The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale: This a group nomination in progress of three sets of sub-categories of Category:Sportspeople by century, following on from the nominations of other similar categories. All of the parent categories (Category:Alpine skiers, Category:Volleyball players, Category:Sports commentators) are subdivided in other ways, and creating categories-by-century will (if populated) lead to huge diffuse categories. If those large categories are sub-divided, the result will be lots of multiple-intersection sub-categories, creating lots of category-clutter on articles, and maintenance headaches. Whatever the merits of by-century category categorisation in other areas where there are many notable people over many centuries (such as sculpture), it seems rather pointless for these topics which overwhelmingly relate to the 20th and 21st centuries. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 19:50, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why do people need to be in any of the century categories? Unless massively sub-divided, they will be far too big to be any use for navigation. Their only conceivable use is for a tool like catscan to generate category intersections on the fly. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 22:20, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep All to allow for navigation across common defining characteristics. Why do we need categories at all? Let's just dump the entire system and we can avoid all of these "Why do we need..." arguments. Alansohn (talk) 00:02, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Alansohn, you say "defining characteristics" in response to just about every proposal to delete a category. But sport commentators have only been existence for about 70 years, so in what way does splitting them in a by-century category define them even further? And how does it help navigation?
There doesn't have to be a simple choice between "dump the entire system" and "keep everything". Most CFD discussions are about finding which categories help navigation and which don't. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 01:01, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Categories would be way to huge to be useful unless hugely subdivided, and to subdivide them would make them far to unuseful as well. -DJSasso (talk) 23:32, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep these and alll similar categries. a reasonable topic for browsing, and a reasonable way to browse. If they need dividing, they can be divided, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong about large categories. Upmerging to sportspeople by century or people by century is among the few things that can be guaranteed to make such a problem worse. Anyone wanting to delete because of potential size and diffuseness and do that seems to be contradicting themselves. DGG ( talk ) 00:45, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
All 4 occupations here are overwhelmingly 20th and 21st-century occupations. How does dividing them in two help anyone? There may be a merit in by-century categorisation for occupations which span five or more centuries, but none of the keep !voters here has shown how any useful purpose is served by applying it here. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 02:14, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. I'm starting to think that division of people by century is a tad arbitrary when it comes to things like this. I'm not clear with what navigational purpose such a scheme would serve. I could understand if they were holding subcategories for decades or years, but obviously they can't. Good Ol’factory(talk)02:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete – as BHG says there is perhaps some point in subdividing categories which span millennia into centuries (eg Archbishops of Canterbury) but not such as these. (These are not defining characteristics - I've never heard of say Nigel Mansell being described as a '20th-century racing driver' - it's a combination of a defining characteristic ('racing driver') and a factoid.) Occuli (talk) 21:40, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete I've been thinking about these "by-century" categories for a few days now, and while on occasion it might make sense- as a way to divide, for example, Roman Catholic Bishops (something that's been around for many, many centuries), these subjects only have been seriously around for the 20th and 21st centuries CE, making the system unnecessary in these cases. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 03:37, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:Delete. All of this category's entries are part of a group AfD here. I have listed the category itself in the group AfD as well. Blanchardb-Me•MyEars•MyMouth- timed 17:53, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Provisional Delete If AfD wipes out the articles, then this goes 4 days later as a C1 speedy. When you nominate every article in a category for deletion, it is not necessary to nominate the category here; if the articles go, the cat goes almost automatically. If the articles stay, then two discussions have to be closed instead of one. That AfD looks one-sided, so this discussion is likely irrelevant. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 03:44, 16 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Nominator's rationale: This nomination will remove both the ice-hockey-players-by-century-categories and the male-ice-hockey-player categories. There are still largely unpopulated categories which seem to be one the latest descendants of Category:People by occupation and century, with the added spice of a male-only category tree. Ice hockey has historically been predominantly a male game (though not as much as, for example, rugby), and although women's participation is growing, it remains predominantly a male sport. That means that there is a good case for creating Category:Female ice hockey players. However, per WP:Cat/gender, a female category does not need to be balanced directly against a male category where the vast majority of people in the group are male. All these male categories do is complicate the category tree, with no benefit to readers. In this case, these categories have not been heavily populated: so far as I can see, the male categories currently contain only 46 articles, a total which includes a significant number of duplicates. Whatever the merits of by-century-categories in other parts of the category tree, it's a bad idea with ice hockey, for a number of reasons:
ice hockey players are already categorised by team, which groups players who had some connection with each other
if fully populated, these categories will be huge; too huge to be useful for navigation
splitting them further either requires creating a huge collection of triple or quadruple intersections such "20th ice hockey forwards from Canada". That will be a maintenance nightmare
Even if split as above, many of the categories will still be too big to be useful. One solution is to split them by decades creating for example "1960s ice hockey forwards from Canada" ... but sportspeople's careers don't fit neatly into decades, so most players would end up in two or more by-decades categories, creating category clutter
Delete per nom. I was actually about to put these up yesterday and decided to go to bed first. She pretty much worded it exactly how I was going to. Pure overcategorization. -DJSasso (talk) 15:53, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Both of those should probably be deleted as well, this is why you should propose them first before you create whole new massive category trees. -DJSasso (talk) 16:14, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and merge all as suggested by nominator. As with BrownHairedGirl and DJSasso, I was rather concerned about the multiple intersections this category schema creates. God help us on categorizing an article like Gordie Howe (to use the extreme example) if we were to have to split these trees into numerous intersections. Resolute17:55, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and Merge per the nominator's suggestions. These categories are completely silly; quite aside from that the overwhelming number of ice hockey players played in the 20th century (the organized sport only having been created in the 1870s) and being overwhelmingly male, they're about as informative as Brunette female hockey players. RGTraynor 09:59, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep these and alll similar categries. a reasonable topic for browsing, and a reasonable way to browse. If they need dividing, they can be divided, but there is nothing intrinsically wrong about large categories. Upmerging to sportspeople by century or people by century is among the few things that can be guaranteed to make such a problem worse. Anyone wanting to delete because of potential size and diffuseness and do that seems to be contradicting themselves. BHG, I suggest that before going further on thius that there be an attempt at a much more general discussion. This is somewhat far-reaching. DGG ( talk ) 00:45, 12 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. Holy triple and quadruple intersections. I'm starting to think that division of people by century is a tad arbitrary when it comes to things like this. I'm not clear with what navigational purpose such a scheme would serve. I could understand if they were holding subcategories for decades or years, but obviously they can't. Good Ol’factory(talk)02:42, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:Merge. Not quite a duplicate but there are no other decades in science AND technology, whereas the decades in science is an established category. Tim! (talk) 11:47, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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Delete per nom, or better, merge to Category:Ratzeburg. Many "mittelstand" German companies are probably still more localised than their equivalents in the Anglosphere, but this sort of category should be kept to a minimum, imo. Half the infobox seems to be about the Colt gun co. Johnbod (talk) 00:12, 13 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Nominator's rationale:Upmerge, redundant. Perhaps I'm missing something, but I thought we used "country" in the category system to mean sovereign state. The parent category Category:Sovereign states is otherwise empty (and could be deleted as empty if this category is deleted), so this category is presently unique. postdlf (talk) 07:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Sovereign" is debatable for the SMOM. See here. I think this demonstrates one of the problems. Ultimately legal sovereignty depends not solely on claims, but also upon recognition by other sovereign entities. There are bound to be grey areas. Good Ol’factory(talk)02:45, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On balance I'd have to agree with you that it probably is sovereign at international law. But it is arguable. SMOM, why do you torment us so? Get your act together and take Malta back by force! Good Ol’factory(talk)06:18, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You've just finally discovered what everyone knew before—that the "good" in Good Olfactory is very, very good. Merciful, kind, just, etc. As Alansohn has said in a different context, you can just shorten it to "God Olfactory" if you like. Good Ol’factory(talk)08:56, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
None of the constituent parts of the UK are are categorized as countries directly and independently (neither their articles nor their eponymous categories), but rather are categorized as part of Category:United Kingdom. So I can't see the sovereign states category as having been created to address that issue. We currently handle it the opposite way; those countries that are...less than sovereign are instead distinguished by either being grouped by their parent country (as with the UK) or in an appropriate subcategory that distinguishes them by their lesser status (Category:Asian dependencies or Category:European dependencies). But however it's done, it needs to be done uniformly across all continents. postdlf (talk) 17:57, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment -- We probably need a category for non-sovereign states, such as 4 home countries of UK, Catalonia, Gibraltar, and I expect we can find a few more. This needs tidying up, and then the merger can be done. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:22, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Merge per nom (changing my !vote). I think that postdlf is on the right tack, and it would be better to create a category for the fewer non-sovereign states. Though of course the idea may be too problematic for even that solution, because it poses big arguments about what constitutes sovereignty: there is a notable body of opinion in the UK which argues that because of its membership of the European Union, the United Kingdom is no longer a sovereign state. This may just be more of a can of worms than the category system can accommodate. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 22:29, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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The result of the discussion was:keep. Count is now ten articles which seems fine and is twice as many as the five which the nominator said would have given pause to the nomination. Angus McLellan(Talk)20:13, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: This appears to be another eponymous category- none of the other Presidents of UR Tanzania have categories, and I don't see enough content here (2 articles) to change the general precedent against eponymous cats. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 06:20, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak delete per WP:OC#EPONYMOUS, which recommends creating such a category only for collections of subarticles (see Wikipedia:Summary style), or collections of articles on a topic about the named person. Julius Nyerere was a hugely significant figure in the history of decolonising Africa, and his significance as a political thinker extends well beyond Africa (never mind just Tanzania), so I have no doubt that many more articles could be written to populate such a category. However, those article don't yet exist, and only three of the five articles in the category actually belong there: Julius Nyerere, Arusha Declaration and Mwalimu Nyerere Museum Centre, and I don't think that's quite enough to justify a category. However, if this category is deleted, then it's very important that it be deleted without prejudice to re-creating it when such articles exist, because it's only due to the sytemic bias of wikipedia towards developed nations that we don't have much more coverage of Nyerere. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 11:13, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
BHG, if there had been five articles in it last night, we wouldn't be here- there were only two when the nomination was submitted. With five, I would withdrawn this nom and allow it to populate naturally. Bradjamesbrown (talk) 22:49, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment – it reflects badly on Wikipedia that Category:Categories named after politicians has so few categories for African leaders. There were various giants who are missing - eg Kaunda, Kenyatta, Banda – and Nyerere is in the same league. I tend towards 'weak keep' while conceding that 3 articles is not very many. Occuli (talk) 22:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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Keep all to match the article Thorold, Ontario. (I personally think Thorold, Ontario is preferable to Thorold as I have heard of Ontario but not of Thorold; but other Canadian places have dropped the disamb in the last year or 2 and there do seem to be no other Thorolds.) Occuli (talk) 01:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A move discussion on the article should really come first, following which the category can be renamed or not pro forma. Close as the wrong process for what's desired. Bearcat (talk) 05:04, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep all per Bearcat. The current names match the head article Thorold, Ontario, and as Bearcat notes a proposal to rename the head article should be made through Wikipedia:Requested moves, not here. I suggest that the nominator should withdraw this nomination, without prejudice to making a new one if and when the main article is renamed. (If the article is renamed, the proposed category renaming is likely to be uncontroversial). --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 11:18, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The convention is that category names should usually follow the format of article names. Your revised proposal makes even less sense than the first, because it breaks that convention in two ways rather than just one. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 18:31, 9 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, particularly the first. Thorold is an English surname, of a family of Lincolnshire baronets, some of whom were probably notable, but ought not to be in a category about a city. In principle, it should match the main article, but if that was moved to Thorold (city), the others could be changed too. Peterkingiron (talk) 22:28, 10 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
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