittently a union and a Socialist Party official. I object to the idea that we should shove this under the rug, as if it was not important to understanding Carl Minkley the human being. Picasse didn't spend all his time with a pen or brush or palette knife in his hand, either. -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  01:03, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * But, was being a housepainter a defining characteristic for him? Vegaswikian (talk) 01:12, 9 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Why do categories need to be "defining" characteristics rather than "significant applicable" characteristics? Carrite (talk) 01:37, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Significant is way too subjective? Vegaswikian (talk) 02:29, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I object to assertion that this is some sort of "shoving under the rug", as though by limiting the categorization nobody will be able to read the article to find out that Minkey was a house painter, or any of the other four in the category whose source of notability has been played down in the lede. The fifth, of course, is the failed assassin, and if one goes over to the failed assassins category, one finds among a wide range of ther professions, a bricklayer, if one goes from there to Category:Bricklayers, one finds a pitcher, a mayor, a Nazi, another socialist from Wisconsin, and a novelist. Going back to those Wisconsin socialists, we find a prime minister, a farmer, another cigar maker, a Linotype operator, a barber, a machinist, a real estate broker, and a mold maker. Indeed, there seems to be no limit as to who can be a Wisconsin Socialist; one does not even apparently need to be from Wisconsin. And what I find is that in nearly every case here of inclusion in one of these tradesman categories, it is your edit which includes; I see for instance that the cricketer Dick Barlow is numbered among the moldmakers  with the comment, "an honourable trade". Perhaps the noble cause of the working man is intended to be uplifted, but the effect for me is much more like that of "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God", and I am thus somewhat disappointed to learn that there are apparently no Wisconsin Socialists in Category:Deaths due to animal attacks in the United States. However, I must insist that categorization is not the way to right this great wrong. Mangoe (talk) 04:59, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * What do you mean, "one does not even apparently need to be from Wisconsin"? If you're talking about Goldie Mabowecz, she grew up in Milwaukee a few blocks from my house, and was steeped in the traditions of Milwaukee's Sewer Socialism long before she moved to Israel. (Read her autobiography.) -- Orange Mike &#x007C;  Talk  22:47, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not really concerned if a category has an extra article somewhere. The larger issue is that being "honourable" isn't a workable standard for what categories we should have. That would exclude the quite encyclopedic but distinctly dishonorable Category:Suicide bombers. RevelationDirect (talk) 07:32, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * My remark re Golda Meir was along the lines of a humorous exaggeration. Beyond that, you seem to have missed the point: honorability is irrelevant as reason for inclusion. Mangoe (talk) 13:22, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I see some confusion between "defining" and "notable". An occupation can be defining to someone's life without being a reason for their notability.  An occupation can also, in some cases, not be defining - for example, an occupation which is only followed briefly.  For example, Amos Ferguson didn't become famous because he was a house painter, but I cannot see how it could be argued that it was anything other than defining to his life.  John the Painter was not famous because he was a house painter, but it's one of the best-known things about him - again, defining.  For George Bradley (cricketer), neither of these things is true, but he spent his entire adult life as a house painter, and it must have affected how he pursued his brief but notable time as a cricketer - it's hard to see how this is not defining to his life.
 * Categorisation by trade union membership might be useful, but this does not directly correlate with occupation (many unions cover various occupations; each occupation has been represented in various unions; many workers are not union members) and I can only see this being defining for officials, or perhaps a few individuals who used their membership to launch a new career or received notable support from the union.
 * Occupation is not trivial, and, provided that individuals for whom occupation is not defining are not placed in these categories, there's no danger of it being a trivial intersection. Of course there may be individuals in these categories with nothing else in common, and holding a common occupation may not be of interest to a particular reader; that's a feature of any category.  Many other categories do represent far more trivial connection (e.g. years of birth and death, cause of death, schooling), but there seems to be consensus for at least the first and last of these.  Cause of death by occupation, to my mind, is a good example of a trivial intersection which should go; nationality by occupation will rarely be interesting, but might be a valid way to divide large categories. Warofdreams talk 14:41, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * My problem with this is that it seems to me that a lot of times occupation is trivial. It's particularly obvious with the sports people, but there are many other cases where there's an "early life" section which enumerates jobs the article subject held before he fell into his defining profession. And, apparently in the interest of playing up these "honourable trades", someone has categorized these jobs. I've also seen a number of cases where the lede has been edited to the same end, thereby obscuring to an extent the real reason the person is remembered.


 * I'm also looking at this from the perspective of house painting. It's not unreasonable to look to the category and think, "these people have some importance in the history of house painting." And almost without exception, that is untrue. Mangoe (talk) 15:17, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that's the core of the disagreement. Some people see any occupation which isn't a clear cause of notability as trivial; others (including me) see it as often defining even when it doesn't directly contribute to notability.  While it wouldn't be unreasonable to look at the house painters category and think that those people have some importance in the history of house painting, that's not the way that categories generally work. Warofdreams talk 10:34, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't understand what you mean by "defining". I don't consider the summer jobs I held as defining of myself; I worked in a poster warehouse one summer, but that's just because the owner lived the next street over. Similarly, it seems to me that for a lot of these people, specific jobs they held outside of their notable profession are arbitrarily determined by the vagaries of time and place. The cricketers come from pretty much all walks of life, and while I haven't seen any Wisconsin Socialist bankers or financiers, it would not surprise me if one were to turn up. People are weird like that. It has seemed to me that particularly in the case of the union activists there is a narrative being constructed which moves from jobs to activism; but it is not clear to me that particular jobs are as important as a class of employment. So: do we have a reliable source which states that Samuel Gompers's job rolling cigars was specifically important to his career as a union man? If we do, then fine, I can be persuaded. However, it's going to be very hard, I think, to draw a line between Dick Barlow the cricketer and Dick Barlow the tradesman in the same manner. Mangoe (talk) 17:52, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how to be clearer. Perhaps the Wiktionary definition of wikt:define, "1. to determine", i.e. to determine the course of their life?  As several people have said, it's nothing to do with briefly-held jobs, but with long-term careers, which seem to me to invariably be defining.  I'd like to see an example of one which isn't.  Again, it's not to do with notability, but with the individual's life as a whole (this, I believe, is where the disagreement is, but it's important to ensure you're understanding the point I'm making). Warofdreams talk 09:39, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, philosophers debate whether there is anything in a person's life that is not defining in that sense: we should be categorizing by having children, how many brothers and sisters, birth order.... Mangoe (talk) 10:57, 14 March 2012 (UTC)
 * If those things consistently appear in the sources, then there's a discussion to be had (I'd argue those things are unlikely to be defining, certainly far less likely an occupation pursued for many years). Warofdreams talk 17:17, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Noted or celebrated or famed
It seems to me that only those occupations in which people create a work which is presented/published, should be categorised. (I'll reluctantly agree to celebrities as well...)

To use housepainters as an example. People typically do not have news articles written about them for being good housepainters. (A human interest story being a possible exception.) The reason, or even the cause célèbre, is typically for something else.

So with that in mind, I'd like help assembling a list of what would fall under that criteria. And of course there already exists some criteria for certain inclusions (such as for criminals).

Each page linked below has on it a list of "subtypes" of occupations which would fall under this heading.


 * Scholars


 * Scientists


 * Fine arts-related occupations


 * Leadership and Positions of authority
 * Business leaders
 * Community leaders
 * Judges
 * Military leaders
 * Politicians
 * Religious leaders and Humanitarians
 * Royalty and Aristocracy


 * Celebrities
 * Athletes
 * Criminals
 * Entertainers
 * Journalists
 * Lawyers
 * Presenters
 * Socialites

Can anyone think of any others which should be categorised based upon the criteria I set out above? - jc37 21:35, 9 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Reply Organizational leaders (non-profit, professional association, lobor union), military commanders, laywers/judges, inventors, architects, doctors, and reporters. RevelationDirect (talk) 23:07, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Organisation leaders fall under business leaders. Inventors and doctors fall under scientists; architects, under fine arts. As for reporters/journalists, maybe a section called News media (though they might fall under fine arts or scholarship for other, though related reasons). - Hadn't thought about the legal system when dealing with gov't. Was thinking politicians covered them all..lol That said, are judges celebrities? Besides the Supreme court (or the Law Lords), can the average person even name an individual judge? Regardless, It looks like a "leadership" section would be clearer. Also added community leaders. (Was surprised we don't have an article (or at least a redirect) on military leadership.) - jc37 19:45, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * architects, under fine arts? I don't know if I buy that one. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:45, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I was merely going by fine arts. But I would agree that there is a difference between architecture and architects. However, this is all about design. And that would seem (to me at least) to be an art of a type. (Frank Lloyd Wright comes immediately to mind.) I wonder if there are references out there for this? - jc37 22:37, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

I haven't read all of the above comments (it's a pile-up), but I'm putting in my two cents' worth just the same. So which question are we debating here?: (1) Whether or not to eliminate occupations as categories, period; or (2) Whether or not to remove these categories from biographies that list them incidentally? My opinion on #1, is keep the occupations as categories, even the trades ("blue collar" jobs). "Carpenters" could be included in articles about historical periods, union activity, engineering and economic developments, labour migration, to name a few. Aside from being used for articles on broad topics, yes, I can see the occupation categories being used for notable people who worked in a trade as a main occupation -- see Thomas Crapper, who is in category "Plumbers". There may not be tons of biographies like that, but so what, it ain't any less valid. Now as for debate #2, whether or not to remove them from biographies where they are just incidental information -- say, Harrison Ford, who was a carpenter at one point -- I'd say remove them, because the point of the categories is to facilitate searching I believe, and clogging up the category with trivia references is counter-productive, similar to how editors had started adding "pop culture references" to the bottom of many articles, and those ended up being cleaned up and removed... WP should focus on notability and not trivia, and my view is that Harrison Ford's former occupation as a carpenter is, however interesting, still trivia. OttawaAC (talk) 21:27, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think this is mostly about #2. But there is the possibility that if you do a religious job of venting the category contents, a good number will wind up as empty or with very few articles.  If they are empty, they should be deleted.  Now it they only have a few entries, what happens?  Do they get deleted like all of the ones that were emptied or do they get kept as part of a series? Vegaswikian (talk) 21:38, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have belatedly read the above, and conclude that an occupation pursued for many years is a defining characteristic of an individual's life and is therefore an appropriate way to categorise them, even if it was not the reason for an individual's notability. Occupations pursued temporarily, though, are not so.
 * I do not support the suggestion above that we should only categorise "by occupations in which people create a work". This and the suggested list that followed may been part of what led to the class-war allegations made at Deletion review/Log/2012 March 22, especially as the list omits engineers (although these have now been mentioned below). IMHO the above list is unconvincing, although I may have missed the point (I don't understand about each of those pages having a list of "subtypes").
 * On Vegaswikian's last point about #2 above, small categories should be kept rather than deleted, unless there is proper scope to merge them, e.g. house painters and decorators which seem to overlap in meaning. IMHO the appropriate level of categorisation is occupation by nationality, as part of the well-established structure; even if individual categories are currently small, they (i) are part of two hierarchies and (ii) have scope for future growth. I would recreate/retain national sub-categories if there are two or more members. – – Fayenatic L (talk) 00:22, 25 March 2012 (UTC)


 * The general principle of categorization is to divide up the material in a suitable way from finding specific things people do not know the name of, for finding related things of a type once they have found a representative of it, or for browsing, based on whatever strikes them as interesting. Anything that people might want to find or browse is a fit subject for a category, and it is not always predictable. There is no such principle as what people ought to want to find, or what is intrinsically important: neither of these are relevant. if the material is suitable for an encyclopedia, then people will have their own ideas about how to navigate it, and we should facilitate this as best we can, either by whatever organization exists by the nature of the subject, by what we know or can guess people are interested in. If we make a category that nobody uses, it's just a little overhead; if we don't make one that someone would find helpful ,we are not serving our purpose of providing information.
 * For human biography, people are are interested in all aspects of other people, and if there is an imaginable grouping, someone will want it. If there are notable electrical engineers born in Alaska of some particular ethnic background, someone may want to find one of them, and need to do it by seeing our category containing all of them, or want to see all of them. By electrical engineers they may mean either people notable because they are engineers, or people notable who happen to be engineers also to the extent that is worth mentioning within the bio. I picked this example because among the characteristics of people that we know human are interested in is their , ethnicity, geographic origin, profession, and  avocation; but there are more: politics, personal interests, and personal life. Now, the number of possible categories is very great, and most of them will contain a very few individuals, so ultimately the only solution is letting people make whatever category they please, though  we would still need to give them suggestions about what can be looked for,   have the structured metadata that would permit doing it accurately, and have the software to facilitate the making of arbitrary combinations. We're not there yet.
 * So all we can do is meet the known fairly common needs for which we have distinct data. Among them is the concept of looking for someone not just by a primary notable occupation, but by a secondary less notable one. these categories should therefore be inclusive.  DGG ( talk ) 18:59, 24 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Based upon your comments, would I be correct to presume that you do not agree with WP:OC? - jc37 22:07, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

RfC notice
Wikipedia_talk:Categorization - jc37 01:04, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

"Instating concordance"?
I found this wording inscrutable and had to look up "instate" to be sure what it meant ("install" appears to be the closest synonym). Paired with "concordance" it produces an obfuscated phrase that calls for a copy edit. My attempt, "maintaining concordance", was reverted because it has the undesirable interpretation that the category might previously been in concord with its article name which the current wording avoids. I'd welcome any suggestions that allow the less erudite among us to understand this guidance. Perhaps:  Joja  lozzo  17:09, 19 March 2012 (UTC)


 * "Matching" could used rather than "concordance". In more basic language, I think it really just means, "a rename matching the category name to the article name". Good Ol’factory (talk) 20:44, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I suggest aligning category and article names Stuartyeates (talk) 21:03, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I like "aligning". Joja  lozzo  01:51, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

How_to_use_Cfd
Categories_for_discussion is really complicated. Does anyone really follow it?

The following guidance is much easier:
 * Go to "my preferences", the "Gadgets" tab, the "Browsing" section and check "Twinkle ..."
 * Use the now-installed "XfD" (Nomiate for deletion) tab while viewing the page to be deleted or renamed.

Why is there no mention of Twinkle currently? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Category redirect as speedy deletion or full CfD
Due to a nomination today, I wonder if deletion of category redirects should be a speedy deletion nomination or does each require a full discussion? These should be empty but db-c1 should not apply to these. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:41, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
 * What's the correct venue for discussing a category redirect? Is it better to discuss them at CFD or RFD? - Eureka Lott 21:41, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I would say probably CFD, since as soft-redirects, they aren't redirects of the type that are usually discussed at RFD. They are actually empty categories which act as redirects, so CFD might have more to say about them than RFD. Just my best guess. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:11, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Good Ol’factory, both because of the reason he mentions, and because categorization is too important to be discussed at Rfd. Debresser (talk) 00:49, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree too: if there appears to be any scope for discussion, take it to CfD. However, IMHO it is legitimate for an admin to summarily delete a category redirect if it appears to be clearly unnecessary and unlikely to help anyone. For example, I recently deleted Category:Italian people by time period which had no incoming links and was a redirect to Category:Italian people by period. (Tell me if I was wrong to do that.) – Fayenatic L ondon (talk) 15:49, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Double category
This is a duplicate of this one. could you please delete the first one? --Kasper2006 (talk) 09:20, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * We can if the category's creator agrees; otherwise it needs a discussion. I will ask him to reply here. – Fayenatic L (talk) 20:16, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I am happy for one of the groups to be deleted I think this "World Championships Recognised by the International Sailing Federation" is actually a more accurate title but it may be to long. I will leave it to the moderator and use which ever one is left. --Yachty4000 (talk) 21:27, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * For example there is Category:World Championships in Athletics not Category:World Championships Recognised by the International Association of Athletics Federations. --Kasper2006 (talk) 22:44, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ – Fayenatic L ondon (talk) 15:38, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Note for those admins who process speedy nominations
Please see my note here. Thanks. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:42, 2 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Please also remember to check for backlinks before finally deleting the old categories. See the tips at stage 7.3 of WP:Categories for discussion/Administrator instructions. As a current example of where this is required, the Americal Civil War head categories for campaigns by theater (e.g. this one) have chronological lists of the campaigns linked to the member categories. It does not take long, but is easier to sort out at the time than to trace afterwards. – Fayenatic L ondon (talk) 16:54, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Noticeboard
Currently, category-related discussions tend to be spread out over the talkpages of WP:CFD; WP:CAT, WP:NCCAT; WP:CLS; and elsewhere. Awhile back, it seemed to me that having a category-related noticeboard might be nice, so I cobbled one together. Recently, some helpful person added a notice on WP:CAT about it. So at this point, I welcome others' thoughts on this. What do you think about it, and if positive, how and where do you think we should notify others of its existence? - jc37 06:55, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Categorization/Noticeboard

Category:Terminology
I have started a thread at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Categories. Please advise if it needs moving here.  Spinning Spark  16:31, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Category:Clock towers in the United States
Can someone help to put the articles from Category:Clock towers in the United States into the state specific categories? Royaume du Maroc (talk) 15:36, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Speedy criterion C2D and primary topics
I believe that the wording of Speedy renaming criterion C2D is a little too loose, insofar as it affects primary topics.

There is no stable consensus on whether category names should match article titles in cases where those article titles are ambiguous, but have been deemed to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. In full CFD discussions, the outcome can go either way, and the closest I can devise to a neutral summary of the consensus of recent discussions is that editors apply a stricter interpretation of "primary topic" in category space than in article space. How much stricter seems to vary (and I am usually on the very strict side of any argument) ... but this is a glaring exception to the general rule that speedy renamings should be uncontroversial.

C2D currently reads:


 * D. A rename instating concordance of category and article naming.
 * Renaming a topic category to match its eponymous article (e.g. Category:The Beatles and The Beatles – the category could be renamed under this criterion if the article is moved).
 * This applies immediately following a page move with explicit consensus to also rename the category, or two days after any other page move. If there is any ongoing discussion about the name of the page or category, then this criterion does not apply.

The issue arose at Categories for discussion/Log/2012 May 24, so prompted by Oculi's suggestion there I propose to add a third bullet point:
 * This does not apply where a disambiguation page exists at Article name (disambiguation), or where a hatnote in the article links to Article name (disambiguator). A full discussion is needed in those cases.

Note that my proposal goes slightly further than Oculi's suggestion; the hatnote-related part of the proposal is my idea, but I think it keeps to the spirit of Oculi's suggestion.

Any thoughts? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:01, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I can support either option. I think we would be better served by using your suggestion since it may pick up more potential problems.  Adding 4 days to the review process should not really hurt the encyclopedia in any way.  It may add to the full discussions, but then the speedy section is processing far too many categories for my comfort.  So many that errors are getting through. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:50, 24 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment. I'm not sure the added complexity will be a benefit. First off, how many users will understand the exception? Second, how many instances will this situation apply to? Probably one in a thousand out of the times C2D is invoked. I think C2D is currently working fine. Can anyone point to any C2D nomination that has gone through and been applied in a manner that is now thought to be inappropriately ambiguous? If so, my view might change. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:02, 24 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment. "This does not apply where a disambiguation page exists at Article name (disambiguation)". It just occurred to me that contrary to what I said above, this provision would actually have the effect of making C2D inapplicable to most cases where C2D is currently used. Currently, the most common use of C2D is as follows:
 * Relevant article is at "FOO (xxxx)". "FOO (disambiguation)" exists with several meanings.
 * Category corresponding to "FOO (xxxx)" is created at the undisambiguated "Category:FOO".
 * Category is nominated via C2D to change the category name to "Category:FOO (xxxx)".
 * A reverse kind of change—changing a category from "Category:FOO (xxxx)" to "Category:FOO" is rare indeed, and I assume that this is the type that the proposal is intending to send to full CFD. But the proposal as phrased would send both types to full CFD. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:49, 24 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Modified proposal. Good Ol'factory is right that my proposed wording has the unintended effect of preventing the speedying of "Category:FOO" to "Category:FOO (xxxx)". I think that a reworded proposal can resolve this:
 * This does not apply to a rename to "Category:FOO" (to match an article named "Foo") if a disambiguation page exists at FOO (disambiguation), or where a hatnote in the article "FOO" links to FOO (disambiguator). A full discussion is needed in those cases.
 * Is that clearer? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:58, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment. Well, I wouldn't say "clearer" (it's all a bit convoluted—not because of how you have phrased it, but just the nature of the issue itself)—but it it does fix the issue I had identified in my second comment above. I'm still not sure, though, that this isn't a solution in search of a problem. Have there been any instances where C2D has been used to make a change that wouldn't have qualified under this new proposal? It seems to me that the problematic C2D proposals are very rare and that all problematic ones get sent to a full CFD anyway. Good Ol’factory (talk) 07:34, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I am not watching CFD/S closely enough to see how many are getting through, but what I do notice is a steady trickle of contested speedies of this type which are moved to a full discussion. I have two concerns about this:
 * that it is a waste of time having to object and then move a discussion, when better criteria could get to the right place first time;
 * that the lack of an exception in C2D may give some editors the impression that avoiding ambiguity in category names is some of rare exception to a rigid principle. That is not the case; ambiguous category names are a long-standing issue at CfD. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)
 * I don't think there are that many, all in all. "A steady trickle" might mean 3 in a month in a high-volume month, but I'm not aware of any that have "slipped through" and not gone to a full discussion. Because of the small number of instances we're dealing with, #1 is not much of a concern, I don't think. Rather than worrying about your #2, I would be more concerned with the confusing nature of setting out the criterion in this way. I think the criterion as proposed would be relatively difficult even for those super-familiar with CFD to understand. Users who aren't "CFD regulars" typically complain that the CFD instructions are very complicated and confusing and that the speedy criteria are generally not user-friendly to newcomers. The principle you have set out is a good one to keep in mind and the issue will come up occasionally, but I don't see it as something we need to set out explicitly in a formal guideline. Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:05, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I wasn't going to comment since I thought others had this pretty well covered, but anyway - I understand wanting to try to tighten up criteria, but in this case, it seems that this will end up being counter productive, and could add some confusion. And as others noted, At worst it just means going through a nomination. And as I think we all know here, speedy should never be a way to dodge or bypass discussion, it's just intended to reduce the number of discussions by speedying uncontroversial ones. - jc37 08:24, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I share the concern about the wording appearing a bit technical, and thereby putting people off. So I wonder whether it would be better done by using non-technical terms, e.g.


 * Renames to match ambiguous article titles will usually be challenged, so it is best to take them directly to a full CfD discussion.


 * or, even more briefly:


 * This does not include renames to match ambiguous article titles.


 * However, I'm not happy about letting C2D stand unamended. As Jc37 rightly notes, speedy should never be a way to dodge or bypass discussion, and if we accept that principle then we should not have a speedy criterion which includes controversial renames. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:23, 25 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I might add something that's concerned me for a bit (though not not necessarily specific to this topic or even to speedy).
 * I don't think we should be so quick to automatically default to an article name when renaming a category.
 * It's VERY easy to move a page. And the last bold move is not necessarily the best name, much less the most unambiguous name. It's just the name somebody picked at some point.
 * Now compare that to the fact that it is not trivial to move a category (though cydebot is an amazing help : )
 * In addition, category moves essentially are cut-n-paste moves. So we should try to minimise how often they are done. (It's part of why we should deal with formatting and/or punctuation issues - before finallising a rename. - Enacting a rename and saying "we'll fix the punctuation later", seems irresponsible to me.))
 * And another thing to consider is that with articles one can do pipe tricks and/or redirects. with categories, not so much. And unlike redirects in other namespaces, category redirects are (again) non-trivial and not "cheap" as is commonly said of the others.
 * Anyway, just a thought that auto-defaulting to an article name might not be something we grab so tightly to. And having discussions regarding them would seem to me to be a good thing. - jc37 12:05, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that JC37 makes a very good case for removing C2D from the list of speedy criteria, and requiring some review before such changes are made.
 * I would support removing C2D in its entirety, and ensuring that such changes are listed at a full CfD where editors have the option of discussing them. However, in the absence of such a step please can we at least add a few words to C2D to ensure that cases of ambiguity are all directed to a full discussion? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:35, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Removing C2D completely would probably just put as back to where we were immediately before C2D being adopted, with the full CFD section being littered with dozens of routine and uncontroversial renames. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:05, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

New text (for now)

 * D. A rename instating concordance of category and article naming.
 * Renaming a topic category to match its eponymous article (e.g. Category:The Beatles and The Beatles – the category could be renamed under this criterion if the article is moved).
 * This applies immediately following a page move with explicit consensus to also rename the category, or two days after any other page move. If there is any ongoing discussion about the name of the page or category, then this criterion does not apply.

For now, I think I would suggest something like:


 * D. A rename to facilitate concordance between a particular category's name and a related article's name.
 * Renaming a topic category to match its eponymous article (e.g. Category:The Beatles and The Beatles).
 * This applies only if the related article's current name (and by extension, the proposed name for the category) is unambiguous, and uncontroversial - either due to longstanding stability at at that particular name or immediately following a page move discussion which had explicit consensus to rename. If the page names are controversial or ambiguous in any way, then this criterion does not apply.
 * This criterion also does not apply if there is any ongoing discussion about the name of the page or category, or if there has been a recent discussion concerning any of the pages which resulted in a no consensus result.

I think that this does what is being suggested above. And should clear up at least some confusion. Alternate proposals welcome. - jc37 14:56, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I think I would also want to add something like: "...(or if there has been a recent discussion concerning any of the pages which resulted in a no consensus result)...[then this criterion does not apply]." - jc37 15:35, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Added the above phrase and cleaned up text somewhat - as shown in this diff. - jc37 07:29, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Updated Categories for discussion/Speedy/Criteria. - jc37 11:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Support. This incorporates the concerns I had tried to address in my various proposals, and combines them with the important points raised by Jc37 about stability. It also seems to me to address the concerns raised above by Vegaswikian that "the speedy section is processing far too many categories for my comfort". -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:17, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Support – some sort of qualifier is needed to avoid the impression that C2D/Cfd always endorses the matching of article and category names. Oculi (talk) 21:18, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Note I asked Vegaswikian for his thoughts on this revised proposal, since he had commented above. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:09, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Support per Oculi, Bhg etc. Johnbod (talk) 17:49, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Support the wording that Jc37 suggests. It is a good resolution to all of the various issues that have been raised here. --Orlady (talk) 18:25, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Support, no objection to this wording. For a number of reasons, it's better to keep the limitations placed on C2D loose rather than focussing on overly technical analyses of whether disambiguation pages exist, etc. I think a word is missing after "longstanding", however. I'm still not convinced that the change will have any practical effect on how things proceed, but if it makes users feel better, the commentary can be added. Good Ol’factory (talk) 01:07, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I intentionally used "longstanding" because it has broad usage in regards to various policies, and so it should be unambiguous. But yes, I agree that the way I used it in the sentence may need some copy-editing. When I wrote the text I was just starting a discussion : ) - jc37 07:05, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
 * As noted, I was pointed back to this discussion. I am concerned about the phrase had explicit consensus to rename at least right now.  It has been pointed out that WP:RM has no review process and this is a concern for many editors.  So a proposal to add a review process is being discussed.  Without that someone can point to a bad close on an article move as the reason to move categories.  So a bad close without consensus could look like a good close if the review process here lacked any editors who were involved in that discussion.  Vegaswikian (talk) 00:15, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, we could strike that part ("...or immediately following a page move discussion which had explicit consensus to rename."} out until such time as the review process is implemented, as all it would do is cause those discussions to go through CfD as normal. - jc37 10:55, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Support striking out that part until a review process is in place. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:24, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Category:Bridges by century
Somebody has reorganized the sub-categories under Category:Bridges by century into individual years going back to before the current era, so that there are now a great many categories with only one article each, and very little likelihood of any additional members. In earlier centuries, there may be only a few years in which any (now verifiable) bridge was built, but each such year now has its own category. This seems to be extreme over-categorization. As I am very rarely (if ever) involved in discussions here, I am asking for guidance on how to approach this. -- Donald Albury 18:06, 28 May 2012 (UTC)


 * WP:SMALLCAT says "Avoid categories that, by their very definition, will never have more than a few members, unless such categories are part of a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme". In this case, although there is a large overall sub-categorization scheme, IMHO only the parents e.g. Category:Buildings and structures completed in 1213 are accepted; the individual bridges-by-year categories do look unnecessary in the 17th century and before, unless they are likely to gain multiple articles. I'll leave a note for that editor to respond here. – Fayenatic L ondon (talk) 19:05, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Please see Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_April_13.--Mike Selinker (talk) 02:22, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I can see in a case where there are 100 bridges in a century category putting every bridge in a year category is justified, for it is likely that there will be more than one bridge in several of the year categories, and the number that would each have their own year category would probably be more than should be left in the century category. But when there are only 10 bridges in a century category, I don't see it. This is a case where I think consistency leads to an undesirable result. -- Donald Albury 16:23, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Donald on this, and don't see any support at that CFD for creating categories for bridges by year before 1700. IMHO they should be upmerged to both parents. – Fayenatic L ondon (talk) 17:21, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Discussion relevant to this page
We are currently discussing the possibility of moving stub type discussions into categories for discussion (as well as other venues). Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Stub types for deletion. D O N D E groovily  Talk to me  03:29, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Category:Disestablishments in the United States by year
Anyone know about Category:Disestablishments in the United States by year? Seems like these are starting to be nominated for speedy deletion as empty. Were they emptied out of process? Should they be populated? Do we need this tree? No matter what, I don't see a reason to keep the by decade categories in this tree. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:49, 31 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, why should we keep the decade categories in the establishment hierarchy but not in the corresponding disestablishment one? The rationale for having them would be the same, i.e. for some entities (typically bands) an exact year is hard to pin down. As for these categories being deleted when empty that is no problem, unless of course they were emptied out of process. They are so easy to recreate, and those of us who regularly deal with these hierarchies have probably all done that on more than one occasion. __meco (talk) 11:50, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

A category at two separate concurrent CfDs
Category:Police brutality in England is now being discussed at two separate concurrent CfDs: Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_May_31 and a group nom at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 June 1#Police brutality]].

Can an uninvolved admin please try to unravel this? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:41, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I deleted that from the mass nomination since there is an extensive discussion in the older discussion. I left a note on both discussions for the closing admin to consider both discussions.  The closer can decide on how this can be handled at that time. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:19, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks :) -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:34, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Category and template stub types coming to a CfD near you
Talk now is going on at Wikipedia talk:Stub types for deletion as to whether we no longer need SfD and whether the category and template stub tasks should be given back to CfD or given to MfD. Please post your thoughts there. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 11:16, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Culture by city
Category:Culture by city has no consistent formula with Culture in/of city and city culture all in use. I wonder what people's initial thoughts are before nominating, also can we got a bot to tag everything (there over 200 categories when you include Category:Culture by nationality and city). Tim! (talk) 08:16, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I can do a run to tag them, if/when you are ready to nominate them. Avic ennasis @ 08:20, 13 Sivan 5772 / 08:20, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Category:Mosques in cities in Germany
I noticed Category:Mosques in Hamburg listed as DB-c1. In looking at that it appears to have been emptied out of process. I repopulated a few categories. I guess the question here is do we want to support mosques by city or other subdivisions? Vegaswikian (talk) 00:12, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I would wait until state-level categories are populated, then create cities on a case-by-case basis. No one is served by a structure with two dozen two-article categories.- choster (talk) 18:15, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Um, I created Category:Mosques by city back in 2006 when I noticed several existing city-level categories. Is there some sort of problem with this? - Eureka Lott 18:42, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, this is the result of another out-of-process action by User:Alan Liefting? This is getting tiresome. Thanks for cleaning up, Vegaswikian. - Eureka Lott 18:58, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I just fixed this a little to avoid the db-c1. Not sure if I have everything fixed.  BTW, this showed up in the list of categories listed for speedy deletion as empty at the bottom of the main page.  I'm seeing more problems listed there of late. 19:15, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Problem with stub template nominations
One side effect of moving stub discussions on templates over here is illustrated by the look of John O'Neil (painter) where the category renaming template is splashed on the article page. In this case, the information in the box is wrong since we are not proposing to rename the category just merge the templates. Not sure how this needs to be addressed, but we need a solution sooner rather then later. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:38, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Implementing the merger of SFD to CFD
Now that SFD has been closed, and discussions are to be moved here, we need to discuss how to implement that.

I have just closed a bunch of stub templates nominated at today's CFD, because CFD is for categories not templates. How exactly do we want to structure and format stub discussions here? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:29, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The nominations concerned (CfD 2012 June_15#Category:US-business-bio-1690s-stub) were headlined for categories, but there was no link to the  categories; only the templates were linked. The two are not necessarily synchronised, because a Template:US-business-bio-1690s-stub does not necessarily have to place an article in Category:US-business-bio-1690s-stub. In this example the category listed there does not actually exist, because US-business-bio-1690s-stub places articles in Category:American business biography, Pre 19th century births stubs.
 * So a discussion headlined "Category:US-business-bio-1690s-stub" is grossly misleading: we would be discussing a category which has never existed.
 * As far as I can see, the nominations intended to delete or merge the templates, without having any effect on the categories. Can we find a way of structuring the discussions to achieve this?
 * Should CFD be reserved for discussion of stub categories, with the stub templates handled at WP:TFD? -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:43, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Message left at WT:SFD pointing to this discussion. BencherliteTalk 12:28, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

From a brief perusal of the SFD talk page (not having been involved at all with SFD during its life) it seems that the question you raise, of whether CFD should handle stub categories and TFD should handle stub templates, has already been answered very recently with the consensus view that discussion of both types should be kept together and that the new venue for both should be CFD. If the problem is that some of the nominations say "category:X stub" when they should say "template:X stub", that can be easily sorted I hope. At the moment, if everyone else at CFD follows your example and refuses to accept stub templates for discussion or deletion at CFD, then it's difficult to see what people are meant to do - they're simply following the instructions at SFD and TFD and coming here! BencherliteTalk 12:28, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I am not sure whether the discussion at SFD examined the practicalities, and I will now go and read it. But if they are to be kept together, we need a procedure which avoids absurdities such as having discussions headlined by the title of a non-existent category. That sort of thing just confuses editors, and impedes consensus formation. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:37, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Personally I thought they should be submitted to TFD but almost everyone felt they should go to CFD and thats fine. I don't think that those closures where appropriate since the Stubs for discussion venue was closed and it was decided to submit them to CFD. As I mentioned on BrownHairedGirl's talk page I have better things to do than to submit these things for discussions to the venues that coinsensus want only to have someone close them becauase they don't agree that's where they should go. If there are some things that need to be addressed thats fine but now we are stuck in a situation where we have no where to submit stubs for discussion so when everyone figures out what they want to do then let the rest of us know so we don't waste our time. Kumioko (talk) 14:01, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * If editors don't want to revisit the decision to discuss stub templates at CFD, that's fine by me.
 * But it's a waste of time having discussions headlined by the title of a non-existent category. If the stub templates discussions are to be handled here, we need to figure out a procedure which avoids the mess created here, where Kumioko's good faith use of the nomination process produced a misleading result -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:16, 15 June 2012 (UTC)


 * On their faces, the nominations were confusing. As I think I and others said at WT:SfD, if the template's sole real function is to categorise, and (perhaps assumed) if the category is specific to the template, then deletions (or renames) belong at CfD.  If the category exist and functions independently of the template, then the tie is weak, and deletion of the template is a TfD issue without category implication.  In these cases, it was said that the template was unused.  But the category in the template is well populated.  Is this because the template was always substituted?  In this case, with the category being well populated, and the deletion rationale being "unused", there is a disconnect between the template and the category, and I agree that the discussion did not belong at CfD.  I think that if a nomination does not involve any deletion or rename of any category, then the nomination does not belong at CfD.  If the nomination does involve deletion or rename of any category, then the category needs to lead the nomination.  Is there a problem with that?  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:43, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the problem was simply that the nomination used one of the cfd family of templates which generates a "Category:Foo" header at CFD rather than a "Template:Foo" heading.  It could easily have been fixed by changing the header to match the contents of the discussion, rather than closing it on the ground that CFD doesn't do templates when the current consensus (as assessed at WT:STD) is that it now does.  Fixing the nomination templates or creating some new ones or updating Twinkle shouldn't be too difficult.  Speaking as a very occasional visitor to CFD (these days), I would have thought that it makes sense to keep stub categories and stub templates discussions together, so that one new venue develops familiarity with the usual stub-type arguments and common outcomes, rather than splitting user knowledge between two venues.  There is of course always the chance of inconsistency if some related discussions with and without categories are split between two venues.  BencherliteTalk 14:54, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * This is just my opinion here but what is confusing is that we here in Wikipedia have decided to make everything harder than it needs to be. Sometimes we treat templates as templates, sometimes we treat them as categories (stubs in this case), sometimes we treat them at MFD (User templates for examples) and until recently still others at SFD which was disbanded and merged with CFD. IMO what we need to do is treat a template as a template. If it falls in the namespace of Template then it should go to TFD and not have all these what if's and exceptions confusing everyone that doesn't work with them all the time. Categories should go to CFD and MFD should be for whatever's left. I admit that the naming was a little confusing and I probably should have renamed it. It should also be noted that when Twinkle created it initially it created it with theh Category name and I had to go and change it manually. Kumioko (talk) 15:44, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with Kumioko that templates should be treated as templates and not discussed (at all) at cfd. Oculi (talk) 16:43, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

I really don't have a problem with the idea of discussing templates at CfD. (I've often though that navboxes and lists should be discussed at cfd due to similar usage - see WP:CLS.) - jc37 17:27, 15 June 2012 (UTC)


 * I guess that the best solution would be to present this as some form of a category discussion and the nominations must be placed on the category page. So in the case where we had 10 templates filling one category, this should be tagged on the category page, maybe with a new template, to say something link the templates filling this category are up for deletion or merger.  I think those will be the two major issues raised.  One other issue is we need to identity the bots used to replace templates and list them on our maintenance page. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:40, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Since SfD is closed, why don't we just repurpose its related templates for our purposes? there's no reason we should require someone to place template:cfd on a page that's intended to be part of an SfD discussion. CfD would just be the location of the discussions, the format and whatnot can be carried over I would think? - jc37 22:28, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Why is Cydebot deleting hundreds of 'Old Fooian' redirects?
Can someone please explain to me why is deleting hundreds of these redirects? I can't find them listed at WP:CFD/W and the large majority that I checked had never been tagged for CfD and were not listed at the log page that is being referenced by Cydebot in the deletion log. What am I missing? Jenks24 (talk) 00:45, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * How about a time stamp? I scanned the first 500 edits and did not see any.  Vegaswikian (talk) 00:50, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * From 00:07–00:47 today (UTC). Also, look at the logs, not the contribs. Jenks24 (talk) 01:02, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

The discussion was back in April but it was agreed then to not implement it until today. Because there were so many of them they were listed on the Working/Large page for big jobs. Timrollpickering (talk) 01:10, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks (I forgot about Working/Large). I just re-read the CfD and I see that the nomination actually lists all the redirects that aren't going to be deleted. I strongly object to how this CfD was carried out – none of the pages that were up for deletion were tagged as such, so those who had watchlisted these redirects were unaware they were up for deletion. I definitely would have voted keep had I been aware of the discussion. Added to this, not only were many "old fooian" redirects deleted, plenty of the old "alumni" style were also deleted, something that I don't see mentioned in the nomination at all. I know I'm being a pain, but I really think these should all be undeleted and put through a proper CfD. Jenks24 (talk) 01:37, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Anyone? Not trying to force the issue, but if no one objects in the next few days I'll be going back and undeleting the useful redirects. Jenks24 (talk) 07:51, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
 * This isn't really the place to propose a reversal and take silence as acceptance though (and which are the "useful" ones?). There's clearly an issue about how we handle category redirects and how the call is made on them. Timrollpickering (talk) 19:55, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * It's always bugged me that "redirects are cheap" isn't applied to category redirects. Particularly as the names have often been changed and vary so much for picky grammatical or formatting reasons. It often takes me a few tries to remember even the names of categories I've created, with all the possible variations in prepositions (Foo of/from/in Fooland), capitalization, hyphenation, etc. postdlf (talk) 21:32, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * They are problematic in that editors see a blue link when they add a 'bad' category and they have no way to know that they made the error so they can fix it. I know at one time there was a bot that moved articles in the redirected categories, but as far as I know that has not run in a long time.  If a bot like that was available keeping these would be less of an issue.  If that bot was running it could also add a template like dn but for categories that are there for disambiguation, if we could figure out how to attach it to the article with the problem.  Vegaswikian (talk) 22:07, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * RussBot is still going. However there isn't a bot checking the disambiguated categories. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:02, 28 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the replies, sorry I couldn't get back to this sooner. I'm still not happy with the way this was handled, but I guess Tim's point about this not being the right place to discuss a reversal is correct. I'll be taking this to DRV shortly. Jenks24 (talk) 07:59, 2 July 2012 (UTC)
 * Now at DRV, see Deletion review/Log/2012 July 2. Jenks24 (talk) 10:07, 2 July 2012 (UTC)

What goes in hotels
Should Canis Resort be categorized as a hotel? While it is a hotel, that category is for facilities used by people, right? Vegaswikian (talk) 20:05, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

continuing the SFD discussion
It's nice that the three stub discussions on June 13 CFD page surrounding a discussion on Superfund sites in New Jersey, because that ironically parallels the decision to close the poorly attended WP:SFD and dump the contents onto CFD without there first being a discussion on the CFD talk page itself. There's no problem with moving stub categories over here, but there's no mechanism for closing and implementing discussions stub-based discussions here. WP:CFDW doesn't have spaces to handle them; Cydebot is not set up for them; and editors on CFD don't know how to close them (or at least I don't). And it's also completely illogical that a stub is treated like a category, since, well, it isn't one. If discussions like the ones on June 13 are to be closed, these procedures need to be put into place, or some new Superfund site needs to be found. Meantime, I'm closing all of them as no consensus pending the implementation of some way to handle it.--Mike Selinker (talk) 11:32, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Inter Milan-categories
Kinda too late now, but I noticed that all F.C. Internazionale Milano categories have been renamed to Inter Milan per C2D. If you look at the Talk:Inter Milan, you'll find out that it's not exatcly "longstanding stability at at that particular name or immediately following a page move discussion which had explicit consensus to rename". Mentoz86 (talk) 12:19, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Men Nurses deleted and replaced by Male nurses?
I see that category: Men Nurses has been deleted and replaced by Category:Male nurses. Was there a discussion about this? - If so how do I find it? Thanks in advance. Ottawahitech (talk) 19:46, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It was Category:Men nurses, not Category:Men Nurses (if you don't see anything in the deletion log, it never existed). The discussion was here. postdlf (talk) 19:51, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick response, postdlf. I had forgotten that I have already asked and received an answer to my question - me and my memory, sigh...
 * In any event, I see that the link to the category discussion exists in Category:Men_nurses but not in  the history of Category:Male nurses, which is where I  would tend to look  for it. As far as the deletion log - I don't know where to  find it.Ottawahitech (talk) 14:58, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * When you click on a category title that doesn't exist, but used to, it's at the bottom of the pink box with the header "A page with this title has previously been deleted." postdlf (talk) 15:15, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry I am not with you. Are you talking about the deletion log - if so I still don't see it. Ottawahitech (talk) 04:57, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The deletion log entry for Category:Men nurses is the last section of the pink box telling you that the category had been previously deleted, telling you who deleted it, when, and typically with a summary (which is what gives the CFD link in this case): "16:33, August 14, 2012 Cydebot (talk | contribs | block) deleted page Category:Men nurses (Robot - Moving category Men nurses to Category:Male nurses per CFD at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2012 August 7.)" (look at a frequently deleted page to see a longer deletion log displayed). You can also access the deletion log directly for any title at Special:Log. postdlf (talk) 05:08, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

A misbehaving bot?
One of my recent category edits has been re-directed by a bot: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marie_Curie&diff=511351103&oldid=511333713 to a category that is inappropriate for this article. What can be done? Is this the right place to post such questions? Ottawahitech (talk) 15:56, 8 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The bot did its job correctly. Category:Pioneers is a category redirect, so the bot moved the article to its target category. You're correct that Category:Pioneers by field isn't an appropriate category for the article, so I would simply remove it. The article is already a member of many categories, and we do want to avoid overcategorization. - Eureka Lott 16:29, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Naming conventions for French grandes écoles / Full name with French spelling (acronym or nickname, town, country code)
On the English WP, there are 200 dufferent French "grandes écoles".

50% of them are self-proclaimed "grandes écoles" ; the appellation "grandes écoles", as already said above, is not protected by law.

During the telecom boom, dozens of "opportunistic" telecom engineering schools were created ; they all had very similar names : how many different names can you give to a school which trains future telecom engineers ?

Some engineering schools have very long and boring names ; they are mainly known by their acronym, or by a nickname, like NATO, NASA, or FBI.

You have Supélec = École supérieure d'électricité

Supaéro = École nationale supérieure de l'aéronautique et de l'espace nowadays merged into ISAE = Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace

Supaéro also had an acronym ENSAE, but this acronym was shared by another school :École nationale de la statistique et de l'administration économique located in Paris.

The following example is particularly demonstrative :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENSEEIHT

École nationale supérieure d'électronique, d'électrotechnique, d'informatique, d'hydraulique et des télécommunications (ENSEEIHT, Toulouse)

ENSEEIHT ENSEEIHT École nationale supérieure d'électrotechnique, d'électronique, d'informatique, d'hydraulique et des télécommunications ENSEEIHT ENSEEIHT Высшая государственная школа электротехники, электроники, информатики, гидравлики и телекоммуникаций 国立高等电力技术、电子学、计算机、水力学与电信学校

No French native knowing the school would be able to pronounce the name ; they would know the acronym without knowing for what words or conceps the letters stand for.

If you see ENSEEIHT, Toulouse, you very quickly get the information ; you know that it is kind of engineering school situated in Toulouse ; easy to pronounce.

The pronounciation of the acronym would be similar to ENSET, Ecole normale supérieure de l'enseignement technique, situated in Cachan, (ENSET, Cachan).

If you look at the electronics engineering schools, it is even more confusing !

Therefore, I propose following conventions :

Full name with French spelling (acronym or nickname, town, country code in case of doubt).

This convention would make the list of French grandes écoles much clearer, quicker to read and to pronounce.

All above examples would now result in :

École supérieure d'électricité (Supélec, Gif-sur-Yvette)

Ecole normale supérieure de l'enseignement technique (ENSET, Cachan)

Institut supérieur de l'aéronautique et de l'espace (ISAE, Toulouse)

and last, but not least, a monstrous long name for a not-so-famous engineering school :

École nationale supérieure d'électronique, d'électrotechnique, d'informatique, d'hydraulique et des télécommunications (ENSEEIHT, Toulouse)

Be careful with the French spelling !

In a long name, there is only one upper case letter for the first word (except of course for proper nouns).

Euroflux (talk) 19:30, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Grandes écoles
...Looking at this, I think something should be done, but I'm not quite sure what. Any ideas? - The Bushranger One ping only 18:47, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Following the recent rename from "alumni of", Category:Grandes écoles alumni, User:Euroflux has apparently taken it upon himself to reorganize Category:Grandes écoles. Several editors have already intervened.- choster (talk) 19:46, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Hello there ; I am a French aerospace engineer fluent in a reasonable number of languages (German, Swedish, Spanish, Russian,...). I have been a completely passive reader of Wikipedia for 8 years, mainly the English one. I began my "categorizer" career with the following paradox :: I stated that there was a Category:French aerospace engineers on 5 WPs : English, Russian, Turkish, Finnish, Slovenian, but NOT on the French WP ! My first category in my life was therefore fr:Category:ingénieur aéronautique français on the French WP. Euroflux (talk) 11:01, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi there, you should have an eye on user Euroflux. Have a look at his contributions (or better constant fighting) in the French and German WP....

--194.127.8.18 (talk) 11:30, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I created this account on the 13 of July on the English WP, exclusively focused on Aeronautics. In less than 2 months I made 3200 edits mainly on French, German, English. Aerospace is very well covered on the English WP, which is not surprising, but very poor on the French WP. German Aeronautics is quite OK on the German WP but Space is weird and tries to "separate" from Aeronautics...
 * I created more than 80 categories on the French WP reorganizing the Aerospace engineers by nationality, the engineers by school, by Corps, etc... I reorganized the Aircraft industry by airframe manufacturer, engine manufacturer, equpment manufacturer, etc... ; 95% of them were saved. I was blocked there because I was too quick ; they checked after my being blocked, stated that 95% of what I did was OK for them, and then unblocked me. I am a professional and know exactly what I am doing. On the French WP, contrary to the English WP, there is no professional controlling Aerospace ; there is an old "fan" behaving like a dictator. On the French WP there have been many fights before I came and I have been wrongly accused of being a "sockpuppet" ; I brought the undebatable proof that I was not. "Grandes écoles" is a very touchy subject ; there is no official definition whether a school should be called "grande" or not, etc... Euroflux (talk) 12:06, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Euroflux is a "sockpuppet" with an other account (on French WP) but not on en.wikipedia.org. It is not a problem here but it is not a wrongly accusation. 94.228.187.87 (talk) 12:32, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Euroflux is a purely "professional" account exclusively dedicated to aeronautics + technology transfer and created 13th of July 2012. In less than 2 months, 3200 edits mainly on the French (1500 edits), German (850) and English (600). The home wiki for Euroflux is the English one since en:WP is in my opinion the only decent encyclopaedia for aeronautics.
 * I have had previously a "private" account almost inactive Francoisalex2. I just recently put my private account into practice to help an American friend of mine. The only activity of this account was to translate from English into French an article of art history Berthe Weill, Berthe Weill. Francoisalex2 was involved in a conflict between the French author of Berthe Weill and the American author of Berthe Weill. There has been a conflict between the translation English --> French of Berthe Weill and a pretenduous "fusion" with another French speaking artcile Galerie Berthe Weill. Francoisalex2 got blocked on the French wiki on the 12th of July for one week. Euroflux was created on the English wiki where it was NOT blocked and concerning a completely different subject. Francoisalex2 never dealt with aeronautics and Euroflux never dealt with art history. Those are completely different subjects and wikis.
 * Euroflux began editing on the French WP long after the blocking period of Francoisalex2 and in a completely different matter. There has therefore never been any "sockpuppetry" nor "block turnaround".
 * During 2 years before my arrival in the aeronautical sector, French WP experienced many "problems" with an "IP78" and I was strongly suspected to be a sockpuppet of this IP ; but it was later proved that I was not. Euroflux (talk) 15:52, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

As far as I can see, Euroflux has not been unblocked on the French WP, but is still indeffed there. I tried to explain at length (see my talk page) to this editor what is wrong with his proposed category names (and article moves), but "he's right" and continues adding these categories to articles. I've undone most of his article moves, but haven't even started at the categories mess (in addition to the addition of improperly named cats, several existing cats have been emptied and any text replaced with "to be removed" outside of the normal CFD procedures). Like The Bushranger, I'm not quite sure what should/can be done. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 15:32, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The Category:Écoles Polytechniques is particularly stupid and inappropriate, can't you see it ?
 * This category is wrongly linked to the fr:Catégorie:École polytechnique (France)
 * As I explained many times... Ecole polytechnique, or simply "Polytechnique" has been by far the most prestigious engineering school in France for more than 2 centuries. They head the military parade every 14th of July on the Champs Elysées. They have 1019 notable alumni on the French WP.
 * There are some much less known schools which tried to add the word "polytechnique" in their name... but this is sheer marketing, almost tricky... There has been for example École polytechnique féminine which dropped its original name in 1994 for EPF - École d'ingénieurs. There has been the Institut national polytechnique de Lorraine, the Institut national polytechnique de Grenoble, which are kinds of sets of engineering schools. But there are no links between the original Ecole polytechnique and those other schoools which added "polytechnique" to their name. Therefore the Category:Écoles Polytechniques is nonsensical, contrary to the Category:Écoles Centrales and the Groupe des écoles des mines. It is all the more nonsensical since the National Polytechnic Institutes (France) are linked through inter-wiki to the original École polytechnique. Euroflux (talk) 16:26, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * +1, Euroflux is right, Category:Écoles Polytechniques is stupid and inappropriate, but, @Euroflux, please, stop antagonizing others. 81.249.170.143 (talk) 16:58, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Whether or not "Ecoles polytechniques" is a valid cat or not is not the question. If the cat is wrong, it should be taken to CFD and the arguments for deleting or renaming it presented clearly and dispassionately to the community. Meanwhile, all the subcategories that were created under "Grandes écoles" have inappropriate and unclear names. Euroflux is cherry-picking by concentrating on this one. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:03, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * @Guillaume2303 ; you claim to be a scientist ; you claim to have a level 3 in French ; you claim to know the French system ; and you want to impose categories which are completely stupid and irrelevant ? Category:Écoles Nationales, Category:Écoles Nationales Supérieures, Category:Instituts Supérieurs are stupid and irrelevant and stupid as well !! The vast majority of écoles nationales, écoles nationales supérieures, instituts supérieurs are NOT "Grandes écoles"... and their denomination says nothing about the level.... Euroflux (talk) 19:04, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * A "Grande école" has no official definition, but everybody knows in France which they are... A "Grande école" is defined by highly competitive exams, and it has nothing to do with whether they are called "écoles nationales", "écoles nationales supérieures", "instituts nationaux supérieurs"... You have "écoles nationales" for hair cutting !... "Ecole nationale supérieure de la police" is NOT a grande école and is inferior to "Ecole nationale d'administration" which is not "supérieure"... The top school for Electrical engineering is "Supélec", "École Supérieure d'Électricité" ; it is not "nationale" being a private institution... The top business schools HEC and ESSEC are private whereas most top engineering schools are public and "national"... Therefore it is stupid and irrelevant to categorize those schools according to whether they are private or public, whether you find the name "supérieure" or "polytechnique" in the name... "What's in a name?", the famous question of Juliet applies here !
 * Conclusion : All those stupid categories wrongly reinstalled in the Category:Grandes écoles by Guillaume2303 should be removed at once !! Euroflux (talk) 19:49, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * See Grande école, Euroflux is right (partially), the french category must be imported here. Grandes écoles means « établissement d’enseignement supérieur qui recrute ses élèves par concours (de la fonction publique) et assure des formations de haut niveau » (see Arrêté du 27 août 1992 relatif à la terminologie de l'éducation, official reference). However, all écoles nationales, écoles nationales supérieures, instituts supérieurs ARE "Grandes écoles". 81.249.170.143 (talk) 19:25, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts is "nationale supérieure" but definitely NOT a "grande école" : how are students admitted ? is there a highly competitive exam ? I don't think so... Euroflux (talk) 20:01, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * École nationale de police trains simple cops !! This école is "nationale" but definitely NOT a "Grande école" !!!! Therefore NOT ALL "écoles nationales" are "grandes écoles" !!!! Euroflux (talk) 20:05, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * "Institut Supérieur Des Arts De La Coiffure Paris (75014)" This "institut supérieur" des arts de la coiffure trains hairdressers !!!! Definitely NOT a "grande école" !!! Euroflux (talk) 20:10, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * École nationale supérieure du paysage trains landscape gardeners.... it is "nationale" AND "supérieure", but definitely NOT a "grande école".... All "écoles nationales supérieures" are NOT necessarily "grandes écoles"... Euroflux (talk) 20:18, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Euroflux keeps missing the point. I have never claimed that the cats that I reinstated should remain, only that he should follow proper procedure if he thinks they should be removed. And he keeps ignoring the faulty cats that he created and added to many articles. Not to mention weird sortkeys like exclamation marks. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 20:15, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Theses weird sortkeys like exclamation marks are prohibited on French WP and are responsible (partly) for blocking Euroflux on French WP (passage in force, non-cooperative attitude). 81.249.170.143 (talk) 20:27, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * See École nationale supérieure du paysage, grande école is in infobox. 81.249.170.143 (talk) 20:33, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Where have you seen that this school is a "grande école" ??? Nowhere !!! This school is NOT considered a "grande" école, just an "école", but not "grande" ! Again, contrary to what has been written above NOT all "écoles nationales supérieures" are "grandes écoles" !! There fore the Category:Écoles Nationales Supérieures and even more the Category:Écoles Nationales should be removed, or at least displaced towards the category "Education in france"... The same with "Instituts Nationaux"... Euroflux (talk) 21:22, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * A lot of categories are ridiculous but passage in force and non-cooperative attitude are prohibited here. 81.249.170.143 (talk) 20:38, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Guillaume2303 keeps saying that my categories are faulty but he did not give any justification ! Her is my categorizing tree:

Category:Grandes écoles

This category contains French Grandes écoles, with following subcategories:
 * 1) Grandes écoles for scientists & intellectuals
 * 2) Grandes écoles for engineers
 * 3) Grandes écoles for economists
 * 4) Grandes écoles for agronomists, biotechnologists & veterinarians
 * 5) Business schools in France
 * 6) Grandes écoles for politicians & civil servants

The original category "Grandes écoles" was a real mess with all kinds of various "grandes écoles" in so many different fields : science, engineering, business, arts, cinema...

It made no sense !! Again and again, the name "grande école" is not protected by law and any weird school can call themselves "grande école"...

That is why I began sorting out those schools.

The most typically French "grandes écoles" are the Engineering schools like Polytechnique (nothing to do with Institut national polytechnique !!), Centrale, les Mines, les Ponts, etc.... ordered according to a certain hierarchy.

Even more selective than the prestigious engineering schools are the "Ecoles normales" dedicated to mathematics, physics, but as well literature, philosophy, biology, social sciences, etc... Those "écoles normales" train top level scientists, professors, and intellectuals as well.

A special category is then dedicated to économists. A typical French characteristics is that most French renowned economists were originally engineers, alumni of Ecole polytechnique (Groupe X-Crise,...), les Mines (Nobel Prize Maurice Allais,...), les Ponts(bridge engineers), ENSAE (Alfred Sauvy,...), ENAC (Jean Peyrelevade,..)

A fourth category is dedicated to agronomists, biotechnologists & veterinarians... this category is nowadays very important due to the growing importance of biotechnolgy ; there has been a recent merging between aa agronomic school and a vet school.

A fifth category is dedicated to an already existing Category:Business schools in France". This category is much less typically french since French business schools very much copy the US system. The French business schools do not have such a long tradition like their engineering counterparts and are not public, but private, which shows that the French government has long neglected business training, due to the influence of the Catholic religion.

The sixth category is dedicated to those grandes écoles dedicated to training politicians and civil servants. There is the famous - but recent - Ecole nationale d'administration (ENA) created just after the War (1945) by General de Gaulle to democratize the French administration and to get rid of the "Collaboration" spirit with the Germans. There is the relatively renowned Institut d'études politiques (Sciences Po). This last category is a kind of "copycat" of the French engineer schools. Sciences Po is hardly considered a "grande école" because they recruit just after baccalauréat with not such a tough competitive exam.

The ENA system is a very new one, and reached its peak under Georges Pompidou presidency. The ENA system is now crumbling down due to the growing importance of Europe. Contrary to engineers, who are a worldwide globalized profession, the French civil servant concept will hardly survive in a global world.

Among the 6 categories, the richest one is obviously the category "Grandes écoles for engineers".

In France, when we say "grandes écoles", it is often understated "grandes écoles d'ingénieurs" (Grandes écoles for engineers). Euroflux (talk) 21:18, 12 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Euroflux, for the umpteenth time: your category names (which are even worse than those you give above, which are not the names of the categories that you created) suggest that they contain people (and exclusively French ones at that), not schools, so the names are misleading. To cite yourself: Why is it so difficult for you to admit that you are wrong? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 06:06, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I am now beginning to be fed up with such nonsense Category:Grandes écoles (French engineers) means that the category contains "grandes écoles" and that those "grandes écoles are training engineers.
 * I have added the word "French" to disambiguate ; it might have been Belgian, Swiss, or Québecois...
 * It is pretty obvious that the French grandes écoles d'ingénieurs are supposed to mainly train French engineers, aren't they ? Such institutions may welcome foreign students for one or 2 semesters, but in practice only French students can cope with the tough "classes préparatoires" and the high level in mathematics. I have seen some Germans in French grandes écoles, but it is very tough for them because they don't have the level in maths. I have met Russian, Danish, Romanian, Brazilian guests. Amazingly enough I have never met any Dutch nor American guest. Euroflux (talk) 08:39, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

{unindent} here is the description of the Category:Grandes écoles (French engineers) Category:Grandes écoles (French engineers)

Subcategories

This category has the following 6 subcategories, out of 6 total.

► Grandes écoles (French mechanical & civil engineers, materials scientists)‎ (4 C, 14 P)   ► Grandes écoles (French mining & nuclear engineers)‎ (9 P)    ► Grandes écoles (French aerospace engineers)‎ (2 C, 5 P)    ► Grandes écoles (French military engineers)‎ (1 C, 5 P)    ► Grandes écoles (French electrical & electronics engineers, computer scientists)‎ (1 C, 16 P)    ► Grandes écoles (French physical & chemical engineers)‎ (1 C, 10 P)

Pages in category "Grandes écoles (French engineers)"

The following 2 pages are in this category, out of 2 total. This list may not reflect recent changes (learn more).

Conference of the Directors of French Engineering Schools Commission des Titres d'Ingénieur

Categories: Grandes écoles French engineers

If you speak of French "grandes écoles" 80% of them train engineers. On the English WP there were 120 of them + probably others not yet identified.

"Grandes écoles" is a touchy subject. There is no official definition of "grandes écoles" and there might be some disagreement about whether a school A is "Grande école" or not. The school A might present themselves as a "grande école" whereas others might consider it as a "petite école". In France, there are endless ideological debates about the suppression of "grandes écoles" in favour of Universities.

Every year there is a ranking by the professional sector ; the "grandes écoles d'ingénieurs" (Grandes écoles for engineers) are split into 3 catégories : A, B, C. The "real" grandes écoles are in fact the A + one part of the B, but hush hush ! Do not hurt egos ! On the French WP there has been a bloody war about a new engineering school named Institut polytechnique des sciences avancées. This is a new school, hardly recognized as an engineering school. They added the word "polytechnique" to their name because Ecole polytechnique is the most prestigious engineering school in France ; it is a kind of advertising trick !

Some wanted to suppress this school out of ideological considerations because it was "private", or not enough recognized, etc... Some students of this school harshly defended their school, which is rather understandable, and they were blocked ! It was long before my arrival. I got suspected of being a sockpuppet of those students which explains why I was blocked.

I made a classification according to the specialty and to the industry, taking into account the French tradition.

Most French top engineering schools (Polytechnique, Centrale Paris, Mines, Ponts) call themselves "généralistes" : their engineers should theoretically able to understand "everything". In reality, due to French tradition, there is a strong bias towards mathematics and mechanical engineering, which is inherited from the 19th century. Electrical engineering is a bit "parent pauvre" (poor parent). Polytechnique, Mines, Ponts trained top civil servants who directed french administrations especially regarding mining, industry, infrastructures, nuclear,...

The top school for Electrical engineering is "Supélec", École Supérieure d'Électricité. This is an "A" school, but less renowned than the former ones. Amazingly enough, "Supélec" is NOT an "école nationale", which shows that the French government traditionally underestiamted the importance of electricity.

An important branch of electrical engineering is telecommunications but if you look at the history of Télécom ParisTech you can see that the setting up of this school in France was rather laborious !

As a result of minor interest of the French State for Electrical engineering, there are a huge amount of private electrical, electronics and telecom schools. Due to the recent explosion of the telecom sector since 20 years, there has been many new "opportunistic" private telecom schools created.

The most prestigious technical corps in France is the Corps des mines, X-Mines, Polytechnique + Ecole des Mines. Those civil servants have headed France especially since the end of WWII. The mining schools are competent for metallurgy, nuclear sector, the whole industry sector ; they trained as well excellent economists, among them a Nobel prize (Maurice Allais).

Aerospace has been a great priority in France especially during the last 50 years. Therefore there are quite a few establishments for this sector : Polytechnique, Supaéro, Centrale,...

Contrary to Germany, France has never been so keen on chemistry. This lack of interest is reflected by the relative anonymity of the French schools for chemical engineers or chemists. Concerning physics and chemistry, it is rather unclear whether it belongs to "engineering" (grandes écoles) or to "science" (University). There are quite a few chemistry + physics schools which are not so much renowned.

I have added "materials scientists" to "mechanical engineers", which is the case in the Aerospace industry. This is debatable ; they might be added as well to "chemists".

"Military engineers" (IA, IETA, IETTM,...) deserve a special category due to French tradition. They have a complete different status and prestige than their counterparts in other countries like the US, UK, Germany... The top engineering school Ecole polytechnique is a military school and has trained up to 60 "Military engineers" per year (the other ones going into the civilian area). "Supaéro" (ISAE), ENSTA ParisTech, ENSICA, ENSIETA (now ENSTA Bretagne) depend directly from the French DOD. Both schools training the officers of the French Navy and of the Air Force are as well "engineering" schools. Euroflux (talk) 09:01, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Euroflux is right (I am French and I confirm the absence of definition of Grandes écoles, there is an official reference here Arrêté du 27 août 1992 relatif à la terminologie de l'éducation too vague) but remain calm, there is no deadline, the the normal and consensual procedure will be followed. 94.228.187.87 (talk) 09:34, 13 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Euroflux has started editing again, emptying categories and adding exclamation marks ("!") as sort keys... He keeps railing against "stupid" categories (because "Grandes écoles" is not legally defined), but keeps adding (inappropriately-named) "Grandes écoles" categories to articles. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 16:24, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't understand what Guillaume2303 is looking for ; he never gave any explanation about why my categories would be "inappropriately-named". At least 3 different users agreed on the fact that the categories "Ecoles polytechniques" (this network does not exist !), "Ecoles nationales", "Ecoles nationales supérieures" and "Instituts supérieurs" were inappropriate because the name says nothing about the level of the fame of a school... Ecole polytechnique is by far the most prestigious school in France whereas the former "Ecole polytechnique féminine" was a much lower level school and had no administrative connection with the former. Names are misleading ! Does Guillaume2303 know anything about French grandes écoles ? I strongly doubt it ; what is he proposing ? Euroflux (talk) 16:39, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * PLEASE! For once try to read what people write, I have said this now multiple times: you have created a whole bunch of "grandes écoles" categories with names like "Grandes écoles (French mechanical & civil engineers, materials scientists)". Such a name is misleading as it suggests that it contains French engineers that were trained at a Grande école, whereas you use it to classify schools. If you want to classify schools by the subject they teach, you'll have to come up with names that make that clear. In addition, these schools (in varying proportions) also train non-French students, so their alumni are not exclusively "French" engineers. Also, you have been pointed several times to the correct procedures to follow if you wish to propose to rename a category or to delete one. Yet, you insist doing things your own way. Finally, I have never seen any explanation from you for your use of exclamation marks and numbers as sort keys. WP is a collaborative project, it is not and will not become your private playground. You must adapt to WP's policies and procedures. Thanks. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:11, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

{Unindent} Who are you and what do you want exactly ? You are not the "people" ; you are the only user making a fuss about this categorizing. Again and again my cartegory "Grandes écoles (French engineers)" is NOT misleading ; evrybody except you understands that this a category containing grandes écoles training French engineers. I am not the one who created the overall category "Grandes écoles" ; I would have created "French grandes écoles" beacause the system is typically French ; it is important for me to put the word "French" because this is the French system and french grandes écoles have been created to mainly train French engineers... didn't they ? Why are you hairsplitting ? and what do you propose concretely ? And what do you know about the system of French grandes écoles ? Euroflux (talk) 17:25, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Like you, I'm a Wikipedia editor who has to follow WPs guidelines and policies. And regarding your faulty reasoning in constructing category names: see, for example Category:Universities and colleges in the United States. There's a category "Category:Dental schools in the United States", but NOT a category "Schools in the United States (American dentists)". Do you see the difference? Also, none of the entries in all these dozens of categories use sort keys like you do (I mean the exclamation marks, and "01", "02", etc). As I have remarked on this repeatedly, but you keep ignoring this, I now ask explicitly: why do you use those? Why don't you want to adapt to WP instead of trying to make WP adapt to you? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:23, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * 2 different users already stated that I was right and that you were wrong ; you are the only one saying that my categories are faulty. Therefore I got 75% and you got 25%. You are not the Director of WP:en, are you ? You are not even an admin, thanks God. What do you know about the French grandes écoles system ? Apparently nothing. You claim to be a neuroscientist and you claim to have a fr:3 level. But what is the connection between a Dutch neuroscientist and the French grandes écoles ? Have you ever set foot in a French grande école ? I don't think so. Obviously you are unable to read French ; you ignore the French spelling rules.
 * As I already explained, the real grandes écoles amount to 20-30, no more, and here we have 150-200 of them ! Many of the "grandes écoles" on WP:en are self proclaimed, almost unknown, and there is a need of classification. french grandes écoles have a precise ranking ; that is why I made use of 01, 02, 03, !,... I did not invent this sorting ; I have seen it in other categories ! For example, there are no more than 4-5 French business schools which really deserve to be called "grandes écoles" : HEC, ESSEC, ESCP,... But it is so ironic that a Dutch guy claims to teach to a French native the system of grandes écoles ! I can't understand your motivations... Haven't you got other fish to fry than harrass me on WP:en, and repeat again and again the same bullsshit ? What are you looking for ??? Euroflux (talk) 18:33, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Can we leave aside the insults, please? It almost seems as if you don't want to understand me. I am complaining about the names of your categories, which are misleading and against naming policy. And you're contradicting yourself. If there is no "official" definition of grandes écoles, then where does the precise ranking come from and who determines which are the "real" ones? Also, an encyclopedia is supposed to inform people. How is anybody supposed to figure out what the rankings you're building in mean? And what do the exclamation marks mean? I am not saying (and have never said) that the categorization of French écoles on WP is perfect or cannot be improved. I'm just saying that you are making a mess of things here by introducing wrong names and using obscure sort keys. And if you read again the comments of the other editors above: they agree with what you said about the grandes écoles, not with how you are categorizing things. As for my connection with the French system, that's more than you apparently imagine, but I have seen some of the things that happened on the French Wikipedia (surtout: "les dizaines de mails reçus ... et ... les appels téléphoniques menaçants et agressifs") and I don't intend to give you any indication who and where I am. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 21:14, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Again and again, you ask questions already answered. I already gave above a ranking. This is a ranking given by a renowned French newspaper ; there might be other rankings. The rankings exist, and might slightly differ from one another according to the sources, but they are not "official". Everybody knows for instance that Polytechnique has been for 200 years the best engineering school in France. But it is not "official" ; there is no law stating this ; if another school wants to claim that they are better than Polytechnique, Polytechnique won't be able to sue them for this ! Schools are ranked with categories A, B, C, D... You claim to know the French system, and you don't know it ? rather surprising... You go on saying that I gave wrong names without giving proofs. I don't know who you are and where you are and I don't give a damn ! I am just fed up with being harassed by you... I have other fish to fry than spending my life on Wikipedia. I can just see that you are very bitter and aggressive, and you make me waste a lot of time answering your bickering and rambling remarks. I did a great job categorizing on the French WP and on the English WP. Any competent person will recognize it. You are just trying to make yourself more important than you are ; you are a simple user, just like me, and what you say is not superior to what I can say. Euroflux (talk) 11:04, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
 * There are several misconceptions in your answer. First, you seem think that categories should rank the entries in them, which of course is not the case. If these rankings are notable, they could be the subject of an article or be incorporated into an existing one. As it is, WP readers are left wondering about the "01", "02", etc. sortkeys (and we still don't know anything about your reasons for the use of exclamation marks as sortkeys...). Second, "everyone knows" is, alas, not an acceptable source on WP. Third, I have many times now pointed out why exactly the names you gave to your categories are unique to yourself, unprecedented on WP, and against naming conventions here. Fourth, as far as I can see, your "great job categorizing on the French WP" is exactly what got you blocked there. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 12:26, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Backlog
I have a suggestion, categories that have been held in backlog for longer than 1 week be relisted. -- 76.65.131.248 (talk) 06:20, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * That's not the guidance in WP:RELIST. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:21, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Problematic restructuring Category: Propaganda
I'm not sure what to do about this, since I'm not sure how to change it back without messing up categories. In Category: Propaganda, despite my objections on talk page, a user put a lot of important categories like Propaganda by country‎ (11 C, 7 P), Propaganda by interest‎ (5 C, 6 P), Propaganda by medium‎ (13 C, 1 P) and Propaganda by war‎ (4 C, 3 P) under a new and rather vague Category:Propaganda_examples which I think people will be less likely to look in to. Where to bring this issue? Or does someone in the know feel strongly enough to change it back correctly ? Thanks. CarolMooreDC 16:59, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * If you disagree with the edits, you're entitled to undo them. User:Andrewaskew said he was being bold, and if there's disagreement, one of your options is to revert and discuss the changes. See BOLD, revert, discuss cycle. - Eureka Lott 23:39, 14 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I did undo one of his changes which he immediately reverted. Perhaps someone could tell me if this below is standard. I've never seen it before. Think I've figured out how to do the other. Guess I'll have to do an RfC.:
 * Classification: Collective consciousness: Societal engineering: Social engineering: Media manipulation: Propaganda
 * Thanks. CarolMooreDC 01:04, 18 September 2012 (UTC)
 * FYI, I noticed someone else already had put one of his categories up for deletion and everyone agreed, so just did same for the other problematic ones. So case closed :-) CarolMooreDC 23:47, 18 September 2012 (UTC)


 * BTW. The structure you asked about comes from Classification. I don't know if it is common, but I have seen it used elsewhere. --Andrewaskew (talk) 06:06, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Culture by city
Hi all -

I've largely retured from the behind-the-scenes side of Wikipedia, and even when I was in full action here this would be a daunting task... so, I was wondering if someone more gung ho could take a look at the subcategories of. All the US cities are "Culture of Foo", all bar one of the UK ones are "Culture in Foo", the rest of the world is a mish-mash of the two plus "Foo culture". Surely there needs to be some kind of uniformity, but were looking at some 350 categories in all... Grutness...wha?  08:08, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Establishments and disestablishments in Iceland
It appears that this entire series many have been emptied out of process. I don't have time to research this, but most of these categories are now up for speedy deletion. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:03, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Author requests renaming
G7 has gone in and out of the CFD Speedy criteria a few times. Wikipedia talk:Categories for discussion/Archive 2010 may have been the first suggestion. It was added to the criteria page on 1 May 2011; removed along with G4 on 29 May 2011; and re-added on 24 June 2012, all of which may have been without specific discussion.

It is somewhat anomalous that an editor can manually create a replacement category and tag his own work for instant deletion, but if he wants it to come to CFD (for somebody else or bot to do it), it has to wait 48 hours.

I propose that "G7: Author requests renaming" be removed from Categories for discussion/Speedy/Criteria, and replaced with C2E:


 * E. Author requests renaming within 28 days of creating the category, and no other editors, including bots, have populated or changed the category since it was created.

Moreover I propose to add a mention of C2E in the "no delay" paragraph at the top of WP:CFDS that covers the General WP:CSD such as "patent nonsense", so that it can be done instantly.

If the new C2E criteria are not met then a full CfD would be required. Comments? – Fayenatic  L ondon 21:02, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
 * This proposal arose out of a discussion between me and fayenatic at User_talk:Fayenatic_london/Archive08, and I think it's a good idea. AFAICS, it is not adding anything new, just clarifying existing procedure. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:41, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
 * As there were no further comments, I have now implemented this. – Fayenatic  L ondon 08:22, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Is this simply a backlog issue?
Just following up on my exchange with MBisanz. I pointed out that his (her?) closure at Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_September_1 has not been implemented. He replied that he didn't "know how to trigger the technical means to do the merge. You might ask somewhere like WT:CFD." Again, if it's just a backlog thing, no worries. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:21, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
 * It probably isn't as a result of a backlog. I don't see it on any of the working pages to be done. I'm assuming it was removed?  Hazard-SJ  ✈   02:14, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not an admin and so I don't understand the question: removed from what? The target Category:Hotels by year of opening was never created, nor were the by-year subcats created. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 02:25, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
 * And the by year subcats were not discussed. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:22, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
 * That's right, I did admit in my nom that I was too lazy to tag the 84 subcats. Oh well, it looks like we'll be retaining hotels by year of completion and establishment for a while, if only by default. I don't expect I'll be the last person to raise this. thanks, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 14:01, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

Côte d'Ivoire

 * Posting here as I haven't a clue where else to post. This is where a very recent change at Monts du Toura has pointed - no link except to CDFS. The change is obviously Category:Mountains of Ivory Coast from Category:Mountains of Côte d'Ivoire. This seems impenetrable, except it's par for the course.  The name of the country is Côte d'Ivoire.  Presumably a consensus has decided otherwise? No explanation.  No pointer to record of discussion. (Insert various point of view comments about Wikipedia process) Opbeith (talk) 21:48, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The article Côte d'Ivoire was moved to Ivory Coast following this Requested Move, which was upheld at a move review. Category:Côte d'Ivoire was speedily renamed to Category:Ivory Coast on 1 September, following a two-day listing. The subcategories were nominated and processed later. I do not support the changes that took place but they appear to be justified so long as the main article remains at Ivory Coast. -- Black Falcon (talk) 05:57, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Categorization of multilingual support templates
It seems that Category:Chinese multilingual support templates, Category:Japonic multilingual support templates, and Category:Korean name templates should be subcategories of Category:Multilingual support templates. Discussion is here. LittleBen (talk) 16:29, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Song and album categories
A large number of song and album categories have been listed at WP:CFD/S for renaming. In each case, the change adds disambiguation in accordance with the title of the article. In some cases, the change seems not just desirable but essential due to the ambiguous nature of the current title: e.g., Category:Ancient albums to Category:Ancient (band) albums. In other cases, the need for the change can be disputed due to a relative lack of ambiguity: e.g., Category:Cloven Hoof albums to Category:Cloven Hoof (band) albums.

A large number of such nominations have been opposed, but an equal number are currently in queue. Should they be processed or does the expressed opposition extend to them as well? -- Black Falcon (talk) 05:15, 22 October 2012 (UTC) I have no objection to these renamings been done so long as they are scrutinised. A failure to link relevant articles make it significantly harder to review them, and when there are so many similar nominations that extra time makes it unlikely that they will actually be reviewed properly against the 3 main criteria: 1) is the categ tagged; 2) does the rename target actually match the head article; 3) is the head article stable at that location. Many editors new to CFD/S make a few noms omitting this info, and in those cases other editors take the time to do the checks. However, in this case we have a problem: the same editor repeatedly makes enormous mass nominations which omit the crucial data, and that makes it highly unlikely that they will be checked. This info is very easily-provided when making the  nom, but its omission makes verification significantly more time-consuming, and it proceeding without checks is a clear breach of the basic principles of speedy renamings. I will continue to object to any such nominations unless other editors certify that they have checked them, because in the absence of the relevant links it is unlikely that they will be scrutinised. This means that we cannot assume that listing for 48 hours will satisfy our usual presumption that such listing implies scrutiny, which is why I will systematically object to any such noms. Any admin who implements speedy moves takes responsibility for checking that they do meet the criteria, so if an admin wants to override my objection that's fine so long as they accept that they take responsibility for verifying them. I unreservedly accept Mike's assurance that he did check these, so I have no objection to them have been processed. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:59, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
 * My opinion: They should all be processed. I understand that editors believe not enough information has been provided for them to decide whether the change matches the head article, and the nominator would do well to provide that information. But that doesn't make the nominations invalid. There's been no evidence that any of these nominations are wrong, just that editors are too busy to check them. I'd rather process them all, then if we discover one or two is wrong, change them back.--Mike Selinker (talk) 10:27, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed. For a recent precedent at a full CfD, see Categories for discussion/Log/2012 May 30, which was closed as Rename to Category:Aswad (band) songs. Note that this was first nominated at Speedy, where I opposed it on some of the same grounds as have just been raised. – Fayenatic  L ondon 10:56, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Another question: If an editor objects because she hasn't verified the nominations to her satisfaction, and then someone else says they have verified them, can they be processed? Or does her objection make it impossible for anyone to process them until she withdraws it? I'm not sure what the protocol has to be here. (Nothing against BHG's objections. I just don't know what to do in this case.)--Mike Selinker (talk) 14:30, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the slow reply; I wasn't aware of this discussion until I came here for something else.
 * Agreed in principal. Unless people bring up objections that actually oppose the change on the grounds that it does not match the parent article, or we don't want to match the parent article in this case.  Band related nominations tend to get so low participation at CfD, that when we are following an established precedent of matching categoriy names to the relevant article titles, not much is gained by going through the whole CfD process.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:06, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
 * OK, it seems like we're agreed that they can be processed once checked. Unless I hear a strong objection soon, I'm processing them.--Mike Selinker (talk) 17:16, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
 * All are checked and processed.--Mike Selinker (talk) 02:08, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Remarks removed
When pressing the link to new discussions on WP:CFD there used to be a note saying  or something like that. Why was that removed? I propose restoring that. It was very handy and helpful there. Debresser (talk) 17:53, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

missing discussion
I see that Category:Social engineering (political science) is up for deletion/discussion, but the link leads me to Categories_for_discussion/Log/2012_September_19 where I cannot find it - where did it disappear to? Ottawahitech (talk) 14:50, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The discussion was relisted at Categories for discussion/Log/2012 October 30, but the category links weren't updated. I fixed the links. - Eureka Lott 15:36, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Category:Very large categories
What is the purpose of Category:Very large categories? (I typed a more detailed question before but Wikimedia Error wiped it out) Ottawahitech (talk) 16:23, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Many category submissions
In the process of changing category names according to set standards, according to WP:LUX, many categories will have to be renamed (possibly a hundred or more). Is there any specific procedure, or do they all have to be submitted? Thanks. Scotchorama (talk) 17:06, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * They all have to be submitted, tagging the page and listing at CFD, but can go to Speedy using cfr-speedy. I'll start you off with the top ones. I think even those can be done as Speedy. – Fayenatic  L ondon 16:43, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Merge Category:Track and field clubs in the United States
With Category:Athletics clubs in the United States as all the others of the kind. --Kasper2006 (talk) 17:30, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
 * But Category:Track and field by country says "Track and field is a sub-set of events within the individual sport of athletics", in which case the sub-cat might be valid... – Fayenatic  L ondon 18:07, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

could use a look from someone familiar with current categorization standards
Category:Strategies for dealing with the two party system this is a recently created category, which seems a bit of a pointy response to discussion at Talk:Electoral fusion. Not sure if it qualifies for deletion or if perhaps there might be some already existing similar category. older ≠ wiser 21:42, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Category:Tributes to the Beatles vs Category:Tributes to The Beatles
I can't seem to find a discussion around this, but "Tributes to The Beatles" has been moved, I believe wrongly, to "Tributes to the Beatles". The band is called "The Beatles", not merely a collection of individuals known as "Beatles". Furthermore, rather ironically, the exampled of The Beatles is used to describe such a collection, as seen on the Project Page. Can this move be reverted please? -- rm 'w a vu  04:39, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Template instructions STILL all screwed up
I can't have done one for a year, & faithfully following the instructions still fucks it all up. No wonder only regulars ever venture to nominate here. Johnbod (talk) 20:38, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Want me to walk you through it once? Debresser (talk) 21:10, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Categorization alerts?
Is there any mechanism by which editors can be alerted when a page is added to a given category (something similar to watchlisting... but pegged to a category and not the individual page).

The issue is problematic categorization and verifiability... adding a potentially problematic cat to a bio article (especially, but not necessarily a BLP). For example, someone adding to a bio article. Sometimes this is an appropriate addition (when the person actually is/was a communist)... but I could also see this cat being added inappropriately (by POV vandals, etc.)  Now, obviously, if this cat were added to a heavily watched article (say, Barak Obama) someone would quickly catch it and remove the cat. But we can not be sure this will happen for articles on more obscure people - articles that might not be on anyone's watchlist. The inappropriate categorization might not be caught for a long time. It would be helpful if there was a way for members of interested wikiprojects (such as WikiProject:Socialism) to watch a category... and to be alerted whenever that category is has been added to a page... so they could review the page and categorization, and ensure that the categorization was appropriate and verifiable. Blueboar (talk) 14:40, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Not currently, except for I think manually checking related changes for a given category, but maybe there can be an edit tag created for any change of categorization on BLPs, so that recent change patrollers will better notice such changes? I don't see the urgent concern outside of that scope. postdlf (talk) 17:24, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Over-hasty move
Someone has just changed the Category:Wendland to Category:Wendland (region) without a) informing me as the orginator and b) spotting that there is an RFM discussion currently ongoing to move the primary article from Wendland (region) to Wendland. If the move is approved, as seems likely, we're going to have to move the category back. I can't find the CFD proposal and resulting discussion - is it archived anywhere? --Bermicourt (talk) 09:29, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I see what you mean (or rather, I don't). The move on the category page is attributed to Authors: User:Good Olfactory & User:Bermicourt, perhaps you can contact them in the first instance and ask them to speedy rename. Ephebi (talk) 11:30, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It was done in an unopposed speedy move here, apparently ignoring the discussion on the relevant article page. Ephebi (talk) 11:39, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Why 225 categories such as Category:American athletes and only one Category:Canadian track and field athletes?
Look at these deletions unjustified: Category:Canadian male athletes and Category:Canadian female athletes, this revert and this message: «FYI, I tend to agree with your reasoning; it's purely the way you're going about implementing it to which I am opposed.» Nyttend. --Kasper2006 (talk) 16:42, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * This page is meant for discussing how to run CFD; if you want to see a bunch of categories renamed, follow the WP:CFD instructions. Nyttend (talk) 16:45, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ Hope I did not make any mistakes. ;-) --Kasper2006 (talk) 17:39, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Actors/actresses discussions
Someone should close this actors discussion and this actresses discussion from November. I can't, because I commented on it. But someone should settle the issue. (Beyond those, this librettist discussion of mine is the only one remaining from November. It should also be closed.)--Mike Selinker (talk) 18:32, 26 December 2012 (UTC)