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Apparently an editor is changing some of the BC categories to BCE. I found this in Confucius. The issue is that if this action renaming to a red linked category. his is a problem when other editors nominate the emptied categories for deletion. I need to do some digging to find out which editor is doing this which I consider to be WP:POV. But if anyone has a bot to look for the red linked BCE categories and rename them, that would probably be a good thing. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:04, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually some section in wp:mos says that both are fine, and that BCE is used in scientific circles. Debresser (talk) 00:42, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

But you should not change for the sake of changing within an article. Likewise the BC category structure exists and should be retained and expanded and not split into BC and BCE. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:47, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with both points. Perhaps soft redirects can solve the second issue? Debresser (talk) 11:20, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

For anyone who is interested, the unofficial "CFD-is-broken tracker" has spit out its final numbers for all of 2009: here.^[1]

Summary: There were 5536 CFDs and 37 DRVs (0.69%). The DRV results indicted that about two-thirds of the 37 appealed CFDs were "unproblematic" in the way they were closed, while the other third were closed in a way that was somehow "problematic". 0.22% of all CFDs were "problematic". 0.11% of DRVs were "clearly wrong" (overturned at DRV).

Congratulations, CFD closers. You did the unproblematic thing 99.78% of the time; and you avoided doing the clearly wrong thing 99.89% of the time.

Of course, the closers couldn't have done so well without the collaborative work of everyone who worked to build consensus in the thousands of CFDs, day after day. Nice job. — Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 06:02, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Good Olfactory.

Same point as before, but dividing the numbers by a large number of CfDs that were not deletion discussions is perhaps unfair to a true analysis. I'd prefer to see raw numbers. Looking at User:Good_Olfactory#Unofficial_.22CFD-is-broken.22_tracker, I find column 12 '% "problematic" of DRV total' the most meaningful. Does it mean that problem CfD closures are specific to northern-non-winter time? That said ...

Speaking from the top of my head, on gut feel from DRV, the problematic closures that seemed to be be over-represented from CfD, no longer seem noticeable. So, as per Good Olfactory (do you have a name, as opposed to a characteristic), congratulations to the closers, and thanks to all participants.

Note that I moved myself from Category:Wikipedians who say CfD is broken to Category:Wikipedians who say CfD needs more diverse participants.

For anyone who disapproves of my style of capitallisations in abbreviations, feel free to point me to a guideline (or even better, an article!), and I will be pleased to be educated.

Happy New Year. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:56, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Rename discussions can also be appealed to DRV, since the old category is deleted and the newly named one created, so I'm not sure that there's anything inherently unfair about using the total of CFD. I agree the "problematic" total is useful, but a close can be "problematic", i.e., "debatable", without being "obviously wrong" (i.e., overturned). Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 07:09, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics. If this data is to have any meaning, the routine renames and the one-sided deletions need to be segregated out. The fact that it is theoretically possible to challenge a rename hardly justifies stacking the deck. Anyone notice that 97.78% of discussions at CfD are rather routine renames, ones that should be speedyable? A significant percentage of the remainder are rather routine deletions, where the overwhelming majority of participants vote to delete. Somewhere about 1-2% are "discussions" where some participants vote to keep and others vote to delete. These are the ones where admins have been making some rather strikingly bad calls. As DRV will only overturn if the rotten egg smell levels wafting from the bad call are even higher than usual, the fact that half (.11% out of the .22% that went to DRV) of these stinkingly bad calls were overturned is further evidence that we have very little to be proud of here at CfD. We have made progress this year. Some of the most problematic admins have moved on and/or left close calls to more unbiased admins, bringing the problem levels down as the year progressed. But the problems are far from gone. Alansohn (talk) 23:27, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Any segregation of data would just result in accusations of bias in deciding which ones were excluded and which included, which is why it all goes into the hopper. Since they are all damned lies you are damned if you do and damned if you don't, I suppose. Plus, it would be way too much work for too little return. As it is, some users probably think it's pointless. It's just my personal hobby-chart: it's not official or anything so anyone's welcome to do their own work to make a better one. I think it does help put things in perspective though. There were only 6 overturned discussions. Things are not all as bad as some make them out to be. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that in any field of life, an error rate of 0.11% would regarded as a stunningly good success rate.

However, since Alanasohn reckons that the 0.22% of CFDs which went to DRV is a gross under-representation of the problems he believes exist with CFD, the solution is in his hands. Rather than endlessly moaning here and in CFD discussions, why doesn't Alanasohn open a DRV for any CFDs he considers to be "bad calls"? Then we can all see whether there is any justification for his increasingly derogatory comments about CFD participants and closers. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:02, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Because DRV is supposed to be reserved for where undeletion is good for the project. Sometimes it's the case that a discussion is closed before it is complete. The decision might be the right one, but some of the participants, such as editors new to working with categories, are left dissatisfied. This most easily happens when the closer constructs a solution consistent with the discussion, but was not actually proposed by any participant. I suggest that in such cases, instead of closing, the experienced CfD participant should paraphrase the apparent consensus, if no one objects, leave it as an easy close for someone else.

With regards to the statistical values: I believe they are not accurate values. I think they are out tenfold and the 2009 success rate is not quite "stunningly good". However, the trends are likely to be accurate, and the trends encourage confidence. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:19, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

You can believe whatever you want, but I just counted and did the math. Prior to me actually doing the counting people claimed it was really bad. Now actual numbers are presented and people just say, "I don't think they're accurate." Funny. If nothing else, it's giving us a clearer view of where the problem actually lies. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:22, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I said the trend is accurate, and I'll also say that the trend is what is important.

There is also no denying that there are zero "problematic" closes in your table for four months, except for this one which I still find mildly amusing. That zero is still zero even of multiplied by 10. Also, often is relist is warranted on the basis of new information, or a new participant, and so the relists are not necessarily "problematic". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:28, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, and you also said, "with regards to the statistical values: I believe they are not accurate values. I think they are out tenfold." So that must mean I made about a 14x screw-up in the first 8 months? I see. (Not really, but whatever.) As the chart says, the "relists" are only "problematic" if the relist results in a result that contradicts the original close. This may or may not be the closing admin's fault. "Relists" can also go in "unproblematic" if the result in the relisted discussion is consistent with the original close. Thus, the one you linked to goes in "unproblematic", since the second CFD resulted in the same result as the original close. The "problematic" one for October is actually found here. I see that maybe since my chart is not fully read, misunderstood, or incomprehensible we can't have a good discussion about what it means. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:30, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I like the chart. It is helpful. Thank you. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:40, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

What's the recommended procedure to take with the categories listed in the "Categories possibly emptied out of process" section? Repopulate them if possible and delete it if you can't (as when the articles were deleted)? Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 03:51, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

It depends on the reason. Most of the project related ones I ignore. If the category probably would not pass at CfD then I ignore. If it looks like something that should be retained, then I go to the cache and repopulate and then nominate at CfD to see where the consensus lies. Some I just delete. So whatever you decide to do will probably be OK. There is no hard and fast rule to follow. Vegaswikian (talk) 06:18, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 06:37, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

As of the writing, there are 71 open CfDs that are waiting to be closed, 37 of which are more than two weeks old. By contrast WP:AFD, which averages more than 100 deletion discussions per day, has eight open discussions, all of which are for January 10, the day that just rolled off of the week-long cycle. The simplest solution is to close all of these discussions as no consensus and move on. Far too often, these discussions are relisted days or weeks after the seven-day limit and are then closed arbitrarily once the vote needed to just tip the scales barely in one direction is cast, whereupon its closed.

We need to craft some policy so that there is some clarity and transparency in how these stale cases are closed. I suggest that CfDs that do not have a consensus after a week be relisted immediately and kept open for a second week; Those CfDs that remain uncloseable as either keep or delete after a second week should be closed as no consensus after the completion of a second full week. Given how few discussions there are at CfD, especially compared to the far more substantial case load at AfD, there is no justification for so many open discussions staying open so long after the one-week period, nor is there any rationale for when and why CfDs are closed under the present arbitrary process. Alansohn (talk) 20:43, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

• Comment. I think a big part of it is just that there are far less admins working to close CFD discussions than there are at AFD. I would be hesitant to require any discussion to be closed after a set period of time, though. This is because being an admin isn't like a job where users are pretty much guaranteed to be working at regular intervals. People here work when they can on a volunteer basis, and there will always be times of the year when there are less active admins than other times. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:01, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

1. I also argued once that 1 relist should be the maximum.
2. There seems to be a reluctance to close discussion as no consensus. If this is so, then I would say that is a misplaced reluctance.
3. But I also agree with Good Ol’factory, who was just a few minutes faster than I was in replying, that the high number of open nominations is more likely because of a lack of closing admins, than anything else. Debresser (talk) 21:07, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

• Another comment. If backlog is an issue, we just need to add {{Adminbacklog}} to the list of open discussions. When that is done they get dealt with fairly quickly. Mind you, there are admin tasks that get far more backlogged than CFD ever gets. Many backlogged tasks get into the hundreds or even thousands. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:14, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
• Is there any reason why a non admin can not relist an open discussion? Vegaswikian (talk) 22:06, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Nothing in WP:NAC seems to suggest that they cannot. Bencherlite^Talk 22:50, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

• In general, I agree with GOF and Debresser. In addition, someone might see an "arbitrary process" on closure/relisting, while others might see different people judging consensus (or lack of) in different ways according to the particular facts, and making a judgment call as to whether further discussion might be beneficial. In my view, there is unlikely to be only ever one right answer in such circumstances; instead, there's likely to be a few options, all of which might be reasonable and within a closer's discretion. Calls for a "policy" on how to act, therefore, may not be the best idea. I agree with the above comments about the lack of admins. Are there any non-admin users hanging around CfD who might be suitable for the extra tools? I used to close CFDs regularly when I first became an admin in 2007, but my interest has diminished substantially in the last 12/18 months, I must say, for various reasons. <slightlyofftopic> CfD is also one of these areas where regular participants tend to get to know the usual outcomes for similar cases (and so tend not to "pile on" delete/keeps), and it's therefore not necessarily easy for non-regular admins to learn the conventions or relearn them after a break. For example, a couple of years ago, eponymous musician categories that only had the main article plus subcategories (albums, band members or the like) would routinely be deleted. Looking through CfD earlier today or yesterday, I think I saw someone suggest that the consensus has changed. Would I therefore want to close that discussion? Probably not, lest I be the one out of line. </slightlyofftopic> Bencherlite^Talk 22:50, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

• One problem with the stale discussions is that they are difficult to follow by watchlisting. I created Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Previous 8 to 21 days to help myself follow the progress of old discussions, but it would easier if every discussion were on its own page.
• Bencherlite is right in noting that there is an assumed knowledge of "regular outcomes". This not only makes it hard for non-regular admins, but for all non-regulars to understand what just happened, sometimes.
• Adding {{Adminbacklog}} to stale discussions is probably a very good thing to do. Hopefully, it will attract more admins. I think that most of of the stale discussions are actually difficult to close, and not in the subset of "regular outcomes". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:22, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Nice idea about the older debates list. I've added WP:CFDOLD as a shortcut to it, and added it to {{deletiondebates}} for some added visibility. Bencherlite^Talk 01:23, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Now we're up to 81 open CfDs that are stale and waiting to be closed, 37 of which are more than two weeks old. AfD has ten times more discussions per day with ten times as many participants in the average discussion, yet only one-tenth as many deletion debates open after the one-week deadline. Does AfD have 100 times more admins working closes or are the admins at CfD just unwilling to either make "difficult" closes or simply close as no consensus. Alansohn (talk) 18:49, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

• I'll probably have more time starting next week to do CFD closes...the past few weeks have been busy what with the holidays and having guests over, which is probably the case for many people volunteering time here. I think closing CFDs is often more difficult than AFDs because there are more possible outcomes, through the possibility of renaming a category. Regarding when to relist, I've thought it best when 1) there have been very few participants, and equal arguments provided, 2) if it's clear that there's a consensus against keeping a category in its current form, but no consensus yet as to how to rename it, 3) if a discussion has belatedly turned to a new option that may provide a compromise consensus solution if more time is given to discuss it. There've been a few times in recent memory where I've relisted, and then ended up closing the second time around as no consensus because no one developed the discussion any more. Often relisting a second time would clearly be a waste of time if nothing new is going to happen. postdlf (talk) 19:47, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

• You know, it's interesting—not too many weeks ago, there were complaints that there were too few admins closing all the CFDs. In that situation, there was no backlog. Now that that concern has presumably been dealt with and we have more admins closing discussions, we have complaints that there is a backlog. Some admins could come along and close the backlog, in which case we'd probably have complaints that too few admins are closing all the discussions. Complaints like this are obviously cyclical, and in either situation there will be some editors who are dissatisfied. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:32, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
  • Ok, you talked me into it. I'll come back and close more. --Kbdank71 14:15, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
    • Thanks. When you were doing the closes, we rarely had a backlog (if my memory is working today). Vegaswikian (talk) 18:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
      • That was easy. I thought I would have to resort to "if you don't, the terrorists win". Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• I think that overdue discussions are not so great a problem. If they get very old, perhaps they should be closed "no consensus" by default. If a particular discussion is important to someone, add {{Adminbacklog}}. If any editor feels that a particular discussion should be closed a particular way, then say so. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:45, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
  • When there is a group nomination, I find it more difficult to close as no consensus. Someone went to some amount of effort to nominate those and a no consensus close probably means that they will be nominated again in the near future. Clearly relisting is an option and anyone can do that based on the response above. I find it interesting that one option that anyone can apparently use is not being applied. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:37, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
    • I'm thinking that in the old discussions, pretty much everything that can be said has been said, and so relisting just complicates the history of the discussion. On the subject of attracting attention of relisted discussions, I could try again asking harej to add to WP:CORD a section on relisted non-AfD XfDs, otherwise, I don't think relisting really does much.
    • I was also thinking after my previous post that in a stale, well participated CfD, it would probably be a good idea for the nominator, in particular, to repond to the discussion and suggest a close, whether as per his original nomination, or something different based upon the discussion. Especially so for a group nomination. I assume that the nominator has probably taken interest in the developing discussion. If the nominator is a regular closer, I'd suggest leaving such a CfD open for a few days for any objections, to avoid a negative perceptions. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
• One point that I don't believe has been mentioned is that we have had several days with a larger then normal number of nominations. Don't know if that increase in workload is part of the problem or not. But it is worth noting. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if this has been proposed before, but at least I couldn't find it in the archives. I propose adding a new speedy criterion:

8. Renaming a category to match the name of a corresponding article, except if the speedy renaming has been contested in the past or if renaming the category has already been discussed at a full CfD.

In my experience a lot of these renames are uncontroversial and only need to go through CfD because we have no other mechanism to rename categories. Remember that standard article naming conventions do apply to category names, so in most cases there's no need to have the same discussion twice (first on the article's talk page, and then at CfD for the corresponding article).

Examples of this kind of discussions are listed below. As you can see, there are a lot of these, and the overwhelming majority are uncontested. That's why I think a speedy criterion would make it more straightforward for people working on these articles to get categories renamed, and it could also improve the quality of CfD discussions since a smaller proportion of the proposals would be uncontroversial renames. Any thoughts? Jafeluv (talk) 13:39, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• I'd agree. I've had in the past supported C2#4 and C2#6 as well. After all, if something is complicating the case, the admin deciding on the speedy is likely to catch it. And mistakes can always be restored through the normal processes anyway. So whatever we can make speedy, we should. Debresser (talk) 13:53, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Generally, I'm not opposed to this idea, but I'm curious. How do you define "corresponding article"? I've seen people argue for renaming Category:Something of Foo to Category:Something of Foo(Bar) because of the article Foo(Bar), even if there is the article Something of Foo. Would something like this fall under the speedy rule? --Kbdank71 14:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Interesting question. I guess if we have an article at Foo (bar), I would assume moving any "Something of Foo" category to "Something of Foo (bar)" would fall under this speedy criterion. However, in complicated cases – like if there's an article "Something of Foo" that uses a different naming – the category shouldn't be speedied but taken to a full CfD instead. And of course, any speedy nomination that is contested for whatever reason should go to CfD anyway. In any case, this kind of renames should in my opinion be speedyable. Jafeluv (talk) 14:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

• I too would agree. One could add the proviso that removing a disamb from a category name is not speediable. (For example we have San Francisco and Category:San Francisco, California: several cfds have supported the 'city, state' formulation for categories regardless of the article.) Occuli (talk) 15:02, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
  • I agree with this; it should never be a speedy rename to make an existing category name less precise/more ambiguous, but in all other circumstances it should be a speedy rename to match the category title to the parent article. postdlf (talk) 15:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
  • That's a good point. I too agree with this proviso. --Kbdank71 16:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose. While this may be true in many cases, over the years, the discussion here has resulted in changes to the article name. A good number of these changes are driven by editors who move the article without discussion or ignore consensus. So the discussions at CfD provide a double check about the sanity of the article name. To move these to speedy criteria would eliminate that extra check. And is this so important that leaving the old name for 5 extra days hurts anything? Vegaswikian (talk) 19:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
  • If the article name has been changed without discussion or against consensus, anyone can contest the speedy cfd. Besides, "this was changed without discussion and against consensus" usually holds more water for an article fix than "those people over at CFD disagree" (which I don't recall ever having worked). --Kbdank71 19:27, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
  • The speedy rename process already provides a second pair of eyes, along with a two-day grace period which is more than enough to assess if the article was moved against consensus. Furthermore, if anyone objects to the speedy for whatever reason, it will go to a full CfD anyway. I don't see how an obligatory seven-day discussion is needed, especially concerning that the vast majority of these are basically "propose, support, support, rename" (see above for details). I might try to dig up cases later where the rename has failed to gain consensus at CfD despite meeting the proposed speedy criterion, but I'm pretty sure these are a small minority. Jafeluv (talk) 08:39, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
    • The assumption is that the few people who look at the speedy nominations will catch every problem is not really sound. History has shown that this is not the case. Small groups of editors are not perfect. The speedy criteria should be for items that will not have problems. I think it is clear from the discussion that there are issues with the proposal. Why is there any need to speed these up? What would have happened if the discussion about Category:Outkast albums was not at a full CfD? Many articles and categories are thinly followed so speedy changes may not get exposure, especially if the article was renamed without discussion or consensus. No harm is done by waiting 5 more days and allowing a few more eyes. In fact, many of these could be closed under WP:SNOW if the administrators did not have to worry about complaints for acting too quickly. So, its not broken and we don't need to fix it. Vegaswikian (talk) 08:59, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
• I know this is limited scope but what about series and franchise categories? Simply south (talk) 19:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

• Tend to oppose per Vegaswikian. These generally are uncontroversial, but that is not always the case. I don't really want to go trawling through the logs to back myself up, but in many cases the consensus in Cfd debates has been to rename the article to follow the category, not vice versa. This all stems from the fact that an article rename is a fairly trivial thing and can be done by just about anyone - renaming a category is far more involved and, per Vegaswikian, the Cfd process serves as an extra pair of eyes on the interaction between article and category. Further per Occuli's example above, there might also be established categorisation schemes which are deliberately not in sync with their notional parent article - what do we do in this sort of situation?

Several people have already noted these issues and suggested various provisos and exceptions. I have to say that in my view this is just piling complexity onto the whole issue. That being the case, I just don't see this area as being so clear-cut as to be unexceptionally uncontroversial. That, to my mind, should be the standard for a speedy criterion - anything less should go to full Cfd.

Xdamr^talk 06:04, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• An article rename is a fairly trivial thing, yes, and can be done by anyone. Renaming a category should in fact be similarly trivial, and in my view the only reason it is not is because the technical issues make it hard to move categories around (ie. you can't rename a category page, and to move a category you have to edit every article in the category). As I explained above, an extra pair of eyes is what the speedy process offers as well. For the cases where the category is deliberately named differently, I guess we'd have to come up with an exception to the general rule. I'll have to think about that. Jafeluv (talk) 08:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• Agree There is no sense in having main articles and categories with different names (at least in 99% of cases.) In those rare events where there might be some reason to challenge this conformity (e.g. the main article was just moved), then it can be brought to a full CfD. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps somebody would be willing to compile a survey of say one month, how many of this type of rename have been accepted and how many rejected. There seems to be more agreement with this proposal than disagreement, but some hard figures may be more indicative of how desirable this is. Debresser (talk) 14:38, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The first part (how many were accepted) is listed above. I'll try to list all the rejected ones from December for reference. Jafeluv (talk) 15:33, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I've added some data above about rejected nominations. While I was at it, I added some successful nominations that I had missed earlier. Here are the numbers:

• There were a total of 58 nominations in December that could be interpreted as falling under the proposed speedy criterion. These nominations encompassed a total of 137 categories.
• 39 of the nominations were uncontested, encompassing 99 categories (72% of the total).
• 8 of the nominations were contested but successful, encompassing 15 categories (11% of the total).
• 11 of the nominations were rejected, encompassing 23 categories (17% of the total).

Note that I've counted "Someone argued for deletion, but did not contest renaming" as a contested nomination, since that sort of thing would likely go to through a full CfD anyway. Jafeluv (talk) 17:56, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

The idea is a decent one, but fundamentally I think that a 28% contest rate is too high for a speedy. Even if a contested nomination can be brought to a full Cfd without huge drama, I think that the chief object of the speedy criteria is being overlooked. Their fundamental thrust is to quickly deal with uncontroversial and self-evidently desirable changes and/or fixes. This 28% 'controversy' rate, or even the lesser 17% rate of outright rejection, looks (to me at least) to be far too high. Other views in light of the stats would be interesting though...

Xdamr^talk 18:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with User:Xdamr that these numbers are not high enough to make this a speedy criterion. Debresser (talk) 21:00, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I understand. Thanks for considering the proposal. Jafeluv (talk) 11:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Encompassing, I think, the above suggestion, I think that speedy renames should be doable with the agreement of the category creator. This should cover most non-controversial renames. A speedy rename should be easier to obtain than WP:CSD#G7. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Gut reaction is that this is tending towards the WP:OWNy. Once the category is created the creator has as much standing wrt the category as any other editor. A category can be speedily renamed to correct mistakes or to bring it into conformance with similar categories, it can be speedily deleted if the creator quickly realises that it was a bad idea to create in the first place. What more is needed? I'm assuming that you don't mean that on a long-term basis the creator of a category should be uniquely privileged? Outside the brief window of 'newness' which all wp creations enjoy, I don't really think that the creator should find themselves endowed with any vested rights, and most certainly not in the case of a category of long-standing and/or significant use.

Xdamr^talk 00:44, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Sure, if read that way. Vested rights are not OK. I definitely only had in mind new categories, so far minimally used, for which the author could probably succeed in having deleted as G7, if they so chose. What more is needed is that, instead of bringing a category straight to CfD for a not-quite-speedy rename, the creator (assumed to be the only known interested party) be approached with a suggested rename.

If fine text is needed: This would apply only with the agreement with an editor who is the only non-trivial editor of the category, and the only editor to have added members to the category.

As a general approach, I think it desirable that more often category editors are asked about a rename before a CfD discussion is launched. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:26, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd agree with allowing this if the category creator is the only user who has edited the article. If it has been altered by anyone (including bots) I would tend to say just nominate it. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 01:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

A large reorganization of Category:Primates has been proposed and discussed on WT:PRIMATE. The final scheme (second one posted under WT:PRIMATE#Scheme, or shown more clearly below) will involve the following:

1. Five renames (2 of which have been prematurely created... sorry!)
   1. Category:Lorids to Category:Lorises and galagos
   2. Category:Aotidae to Category:Night monkeys
   3. Category:Callitrichidae to Category:Tamarins and marmosets
   4. Category:Early hominine species to Category:Hominina
   5. Category:Early hominids to Category:Hominin fossils
2. Four deletions (after splitting)
   1. Category:Prosimians (split into Category:Lorises and galagos, Category:Tarsiers, and Category:Lemurs)
   2. Category:Atelidae (split into Category:Howler monkeys and Spider monkeys and woolly monkeys)
   3. Category:Cebidae (split into Category:Squirrel monkeys and Category:Capuchin monkeys)
   4. Category:Pitheciidae (split into Category:Titis and Category:Sakis and Uakaris
3. Three merges
   1. Category:Fictional lemurs and tarsiers (merge into upcoming Category:Fictional non-human primates)
   2. Category:Deaths due to monkey attacks (merge into Category:Deaths due to animal attacks)
   3. Category:Deaths due to non-human primate attacks (merge into Category:Deaths due to animal attacks)

All other changes involve simple category creations and the re-categorization of numerous primate articles, which I'm willing to do manually once I get the green light here.

The new scheme will look like this:

• Category:Primates
  • Category:Prehistoric primates
  • Category:Adapiformes
  • Category:Omomyidae (and other subcategories for large extinct groups, if required)
  • Category:Prosimians (split into Category:Lorises and galagos, Category:Tarsiers, and Category:Lemurs)
    • Category:Fictional lemurs and tarsiers (merge into upcoming Category:Fictional non-human primates)
  • Category:Lemurs (contains general lemur articles—forthcoming—and lemur genera with only 1 to 3 species)
    • Category:Subfossil lemurs
    • Category:Mouse lemurs
    • Category:Dwarf lemurs
    • Category:Woolly lemurs
    • Category:Sifakas
    • Category:True lemurs
    • Category:Bamboo lemurs
    • Category:Sportive lemurs
  • Category:Lorises and galagos (to replace Category:Lorids)
  • Category:Tarsiers
  • Category:Monkeys
    • Category:New World monkeys
      • Category:Night monkeys (formerly Category:Aotidae)
      • Category:Howler monkeys (formerly part of Category:Atelidae)
      • Category:Spider monkeys and woolly monkeys (formerly part of Category:Atelidae)
      • Category:Tamarins and marmosets (formerly Category:Callitrichidae)
      • Category:Squirrel monkeys (formerly part of Category:Cebidae)
      • Category:Capuchin monkeys (formerly part of Category:Cebidae)
      • Category:Titis (formerly part of Category:Pitheciidae)
      • Category:Sakis and uakaris (formerly part of Category:Pitheciidae)
    • Category:Old World monkeys
      • Category:Cercopithecine monkeys
      • Category:Colobine monkeys
  • Category:Apes (all Hominoidea)
    • Category:Gibbons (Hylobatidae)
    • Category:Gorillas (Gorillini)
    • Category:Chimpanzees (Panina)
    • Category:Hominina (move contents of Category:Early hominine species here)
      • Category:Hominin fossils (move contents of Category:Early hominids here)
      • Category:Neanderthals
      • Category:Humans (Homo sapiens)
    • Category:Apes in popular culture
    • Category:Great Ape Trust
  • Category:Deaths due to monkey attacks (merge per Cfd discussion)
  • Category:Deaths due to non-human primate attacks (merge per monkey attack Cfd (above) and its own Cfd discussion)
  • Category:Non-human primates in culture (all subcategories will be double-listed for easier navigation, per discussion at WT:PRIMATE#Scheme)
    • Category:Famous non-human primates (to contain existing cats)
    • Category:Fictional non-human primates (to contain various existing cats)
  • Category:Primate anatomy
  • Category:Primate images
  • Category:Primatology
  • Category:Primate stubs

Please either leave comments and/or let me know how to proceed. And a quick note: the term "non-human primate" is a technical term that is very useful in this case... otherwise "Fictional primates" and "Famous primates" would include humans as well. So, please, no taking jabs at the convoluted name unless you genuinely want to include Category:Fictional characters and the deleted Category:Famous people. – VisionHolder « talk » 19:11, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry... forgot a few things. Modifications have been made above. – VisionHolder « talk » 19:41, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Please see WT:Deletion today. Simply south (talk) 14:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

There is an ongoing deletion review for a recent CFD: Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 February 6#Category:Scandals with -gate suffix. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Is it okay to speedily process a proposal that meets the speedy rename/merge criteria, but was proposed at a full CfD instead? That is, if after two days there are no objections, can the nomination just be closed as speedy rename/merge? I'm asking because it seems Altenmann moved some categories from a full CfD to a parallel speedy nomination, in order "not to waste people's time". Can't we just document it at WP:CFDS that a CfD meeting the speedy criteria that has no objections can be speedily processed just like if it was nominated for speedy in the first place? It would be a simpler solution for everyone. Jafeluv (talk) 09:33, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. NJA (t/c) 09:59, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree with the idea, but seems a little messy in the implementation, so I would keep these separated in the end. Debresser (talk) 10:44, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Messy? What do you mean? Pretty much the only difference would be the time when a nomination can be closed. The categories would be processed exactly the same way in both cases. Jafeluv (talk) 21:50, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

That has been the tactic I have tended to adopt when closing. If a full Cfd nomination is speediable then I will speedy it after 2 days of without objections. Just IAR and do it... --Xdamr^talk 19:05, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course, but it would be better to document somewhere that it's a possibility. Jafeluv (talk) 21:50, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to indicate that in spite of my habit of IARing this issue I wouldn't object to formalising it in the guidelines. I see that I didn't really express myself clearly. Anyway, I'd go ahead and add it. Clearly there doesn't seem to be too much drama over this point. --Xdamr^talk 23:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Suggest: A speediable category rename/merge nominated as a full CfD may be speedied 48 hours after someone suggests "Speedy", if there are no objections --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Done here. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've tweaked it a little, amplifying the content a little more - making the circumstances needed a little more explicit. One thing I have done is leave the matter of speedying to the closing admin's judgement rather than, as the original seemed to suggest, making a speedy closure dependent on one of the participants suggesting its appropriateness/applicability. Admittedly, my additions are possibly treading on the verge of being too verbose, but hopefully between us we've managed to come up with something reasonable? --Xdamr^talk 04:01, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, both. Jafeluv (talk) 07:20, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps this is clear evidence of having far too much time on my hands, but here goes...

Looking through the speedy criteria as presently constituted, they seem to fall into three broad classes: enforcement of category tree conventions, enforcement of general wikipedia naming conventions, and typographical fixes.

My outline view is that all the 7 criteria we presently have could be brought under these three headings as follows:

• Enforcement of category tree conventions - No.4
• Enforcement of general wikipedia naming conventions and practices - Nos.3, 5, and 6.
• Typographical fixes - Nos.1, 2, and 7.

The criteria within each of these groups are closely related (eg spelling mistakes (No.1), capitalisation fixes (No.2), and conversion between dashes and hyphens (No.7) - each of these three are separate forms of what could be more generally described as 'typographical fixes'); why not join them together? The criteria and their order is the result of ad-hoc revision and alteration over the past few years. If something has looked good and been agreed to, it has been added to the bottom of the list. Therefore, a few years down the line, we find that there is no real structure to it. So, all that said, what is the general view on revising the criteria to develop some sort of logical framework?

A quick-and-dirty attempt at merger follows. I would suggest something along these lines as a new WP:CSD#C2:

---

A. Typographic and spelling fixes.

• Correction of spelling errors and capitalization fixes. Differences between British and American spelling (for example, Harbours → Harbors) are not considered errors, but if both exist as otherwise-identical category names, they should be merged.
• Appropriate conversion of hyphens into en-dashes or vice versa. (for example, Category:Canada-Russia relations → Category:Canada–Russia relations).

B. A rename bringing a category into line with established naming conventions for that category tree, or into line with the various "x by y", "x of y", or "x in y" categorization conventions specified at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories).

• This should only be used where there is no room for doubt that the category in question is being used for the standard purpose instead of being a potential subcategory.
• This criterion should only be applied when there is no ambiguity or doubt over the existence of a category naming convention. Such a convention must be well defined and must be overwhelmingly used within the tree. If this is not the case then the category in question must be brought forward to a full Cfd nomination.
• This criterion will not apply in cases where the category tree observes distinctions in local usage (for example, Category:Transportation in the United States and Category:Transport in the United Kingdom).

C. A rename enforcing established Wikipedia naming conventions and practices.

• Expanding abbreviated country names (e.g., U.S. → United States).
• Disambiguation fixes from an unqualified name (for example, Category:Georgia → Category:Georgia (country) or Category:Georgia (U.S. state))

---

Xdamr^talk 04:51, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• Support suggestion to revise these. Beautiful. There's no reason we can't reduce the number of individual criteria and just include explanations of what type of changes qualify under each of the (reduced number of) criteria, as you've done. I'm not sure there's a huge advantage to be gained by doing this, because CFDS works quite efficiently now and there are few problems that arise with it, but I don't think there's any harm stepping back after these years of ad hoc development and consolidating the ideas that have been agreed to. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 04:56, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Agree that CFDS is ticking over pretty nicely at the moment. If anything this change might cause a little initial confusion as old, familiar criteria get merged and mangled up. That said, confusion or not, replacing the arbitrary ordering of 1-7 with the new, shiny, and very 21st century A,B, and C is clearly the best thing ever to happen on wikipedia. Fact. --Xdamr^talk 08:09, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh—well ... in light of this, sign me up for strong support. (Maybe we should use Roman numerals, in honor of Super Bowl season and all ....) Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 08:32, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• Full support. I always kind of wondered why some of these were separate criteria. (I would probably change the ordering of B and C, though, since it would be logical for Wikipedia-wide conventions to come before conventions established in one category tree.) Jafeluv (talk) 07:33, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense. We could also take this opportunity to simplify or amplify the basic criteria as needed. If you compare the criteria as they stand at the moment with my merged version, you'll see that I've dropped some elements and redundancies. Essentially we all agree on the basis of the criteria, the question is can they be improved upon? I think that they are generally pretty solid, but there's always room for improvement. --Xdamr^talk 08:09, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

• Full suppport. This is much clearer and more logical. Good work, Xdamr. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:11, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
• Support User:Xdamr is doing his usual good work! Debresser (talk) 16:59, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Fantastic stuff, it looks like we're all generally content. I'll swap over the current seven criteria with the three above.

A point on naming. All the speedy rename criteria are currently expressed as sub-clauses of WP:CSD#C2. That being the case I've gone with letters A to C instead of numbers. C2A looks a bit better that C2(1) (as a form of shorthand reference) and it does present a clear break with the Nos. 1 to 7 system. Hopefully this will avoid any confusion between the new and the 'legacy' criteria. These three new ones are reachable via the usual CSD-style shortcuts - eg WP:CSD#C2A. All that said, if anyone has another opinion, or wants to go wild and name then X, Y, and Z, I'm sure it can be discussed.

More generally, the new merged criteria could probably benefit from a little polishing and rewording here and there, but that can be tomorrow's problem...

Xdamr^talk 21:33, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I think we should simply call them C2, C3 and C4. Debresser (talk) 21:39, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I think C2A etc. is fine. C2 is more like an extension to G6 than an independent speedy deletion criterion anyway, let alone three separate criteria. The shortcuts are a good idea – this way it's easier to point to the relevant criterion. Jafeluv (talk) 14:24, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Seems like I've run into a little problem. When closing this discussion, I failed to notice that Category:Football (soccer) stubs was in the mix. As we all should know, stub categories are supposed to be nominated over at WP:SFD. So anyways, I went over to add the Association football and several other categories for processing in WP:CFDW, only to realize much later of the aforementioned stub category. I spotted it before the bot was able to get to it and, in order to avoid any mistakes, removed it. So basically, what is the procedure to be done now? Should the stub category be relisted at SFD or can it run its course here at CfDW? — ξ^xplicit 09:47, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

• I say update the template. As part of a mass rename, I don't see why SfD would reach a different non conforming name if they discussed it. Vegaswikian (talk) 09:54, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

  Hmm, I suppose this is true. I'll re-add it shortly. Thanks for the reply. — ξ^xplicit 19:26, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

It appears that Category:Christian university organizations was emptied without first going to CFD. Now I'm happy to get the editor who emptied the categories to list this here, but I'm curious how you put back all the articles into the category should the deletion decision be to keep the category. Is this possible at all? - Tbsdy (formerly Ta bu shi da yu) ^talk 08:00, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

[1] Jafeluv (talk) 08:15, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I've virtually never participated in the CFD process before and came here because I noticed what appeared to be a silly category name (Category:Sailboat names) that, one way or another, should not be used, and I wanted to do something about that. I think I did succeed in nominating the category for merging, but it seems to me there's some significant room for improvement in the instructions for nominating a CFD, and that the directions are longer and more confusing than they need to be. If I were a less-experienced editor, I think it's quite possible I would just have given up, or tried to complete the nomination without understanding whether I was actually doing it right.

Here are the things I wanted to point out:

• "Preliminary steps. Determine whether the category needs deleting, merging, or renaming." Okay, is this supposed to mean "Determine whether anything should be done about the category," or "Determine which of these processes is most appropriate"? I read it as the latter, and then was expecting to read an explanation of the different processes and the situations in which each process was most appropriate. And I genuinely was/am not sure about which process to use here, so I was expecting that explanation to be helpful. Instead, the section appears to be a disorganized mishmash combining links to a zillion different guidelines with descriptions of a handful of different situations that don't apply to my case. I think a much more helpful presentation would be an all-inclusive, easy-to-scan table of the different situations that could have brought the user here, and clear directions on what steps should be taken in each situation, with links to specific guidelines as appropriate.
• The instructions for adding the tags to the category pages could probably be clearer and more concise for users who are unfamiliar with editing categories. (Ex. "Go to the Category page and click the "edit this page" tab at the top. Insert the appropriate template at the top of the page, and fill in the template as necessary.")
• In the instructions for group nominations, I have no idea what the "SectionName" parameter refers to.
• "Preview before saving. The display will give more precise instructions about the next step." Okay, I previewed, and I see it tells me how to list the page at CFD. First of all, if I'm following the directions here, I'm going to see how to list the page at CFD anyway, so telling me "You should preview there to see directions to do the thing we're about to tell you here how to do anyway" seems pretty pointless. Second, I'm now totally confused about whether I'm supposed to follow those directions in the template BEFORE I actually save the template to the Category page, since you told me to preview but not when I should go ahead and save it. Those directions will still appear after the template is saved. Telling the user to preview to make sure they completed the template directly is a good idea, but implying that the reason to preview is to see those next-step instructions is just a mess.
• The instructions for Cfdnotice: clarifying what you mean by the "main article" would be nice. Also, there's that mysterious "section name" (capitalized differently) again.
• Step 3: the giant link is good. But "Follow the instructions in the comments (visible during edit)" is bad. Do not assume that the user has any idea that "comments" = "text that is coded so as to appear when the page is edited but not when the page is viewed." I've been using Wikipedia for years, I have thousands of edits, I've even commented stuff out many times, and I was totally puzzled initially about where these "comments" were. And the attempt to explain that, "visible during edit", is just as confusing, because if I've just followed that giant convenient link, I'm already editing the page, so there's absolutely no need to tell me that if I were viewing the page without editing it, I wouldn't see those instructions. And the only instructions there are "Please add the newest nominations below this line," so it seems extremely doubtful that I need any kind of reminder to look for and follow that instruction anyway. If I'm literate, I'm going to see it, and follow it, and if I can't do that then I don't think any extra instruction here is going to help.
• "All categories are specified without the Category: prefix." A better way to say this might be, "When entering Category names into the template, do not include the 'Category:' prefix." Also, isn't it applicable to Step 2 as well as Step 3? But it only says this under Step 3.
• Under Step 3, it would be more helpful to say "For a merger, use:" than "For {cfm}, use:", and so on. All I did was copy the text you gave me, so it's quite likely I didn't memorize which template that happened to be.
• You can be clearer about what you mean by a definite/indefinite name in the Cfr instructions.
• The Step 3 instructions for group nominations are very confusing. If someone's coming here for the first time, you cannot assume they understand what you're talking about when you say "the standard templates should build the 'Cfd section name'". (Oh, so THAT'S the "Section Name" you're referring to, not that that clarifies much what I should be entering in that parameter if I were making a group nomination.)
• Direction not to link category names should be stated at the same time you say not to use the Category: prefix. And you should take care to make clear that these directions are for the old and new category parameters in the template, but when you're linking to a category in your REASONING, you SHOULD use the prefix, link, and a colon.
• The instructions about including a signature should seemingly be included along with all the other directions and not separately following the table.

Sorry this got so long and wordy. Some of these, I think I could take a shot at improving myself, but I'm quite hesitant to jump in because, as I said, I have next-to-zero familiarity with the CFD process. I'm trying to help by providing an outsiders' perspective here. I'm hoping someone who does understand what users should do will take an interest in improving the way instructions are imparted. Propaniac (talk) 16:19, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

This is all good stuff. From time to time I've had the feeling that the instructions we have at present are not quite so good as they could be. That said, as someone who has been around here for so long as not to really need the instructions, I haven't done anything about it (I'm sure the same can be said for other 'regulars' as well). Boiled down to essentials, Cfd is a relatively simple process. If this doesn't come though in the instructions, I think a full rewrite would be in order.

Xdamr^talk 17:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Although I am now a regular, I wasn't at the beginning. But I found the instructions clear enough, generally. Debresser (talk) 22:19, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest that discussions about any specific category should not start at CFD.

Editors normally start discussions of issues at the most relevant talk page for the specific concern before taking to a larger platform. Consider WP:BEFORE for articles. The principle of trying to resolve any real or percieved problems at the lowest level should also apply to categories. Maurreen (talk) 16:36, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

The trouble with categories is that there is actually very little that individual editors can do with them. Deletion is one thing which I'm sure we can understand needs to come to Cfd, but even relatively simple things like renames and mergers, for various technical reasons, have to come to Cfd to be implemented. This means that regardless of any consensus reached on the talk page, the category will eventually have be nominated here. I appreciate your localism angle, but categories and their talk pages tend to be unwatched and neglected. In this situation, a Cfd nomination is likely to be the best way to raise an issue for discussion before the largest number of editors in the quickest time. Essentially Cfd is going to be involved at some stage, why not at the earliest stage possible?

Xdamr^talk 17:20, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

You have a point that categories are usually unwatched.

As a simple compromise, how about just a requiring a notice on the talk page of the category's main article? Maurreen (talk) 18:09, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Requiring such an action would be needlessly bureaucratic. I have tried all sorts of methods to get discussion going prior to a CFD, but I find starting the CFD the only thing that really gets the ball rolling with any kind of discussion. Even then, participation can be sparse. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 20:58, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

There are always the problems around identifying this article as well. From my own experience I would say that the majority of categories do not have an obvious associated article - to insist upon this would for the most part only serve to send nominators off on a wild goose chase searching for articles which are the nearest match. At the end of the day, categories can be watchlisted, this is the thing to do if you are concerned as to a category's future - all it takes is a simple click of the mouse. You have to take reasonable steps to keep yourself informed on wikipedia, whether for articles, categories, or templates.

Xdamr^talk 21:43, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

FYI, the old UCFD templates have been nominated for deletion, see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 February 22

70.29.210.242 (talk) 07:06, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Also, Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 February 24#UCFD_templates. Jafeluv (talk) 10:36, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

FYI, an article move has been requested for Georgia (U.S. state) → Georgia (US), that you may be interested in, because of all the possible category renames that would ripple out from such a decision. 70.29.210.242 (talk) 09:44, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Please participate in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion discussions#Have all XfD be substituted and link to the actual page of discussion. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:12, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks like business is not so speedy after all down at 'Speedy'. Hello -o -o- o? Cavila (talk) 10:52, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Where should I go to get input on naming a set of maintenance categories? Is CfD the correct place? I chose the poor name Category:Copied uses without oldid for certain instances of {{Copied}}, and I want advice on improving it before creating related categories. Flatscan (talk) 05:04, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I think you're in the right place. Jafeluv (talk) 21:50, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I listed it. Flatscan (talk) 05:20, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I would like to rename the above category to something like Category:English football, defender, 1880s birth stubs in order to not try and infer nationality when it may not be known, having already changed the explanatory text at the associated template (Template:England-footy-defender-1880s-stub). Some discussion on this has been posted at [2]. I'd like to try and get some agreement/understanding of whether the above change is likely to be acceptable, and would then look to change many more similar stub categories accessed from [3], and ultimately the same for other countries as well. I'd welcome any comments - am I best adding the above change to the CfD proposals page, should I refer to the other proposed changes at the same time? Thanks. Eldumpo (talk) 14:02, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

There is Category:Images of curves and Gallery of curves. I don't think we need both of these. Suggestions for how to handle this? Thanks, Btyner (talk) 02:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

The gallery page looks like it would be better suited at Commons. (Commons:Curve is actually a redlink.) Should we transwiki the page there instead? Jafeluv (talk) 13:56, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Suits me fine, how do we do this? Btyner (talk) 14:05, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates should apply. So we can/should have both the category and the gallery because the gallery has greater flexibility of layout. Taemyr (talk) 11:54, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, a gallery is not a category, list or a navigation template, and articles consisting entirely or primarily of galleries are discouraged. Commons, on the other hand, is a good place to host galleries of related images. Jafeluv (talk) 12:01, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure if transwiki import is enabled for Commons from enwiki. If it is, a Commons admin could import the edit history from enwiki by using the import feature. Jafeluv (talk) 12:01, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Merge gallery of curves to list of curves, which currently doesn't have any images. postdlf (talk) 12:25, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Wondering if we want to have the tree Category:People by secondary school? We also have Category:People by high school in Taiwan and Category:People by secondary school in Canada. Mayumashu (talk) 22:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I may in the minority, but I don't believe that this is defining for most alumni and they all should be listified. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:55, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Why do we have categories for birth and death years? Maurreen (talk) 03:28, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Massive inertia. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 04:22, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Seriously though, isn't it something about placing the person in history within the category system? It's probably not an ideal way of accomplishing that, but I suppose birth/death dates for people are so basic to their biography that it kind of makes sense to categorize by them. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:41, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Then I guess I won't disturb the inertia. :) Maurreen (talk) 23:51, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

There is a suggestion this should be merged with Category:Luxembourgian architecture. Well, my first reaction is, I woúld never have thought there might be a category Luxembourgian architecture when I was trying to find a suitable one for my article(s). The natural term is of course Luxembourg architecture - and that's why I added it. If you do a Google search for "Luxembourg architecture" (in quotes) you get 5,400 hits. If you search for "Luxembourgian architecture" you get 115 with the WP category at the top! Luxembourgian is not an adjective used here in Luxembourg. In fact it sounds very pretentious. So let's call a spade a spade and have Luxembourg architecture, just as everyone else calls it. Then you can merge the few existing instances of Luxembourgian architecture into Luxembourg architecture. -- Ipigott (talk) 13:17, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually, it's not only the architecture category. All these use the adjective "Luxembourgian" as well. I think a mass-nomination would make more sense than singling out the architecture category. Jafeluv (talk) 13:38, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Both category names have the disadvantage that they don't make it clear whether they refer to Luxembourg or to Luxembourg. Most but not all entries are in the city; of course all are in the country. Maybe Luxembourg/Luxembourgian is being used to convey that distinction. Hans Adler 13:42, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

PS: I have notified WP:LUX of this discussion. Hans Adler 13:45, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

This comment refers to my nomination to speedily merge the newly-created Category:Luxembourg architecture with Category:Luxembourgian architecture, which has existed since June 2008. See WP:CFDS where the nomination is listed. I'm kind of agnostic at this point on the issue of which adjective would be preferable, but if there is a desire to change it, a rename should formally be proposed. Creating a differently named new category to compete with the already existing one that uses the standard adjective used throughout WP isn't the way to go about this. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 20:51, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure how much alive the Luxembourg project is. (Even the Mexico project seems to be defunct.) If nobody turns up we should look at recent edits to Luxembourg-related articles and approach some of the editors directly. Hans Adler 21:51, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure how to go about an official nomination process but over the past 24 hours I have started to look into this in more detail. First of all, I do not think there is any intended distinction between the country and the city (in more cases when discussing art, culture, music, etc., it doesn't matter anyway). I also find it illogical that Category:Luxembourg geography stubs exists side-by-side with Category:Luxembourgian sport stubs! There is, however, perhaps a simple compromise. I notice, for example, that Category:Nova Scotia culture has a soft redirect to Category:Culture of Nova Scotia. Maybe this procedure could be used to redirect both Cateogry:Luxembourg architecture and Category:Luxembourgian architecture to Category:Architecture of Luxembourg. The same could be applied to other categories covering art, culture, cuisine, music, etc. I am less worried about the Luxembourgian categories which apply to people (priests, saints, tennis players, etc.) as the adjective of nationality seems a little more acceptable. Hope this helps. -- Ipigott (talk) 11:07, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree. All of these would be clearer and more logical as "Architecture of X", and a couple of them already are in that format (ie. Colombia, Georgia and the UK). That format is already used on Commons, by the way. Jafeluv (talk) 11:49, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Seems excellent to me. Some advantages:

• It's easier to remember that we are using "architecture of" than to remember whether we use "Luxembourg ...", "Luxembourgian ..." or perhaps even "Luxembourgish ..." (the latter referring to the language, but who knows this?).
• If we ever want a subcategory for the city it's obvious how to name it: "architecture of Luxembourg (city)".
• Therefore this naming scheme also makes the scope of the category clear. Hans Adler 11:55, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

But this only makes sense if all categories in Category:Architecture by country are renamed simultaneously, because it constitutes a change from one naming convention to another. This needs to be done very carefully and a lot of people taken on board. Hans Adler 11:58, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

• Following Hans Adler's suggestion that WP:LUX should be consulted on this, I have been reading carefully through the project page. You may be surprised to see that I found this:

'Luxembourgish' is to be used for the adjective of Luxembourg. 'Luxembourgian' has unfortunately become widely used on wikipedia, however this is incorrect and should be changed when encountered. 'Luxembourgish', is also the name of the language, whilst 'Luxembourger' is the demonym.

Well, while I don't really agree that Luxembourgish should always be used as the adjective, at least the project's opposition to Luxembourgian comes over loud and clear. Rather than going into the intricacies of syntactic relationships, I would argue you would say: "The architecture is Luxembourgish" but "Luxembourg architecture is booming". -- Ipigott (talk) 12:21, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. However, one must keep in mind that especially in smaller and less active projects it's completely possible that the project's official "convention" is just the opinion of one or two individuals, and might not reflect global usage. (This is just a general observation, I'm not saying that this is the case here.) In any case, "of Luxembourg" should be understandable for all. Jafeluv (talk) 12:34, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and clearly similar issues arise with other countries as well, e.g. the UK. So "Xs of [country]" seems to be the best general convention because:

• It's clear what is meant.
• We can simply use the name of the article about the country, with no need for further complicated discussions. Hans Adler 12:48, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

• And not just the name of the article about the country but the name of the article about the topic in question. We have, for example, articles about Culture of France, Art of Denmark, Music of Germany, Theatre of Australia, etc., etc., even if there are usually also redirects like French culture, Danish art, German music and so on. The question now, of course, is -- even if there is full agreement -- whether all these changes should be implemented, and if so how and by whom. -- Ipigott (talk) 14:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

  Indeed, the main article is Architecture of Luxembourg. I'll try to make a group nomination for the architecture categories later today. Jafeluv (talk) 14:23, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

  Okay, "later today" was a stretch, but here it is. Jafeluv (talk) 00:58, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

Does somebody know the procedure to get Category:Marc Claproth either moved to User:Marc94clap or a subpage there or to article space or deleted. Looks like he created an article about himself in category space. Gene Nygaard (talk) 06:58, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually looks like he has it both in user space and category space--if this isn't a speedy deletion in category namespace, it should be, but I can't figure out a classification for it. Gene Nygaard (talk) 07:03, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

See Marc Claproth for context. This looks like an attempt to spam Google, so I have blanked the page for the moment. That should give us enough time for a CfD resulting in a snow delete. This incident suggests several new speedy criteria to me, but if it stays isolated we won't need them. Hans Adler 07:29, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't remember the details, but someone suggested developing a guideline about cats (for people by occupation?) for the 20th and 21st centuries. The same idea might be extended for other centuries.

I'm thinking a guideline might be developed based on expected size -- not too big but not too small. For instance, the high number of modern actors would make them ineligible for cats for the 20th and 21st centuries, but possibly eligible for earlier centuries. In a probably hypthetical example, a moderate number of notable glassblowers throughout history might make them eligible for several century cats. Maurreen (talk) 09:51, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

The last paragraph of Wikipedia:Deletion process#Relisting discussions currently reads:

When relisting a discussion, it should be removed from the log for its original date and moved to the current date's log where the discussion will continue. Scripts such as User:Mr.Z-man/closeAFD automate the process.

While this makes sense for a process like AfD, where each article has its own deletion discussion page, I do not think that it works for CfD, which operates on the basis of deletion discussion sections within daily log pages. When a CfD nomination is initiated, incoming links to that day's log page are created by the CfD tagging templates (i.e., {{cfd}}, {{cfr}}, {{cfm}}, and {{cfc}}) and any notifications (e.g., using {{cfd-notify}}). When a CfD nomination is relisted, it is helpful to take steps to ensure that those incoming links will continue to be useful.

So, I suggest the following two-step process for relisting CfD discussions:

1. Copy the full text of the discussion being relisted to today's log page, and add {{subst:relist|~~~~}}.
2. Blank the discussion at the original log page but preserve the section heading, and add a link to the location of the relisted discussion. For example:

==== Category:Example ====
:{{relisted}} [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 January 1#Category:Example]]. ~~~~

If there is support for this idea, I propose adding a short paragraph or subsection (perhaps in Wikipedia:Categories for discussion#Special notes) with the following text (or something similar):

Discussions at CfD should, when necessary, be relisted in accordance with Wikipedia:Deletion process#Relisting discussions, with one qualification: when removing a discussion from the log for its original date, the section heading of the discussion should be preserved and a link to the location of the relisted discussion added. For example:

==== Category:Example ====
:{{relisted}} [[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 January 1#Category:Example]]. ~~~~

Comments? -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 23:54, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Agreed that it's a bad idea to delete the discussion completely from the old page. What I've usually done is just close the discussion with the normal tags, and add the {{relisted}} template at the top to point people to the right place.^[Example] (I actually have a script that does this.) Others seem to be using this method as well. I'm not opposed to the proposed procedure if people think it's a good idea, though. Jafeluv (talk) 12:54, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

That works as well, and I would not object to specifying that procedure instead. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:16, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

After seeing how CfD discussions are relisted in practice, I think that adding a separate section would be unnecessary rule-creep. I have instead updated the instructions at Wikipedia:Deletion process, which is the page that transcludes the CfD closing instructions. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 20:51, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

For some reason, the guidance at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy criteria said to tag a category with {{db-c2}} ... even though the instructions at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy#Add_requests_for_speedy_renaming_here said to use {{subst:Cfr-speedy|new name}}.

I only spotted this yesterday, when some categories listed for speedy renaming had been deleted. I then noticed that {{db-c2}} causes a category to be placed in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, where some editors unsurprisingly just deleted it. This had even happened to categories which had already been renamed, because Cydebot does not remove the {{db-c2}} tag.

I have changed Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Speedy criteria so that it now recommends {{subst:Cfr-speedy|new name}} ... but do we actually need {{db-c2}}? I think that it should be redirected to {{Cfr-speedy}}, because the current db-c2 gives no warning of the need to list categories for 48 hours before the renaming is done. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:07, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that was probably me, back when I was rewriting the speedy criteria. The instruction was to use either {{db-c2}} or {{Cfr-speedy}}. I assumed the two were duplicates and, for consistency with {{db-c1}}, only kept db-c2. Failure to properly check this out was an oversight on my part, which begs the question, is db-c2 needed at all?

Xdamr^talk 15:25, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

The {{db-c2}} template is supposed to be used for categories that have already been speedily renamed. I don't think it's very useful now that speedy renaming requests are handled by bots, though. I guess it was made for cases where a non-admin performs the renaming by hand. Jafeluv (talk) 18:43, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that the existence of {{db-c2}} as a deletion template may encourage editors to ignore the need to list a category at WP:CFD/S to allow a chance for objections. I can't think of any circumstances where its use would be appropriate other than Jafeluv's scenario of a non-admin implementing a speedy rename which had been correctly listed ... but since there are bots to do the work, why would they want to do it manually?

So I think it should be either deleted or redirected ... but which? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:05, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

I'd say delete. There are enough deletion templates as is. Debresser (talk) 20:56, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, I'm going to go ahead and put {{db-c2}} up for deletion.

We have just had a huge batch of college football categories listed at CfD 2010 April 2, but tagged with {{db-c2}} and speedily renamed by cydebot (see e.g. Category:1911 NCAA College football season. None of the speedy criteria was cite or met, and while I hope that the nominator was merely unaware of how things should be done, this episode demonstrates that {{db-c2}} is incompatible with existing processes. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 08:54, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2010 April 3#Template:Db-c2. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:09, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

see discussion Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_UK_Railways#Category:Disused_station

I will need to tag these categories for renaming and all subcategories :

• Category:Disused railway stations in England
• Category:Disused railway stations in Northern Ireland
• Category:Disused railway stations in Scotland
• Category:Disused railway stations in Wales

The format is "Category:Disused xxxxxxxx" to be renamed "Category:Defunct xxxxxxxx"

Is there are machine or bot that can help with this? also when I list them in "categories for discussion" do I need to list all the sub-categories, or can I just list the top 4 categories (there are no exception categories within)? Thanks.Shortfatlad (talk) 17:40, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Just got a message back at User_talk:Cyde#Cydebot_preparation which I think answers the above - I will leave it here just in case there is more.Shortfatlad (talk) 17:53, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Minor disagreement over format of {{Cfr-speedy}}.

Comments sought at Template talk:Cfr-speedy#Format_of_text_to_be_pasted_into_WP:CFD.2FS. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:12, 11 April 2010

I have filed a request for a bot (see here) to tag large numbers of categories nominated as part of group nominations. Comments and suggestions are welcome. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 04:07, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Cydebot is screwing things up. It made this edit (Speedily moving category German-American sportspeople to American sportspeople of German descent per CFD). Which is incorrect. Those or two ENTIRELY different categories. German-American sportspeople is for sports players who play in Germany and America. American Sportspeople of German Descent is a completely different catagory. Please help make sure the bot didn't add incorrect catagories to any more pages. RF23 (talk) 19:35, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

By what logic are sportspeople who play in Germany and the United States "German-American"? In any case, if you're just interested in the sportspeople, all 71 that were moved can be found here. If you want to look at all German-American articles that were moved, see here. However, I suggest talking to the editor who proposed the moves first before starting to revert the bot. Are you sure that the sportspeople category was used as you described above? The editor who proposed the move was Mayumashu (talk · contribs) (nomination here). Let me know if you need further help with the situation. Regards, Jafeluv (talk) 20:23, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Looking at the first 10 pages that were moved, only two of the articles actually mentioned anything about Germany or German heritage. So the category might indeed need some checking. However, I'm pretty sure it's not for players who play in Germany and the US. Jafeluv (talk) 21:12, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

It is not, at least not intended to be. The renaming was done for this specific reason, actually, that the old name allowed for two or more interpretations as to what the name meant. Now it s largely clear. Mayumashu (talk) 17:02, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

One of these discussion completely lost focus, and when on to talk about a million things at once, could someone close Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 April 7#Category:Wikipedia:Other Books and all other discussions related to Wikipedia books as "no consensus/procedural close" or whatever's appropriate, so I can resubmit them as more focused requests which reflects the recent updates in software? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:40, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Would someone please close the Wikipedia books nominations at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 April 7 (3 noms) and Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 April 27#Wikipedia books (6 noms grouped into one section). The April 7 nominations can be closed procedurally as having been superseded by the April 27 nominations, but their content can provide context for the April 27 nominations. I just now added a full, formatted list of categories nominated in the two group nominations to rename or delete user books by topic and community books by topic. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 19:25, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

FYI, {{cfc}} and {{cfl}} have been nominated for deletion. 76.66.193.224 (talk) 06:05, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Cydebot speedily moved Category:Texas rock music groups to Category:Rock music groups from Texas on May 31st.[4] I'm wondering whether any of the moved articles might have been categorized under "Texas rock..." as a genre of music, as opposed to "Texas... music groups" as a geographical designation. In particular, the two articles Bloodline (band) and Five Americans don't seem to explicitly state that they were formed in Texas. Could someone look into this? - dcljr (talk) 21:18, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Is "Texas rock" a genre to begin with? There's no Category:Texas rock category, let alone a Texas rock article. A Google search doesn't bring up a genre "Texas rock" either. The Five Americans were formed in Texas [5], though I'm not sure about Bloodline. — ξ^xplicit 19:00, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking of suggesting that a category be renamed, but before I do, I want to make sure I'm not volunteering for a bunch of tedious manual editing :-) So: if the rename proposal is adopted, is there a tool that will change all the category tags in all the articles within the category to reflect the new name? (BTW: if that is an automated process, that fact should probably be mentioned in the Project Page to help future users understand the process better. The "Procedure" section has steps 1,2,3 to get the rename/delete started, but users may want to know what happens after that. Maybe add a Step 4? ). --Noleander (talk) 15:35, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is automated. We currently have two bots which handle the removal and/or replacement of category tags; see Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working#Bots. The instructions for Step 4 are found here, but I think that's too much detail to add to the CFD page. You may be right, however, that a short note indicating what happens after Step 3 may be useful. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 17:15, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the best place to raise this, but I'm requesting help cleaning up a category. Category:Christian terms has over 1000 pages. An anonymous editor, over the years, has been adding tons and tons of junk to this category. As it stands, I believe the scope of the category is way too broad, and was wondering if anyone wanted to help take on the daunting task of cleaning it up, and/or setting some clear boundaries/guidelines for inclusion. I'd be glad to post this elsewhere if anyone has suggestions. -Andrew c ^[talk] 17:48, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Christianity and WikiProject Linguistics appear to be active (judging by the frequency of talk page posts and the time it takes for someone to respond to them), so you may find it useful to contact them.

I can see what you mean, though: even a quick glance shows that there are many articles about general topics (e.g., Christian music, Christianity and homosexuality) which should not be categorized as "terms". I'd be willing to help, though I must admit that the topic is well outside my area of expertise. However, if clear inclusion criteria are established, I could assist with the removal of articles which do not belong. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 04:35, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Where did common sense go in this debate (Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 May 24#Category:Conductors)? There are thousands of articles on conductors related to music and the word is most commonly used in everyday conversation in a musical context. Why then, when there are only a very small number of articles on train conductors (less than 50), was the category disambiguated for music and not for the train conductors. It seems much more obvious to not dissambiguate the most common usage of the cat but to use an alternative naming for "train conductors" (probabably "category:train conductors" would work great). I would strongly suggest re-thinking this decision. I hope I am raising my complaint in the right place.4meter4 (talk) 00:45, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, there are more than a dozen alternate meanings of "conductor". In a case like this, it is not unusual to disambiguate all usages and not just the uncommon ones. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 01:18, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, when starting the Cfx-steps, I was enthousiastic. I know something in wikipedia. A great line up and steps provided here, compared to my last CfD a year ago or so. But In the end I made a mess like this. Quite intimidating stuff (intermediate problems skipped). In general: It takes 44 lines in the process here, and then another unknown actions along the way. Just after I reached my 5000-edit remark, Wikipedia makes me feel stupid. -DePiep (talk) 21:16, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Part of the problem, of course, is that there are four main possible courses of action at CfD (delete, merge, rename, listify) and three or four process which handle categories: speedy deletion (C1: empty category), speedy renaming and merging, regular CfD, and a separate process for stub categories.

I wonder whether it would be possible to implement a system like the one used by the people at WP:AWB... At Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Bugs, for example, clicking "File a new bug report" will take one to an edit window pre-populated with a template and instructions. For CFD, the text-generating template could be (I've written a non-substituted example, but it should be possible to use substitution):

{{CFD nomination
| action   = <!-- "delete", "listify", "merge" or "rename" -->
| category = <!-- Using the format "Category:PAGENAME" -->
| target   = <!-- if applicable, the name of the target page to which the category is to be listified, merged or renamed -->
| reason   = <!-- the rationale for the change -->
| sig      = ~~~~
}}

This would partially automate the process of nominating a category, obsolete {{Cfc2}}, {{Cfd2}}, {{Cfm2}} and {{Cfr2}}, and significantly reduce the instructions found in Step III of WP:CFD#HOWTO. Thoughts? -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 18:01, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

This actually looks like an amazing idea. It would really reduce confusion regarding the whole CFD process and we'd be reduced to an all-purpose CFD template. Just out of curiosity, is there any way that the template could handle (or be modified to handle) multiple nominations at once? — ξ^xplicit 18:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. :) Group nominations probably could be handled by using numbered category and target parameters: i.e., category, category2, category3, target, target2, target3, and so on; however, there may be a practical limit on the number of categories which could be included. I lack the technical knowledge to do this, but my experience with templates created by others tells me it can be done.

I've created a working version of an all-purpose CfD template at User:Black Falcon/Sandbox. There is some excess code when substing the template (I'm sure the code can be streamlined), but it should provide an idea of how an all-purpose CfD template would function. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 21:32, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

It's definitely a good start. Perhaps the good folks of Wikipedia:WikiProject Templates could lend a hand. — ξ^xplicit 18:56, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I have created {{Cfd nomination}} and requested assistance on the substitution issue at Wikipedia:Template requests. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 22:08, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

This seems to be coming along quite nicely. Is it ready for a test drive? — ξ^xplicit 07:23, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Look at Category:Canton of Zürich - you'll see some subcategories with "canton", others with "Canton"; some with "Zürich", others with "Zurich". (There is even a duplicated category.) The issue with canton vs. Canton applies to other cantons as well. Can someone sort this out without the need to spend time tagging and listing all these categories? (I presume it should be "Zürich" with the umlaut, since that's what the article's called; and "canton" with the lower-case "c" seems more popular - I'll ask someone from the Swiss project to confirm.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:01, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

It should probably be "Canton of Zürich", since that's how the name is written in the article. Jafeluv (talk) 13:47, 16 June 2010 (UTC )

Hmm, I see there's inconsistency there too - in the lead it says "Canton", but in the rest of the article it says "canton". (Perhaps it doesn't really matter which is used, but for the various categories, we should choose one form and stick to it.) --Kotniski (talk) 14:11, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, why is it that when a category is renamed, the old name is completely deleted, rather than being left as a {{category redirect}}? Secondly, when categories are renamed, is it not possible to actually move the existing category page, rather than creating a new category with identical content? That way, the new name will be added to the watchlists of those editors who have the old name watchlisted. - htonl (talk) 07:35, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Category redirects often are left—for example, if the rename involves a change from a hyphen to an en dash or from the former name of an event to its new name—but many times they are either unnecessary or liable to cause confusion (e.g., when a category is renamed to avoid an ambiguous title).

The answer to your second question is, unfortunately, "no"; see Help:Category#Moving and redirecting category pages. At this time, the MediaWiki software does not allow standard moving of pages in the category namespace. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 16:34, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. - htonl (talk) 18:52, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

It would be nice if the MediaWiki software did allow standard moving of pages in the category namespace, for the benefit of maintaining a relevant watchlist, wouldn't it? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:05, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

If a category that you have on your watchlist is renamed by Cydebot, the new category will automatically be added to your watchlist. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:36, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Looks like speedy requests are getting to be very large these days. Based on this, I think we should specifically ban collapsed requests. These serve no purpose other then to make observing what is being listed harder to see. Since these get very little review, they all should be listed in plain sight. Vegaswikian (talk) 20:59, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

The collapsing is typically done as a courtesy so as to not overwhelm the page, so that someone not interested in examining all 50-odd nominations of a particular sort can easily move on. It may make those nominations (slightly) harder to see, but they make everything else on the page easier to see. I think it's pretty subjective which is more difficult for users—clicking a button to see the collapsed information, or scrolling through several pages of nominations to identify the next non-related nomination. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:15, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Yea, odd indent, but otherwise it would be too far down. One problem with the compressed lists is that it affects the automatically going to the correct section heading. The later in the day and the larger the compressed nomination, the more this affects the readers. This problem is also now showing up more often in articles as well. Plain and simple, when I click on the TOC entry or come in from a link, I don't want to be dropped into some random text because of a collapsed box in front of my heading! Vegaswikian (talk) 18:24, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm a little confused how that relates to the ones on the speedy rename page. The link from Template:Cfr-speedy just links to the speedy page in general, not to any particular entry. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 11:13, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Hello all. I've been out of the loop of things Cfd for a couple of months now, but my view is that this is the inevitable by-product of the changes and re-jigging which we put CFD/S through a earlier on in the year, of which C2.C is probably the most significant. Speedy nominations always used to be the exception to the rule - most renames went to full Cfd. Given the recent thrust towards reserving full nomination for controversies and pushing the routine day-to-day stuff to speedy, perhaps the time has come to rethink the layout, format, and usability of CFD/S? Perhaps split it off onto its own page, maybe introduce daily logs? Anyone have views on refining the process?

Xdamr^talk 15:35, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I guess you hit the nail on the head about visability. In the end, that is what we are losing. Csd listings are only in front of the empty categories for review. Reorganization is possible, but I don't know how. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:00, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Hmm, it is fairly clear that the pipeline for handling speedies is creaking a little. Over the past few months we have substantially increased the scope of the CSD criteria; I think it is now clear that as a counterpart we definitely ought to do something to comfortably accommodate this extra traffic.

As a start I suggest that we consider a system of daily logs. The current quantity of speedies really makes the current system, a listing of all outstanding speedy nominations on the main Cfd page, more than a little awkward. Even at the best of times, when traffic was less, throw in a couple of objections or extended discussion and the speedy section tended to look a little untidy in comparison to the rest of the page.

Essentially this just the same thing as we had to go through with full nominations back in the mists of time - an increase in traffic means we have to chop it up into manageable portions. It doesn't do a great deal in itself for visibility - the issue which started this particular discussion off - however, perhaps breaking it into smaller, more easily digestible pieces, might make things easier to review and hence encourage more interest? (not that speedy nominations are ever going to be the No.1 draw on wikipedia...)

As a kick-off, I've taken the speedy nominations from the 14th to the 16th and made some sample daily logs.

• User:Xdamr/Sandbox/CFDSpeedy/14 July
• User:Xdamr/Sandbox/CFDSpeedy/15 July
• User:Xdamr/Sandbox/CFDSpeedy/16 July

Any views on format? (or indeed the need for logs at all?) The number of lines of text per category nomination has been bumped up a bit, though I think that this is acceptable enough in the interests of clarity. That said, I've tried not to make things any more awkward for admins cutting/pasting successful nominations to CFD/W.

Xdamr^talk 15:58, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

For one it makes the contents directly visible. Two it clearly shows without extra work how many nominations there are, and in bulk nominations which is a merge and which is a rename. Also the improved viability allows the odd ones that may have objections to be more easily discovered. If these will be listed using a subsisted template, adding a time remaining countdown, while not a requirement, could be a useful enhancement.

And as you said, this does not solve the problem of finding these. I guess the first pass would be to have all of the speedy stuff on a subpage. So these and the empty categories could be on a single page. Also given the small number of days generally involved, I'd suggest that we keep this on one page, at least for now. I'll also note that giving the contested ones a section was a trial started in the not too distant past to try and clean out the main listing section. It seems that further improvements are needed. Following in that direction, do we want to change the way we move these to a full CfD? If we keep the pages as a log, then it would be easier to link to the speedy discussion. Do we close these in a way similar to CfD or just delete them. Deleting is easier and faster. This is not an objection to what you did, just questions. If we are going to change, then let's try to do so in a way that will work for a while without finding out on the first day that there was a better way. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:19, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I could support the use of logs. It gets a bit ad hoc at the speedy section sometimes, and often users come querying: where was such-and-such a discussion? It would be nice if it were easier to point to some log where the proposal showed up. That said, I don't want to create a whole lot more work for admins to have to tediously close these. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 11:16, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

In lieu of starting what would undoubtedly be a complex CfD (or at the very least, not doing so unless others think I should) can someone give me a bit of guidance on how to categorise Lee Hodson?

On account of playing for the national team, he clearly has a connection to Northern Ireland. But he was born, and has always lived, in England, so Category:Association footballers from Northern Ireland does not seem appropriate. He is categorised with Category:Northern Ireland under-21 international footballers, and on account of that I removed Category:English footballers (the rationale being that he has explicitly identified himself as Northern Irish by playing for that team).

My gut reaction is to nominate Category:Association footballers from Northern Ireland to be renamed as Category:Northern Ireland association footballers. But while I'm normally bold, I'm aware that I may be going over old ground. Thanks in advance, WFC (talk) 23:57, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I would like to renominate all the subcategories of Category:Species by year of formal description of the type "described in" to "named in" (this is more precise and avoids issues with species that were described before they got their names). As requested on the main CFD page, I'm asking for help with tagging here. Ucucha 10:55, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Which looks like it hasn’t been updated in a while, including to comply with this year’s changes to Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_people#Categories.2C_lists_and_navigation_templates. Clarifications also needed. While most is cleanup, there are specific proposals to clarify cases where categories are using “Disclaimers” to try to get around the fact that inclusion of the category implies the person has a poor reputation. (For example see Category:Antisemitism and Category:Homophobia.) For hard core categorization junkies :-) CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:09, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Ie., Category:Alleged bodyguards of Osama bin Laden, Category:Alleged al-Qaeda recruiters, Category:Alleged al-Qaeda facilitators

WP:BLP says For example, Category:Criminals and its subcategories should only be added for an incident that is relevant to the person's notability; the incident was published by reliable third-party sources; the subject was convicted; and the conviction was not overturned on appeal. Since these people assumedly are considered criminals, and they have not been convicted, they shouldn't be in such a category. If they've admitted to it they belong in some other category. CarolMooreDC (talk) 17:18, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Has an "alleged" category ever survived CFD? postdlf (talk) 20:50, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

.... can get some help from other editors regarding the discussion at Category talk:American beauty pageant winners‎‎ ??? Some guidance from an experienced categories editor is much needed but it doesn't really fall into any category here and I don't know where to take it to. Thanks PageantUpdater talk • contribs 01:40, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

I can't figure out where to post the CfD or how to characterize it. Help? The problem category is Category:Pigs, which has as its nominal scope the pig family Suidae but also contains a lot of stuff such as articles about pig husbandry, pig breeds, and notable individual pigs. For some reason Category:Suidae is unused and soft redirects to Category:Pigs. How to fix this mess? 69.3.72.249 (talk) 20:47, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

What's wrong with it, other than a possible naming issue? It's obviously being treated as a topic category, but do we really need a category for just pigs themselves? —Coder Dan (talk) 21:41, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I think we do not need a category for "just pigs", and Suidae is not just pigs. We usually do have a category for a family of animals; in it are listed subcategories, usually one for each genus in the family. Some articles in the category need to be moved to other, more appropriate categories. I think those articles were added to the category because of its ambiguous name, "Pigs". I would recreate Category:Suidae, move all content out of Category:Pigs, then delete the category. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 22:56, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

> a category for a family of animals

Are they set categories or topic categories? A set category is supposed to contain only articles about members of the specified set, but how many animal species families have a large number of notable individuals? There's nothing inappropriate about putting articles that are related to a species family of animal in a topic category about that species family. What you're calling a "mess" is really just a broader category of articles. —Coder Dan (talk) 23:41, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

By family of animals, I meant taxonomic family, in this case Suidae, the pig family. The corresponding category would be Category:Suidae. Here on Wikipedia, currently Pig is about the genus Sus. 69.3.72.249 (talk) 00:00, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I changed "species" to "family". It looks like all of the animal categories are topic categories, so I think the "mess" in Category:Pigs is intentional. Wikipedia animal categories aren't taxonomic classifications, they're navigation aids that collect all articles that are related to animals or types of animals in any significant way. As for the name "Suidae", I'm not sure that's the best choice for a general-purpose encyclopedia. —Coder Dan (talk) 02:39, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

In this discussion I just closed, this argument was ventured: "on the grounds that it is too soon to bring this up for discussion again." User:Good Olfactory replied, "If there is no consensus one way or the other at the end of a discussion how can it ever be 'too soon' to raise the issue again?" It might be worth discussing whether different closes lead to different lengths of time that a close should be honored. I'm not sure I want hard and fast rules, but I wonder if folks could be comfortable with 6 months on a "keep" or "delete," and 2 months on a "no consensus"? Or maybe "no consensus" means it can be brought up again immediately? I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts on this.--Mike Selinker (talk) 17:17, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Whether it's too soon or not should be a consensus decision for the community in each individual case. When the page is renominated, the community has the opportunity to voice that the page should be kept because the matter was recently decided that way, or because the community recognizes that there is no consensus for action. But on the other hand, if consensus has changed and the community recognizes such, the nomination should proceed to a new conclusion. --Bsherr (talk) 17:27, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

That approach gives the individual editor no guidance as to whether it's appropriate to renominate. Or does he or she have to gain consensus elsewhere before renominating?--Mike Selinker (talk) 18:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, in a sense, that's true. But it's actually the same amount of guidance they have for most things at Wikipedia. Should a user WP:BEBOLD or discuss first? How soon may a user again bring up anything that's been previously decided or not decided on Wikipedia? For most things, the only answer is, when WP:CONSENSUS indicates. Otherwise, we get into what lots of people call "instruction creep", which is inconsistent with the "no rules" pillar. --Bsherr (talk) 19:34, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. I've been seeing a lot of "we just discussed this" with no consistency on what "just" means. But maybe that's consistency that we shouldn't want.--Mike Selinker (talk) 19:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Just my interpretation. (Others may think differently.) Now don't go bringing this up again for another six months. :-D --Bsherr (talk) 19:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll put it on my calendar.--Mike Selinker (talk) 19:54, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

• Comment. I can see the logic in arguing "we just discussed this" when there was a clear consensus result in the discussion. But if a discussion ends in "no consensus", I feel that more than anything that's an invitation to continue the discussion in other forums or even the same forum. I wouldn't object to a discussion being closed as "no consensus" being revived almost immediately, but I can understand that others might disagree with that approach. Often, the finding of a consensus versus the finding of none is determined more by who participates than an objective assessment of the beliefs that are actually "out there", so I can understand that those who edit relatively lightly are justified in saying, "but we just discussed this!". I too would be hesitant to assign a specific waiting period requirement, but as a "rule of thumb" Mike's time proposals don't seem unreasonable to me. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
• Comment. I'm not inclined to say there is a minimum time needed. What I would say is that a wise renomination would consider the comments in the previous nomination, take the opinions and then create a proposal that addressed those concerns in a way that could lead to a consensus. Another class of renomination would be where the consensus was close for a point of view and that by addressing the concerns and refocusing the discussion might tip the discussion to reach a consensus. This is a general comment and not based on the contents of the specific issue here. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:15, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
• Comment I would say that Mike's time limits seem reasonable to me, on both established consensus and no consensus. However, there's a problem that some people close discussions as "no consensus" even when a clear consensus is established, whenever the consensus is against the proposal... ("closed as no consensus to delete" instead of "closed as consensus to not delete") 76.66.200.95 (talk) 06:07, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Why doesn't this section transclude Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Howto? __meco (talk) 08:16, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

A new editor, User:RPekař, is rapidly creating categories for every opera composer, even if the person has only composed one opera. The guidelines say not to create categories for things that have only a few members and that are not likely to grow. I left him a message, but what should be done about this WP:OVERCATegorization? All the best! -- Ssilvers (talk) 05:27, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Ask the editor to use better judgement and umbrella nominate inappropriate categories for deletion. __meco (talk) 06:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

From what I can tell, all these categories are fine. WP:OC#SMALL reads: 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, such as subdividing songs in Category:Songs by artist or flags in Category:Flags by country. (Emphasis added.) These categories are all part of Category:Operas by composer, which make them exceptions of generally discouraged small categories, even if they only categorize one article. — ξ^xplicit 07:04, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The instructions for nominating categories through the CfD process are quite long, and editors routinely post comments which suggest that the CfD process is in need of simplification (e.g. 'Category names with hyphens misused after "ly"' and 'Great when I started, ugly at the finish'). Much of the instructions concern the use of the various CfD tagging and nomination templates.

I created {{Cfd nomination}} as a possible replacement for {{Cfd2}}, {{Cfr2}}, {{Cfm2}} and {{Cfc2}}. The new template has all of the functionality of the other four, but requires only one set of instructions, and so I propose that the four old templates be gradually deprecated: update the instructions, tag the templates as deprecated, and eventually (perhaps after a few months) delete them. Any thoughts? -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 20:40, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

• Yes please. It is too complicated right now, which I think obviously reduces the number of nominations that would otherwise be made. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 21:24, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
• Is this a proposal to replace {{Cfd2}} or {{Cfd}}? {{Cfd2}} is internal and {{Cfd}} is what the editors normally use, right. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:35, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

  {{Cfd2}} and the other step-2 templates would be replaced. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 05:12, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

• What about making the name CfX2? The current name confuses it with the step one templates, I think. It seems Vegaswikian above may be identifying that. --Bsherr (talk) 22:17, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

  That's an interesting idea. I thought of renaming it to (or creating a redirect from) {{Cfd nom}} in order to shorten the title, but {{Cfx2}} also could work. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 05:12, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Why not just use cfd2? this page was renamed categories for discussion awhile back. If anything we might just want to adjust the language in template:cfd to make clear that it's not just for deletion outcomes. - jc37 03:34, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

That may be an eventuality, but right now, cfd2 is already in use by the old template, and I think it might be desirable to preserve the old templates as wrappers for the new one, perhaps even permanently, for convenience. --Bsherr (talk) 14:07, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I found the instructions somewhat difficult to understand, so I am listing here the categories which I am mentioning for renaming, together with the target names. WP:HYPHEN, subsection 3, point 4, says "A hyphen is not used after a standard -ly adverb". I mentioned these categories earlier, at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Category names with hyphens misused after "ly" (permanent link here). The last one on this list here has an additional error in the fact that "clean up" (verb phrase) should be "cleanup" (noun adjunct). I started redirecting them, but encountered difficulties, and that is why some of the target pages are shown with blue links.

• Category:All articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases to Category:All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from June 2007 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from June 2007
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2007 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2007
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from August 2007 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from August 2007
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from September 2007 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from September 2007
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from October 2007 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from October 2007
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from November 2007 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from November 2007
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2007 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2007
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from January 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from January 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from February 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from February 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from March 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from March 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from April 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from April 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from June 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from June 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from August 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from August 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from September 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from September 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from October 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from October 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from November 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from November 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2008 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2008
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from January 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from January 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from February 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from February 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from March 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from March 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from April 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from April 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from June 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from June 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from August 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from August 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from September 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from September 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from October 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from October 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from November 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from November 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2009 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from December 2009
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from January 2010 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from January 2010
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from February 2010 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from February 2010
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from March 2010 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from March 2010
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from April 2010 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from April 2010
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2010 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from May 2010
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from June 2010 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from June 2010
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2010 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from July 2010
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from August 2010 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from August 2010
• Category:Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases from September 2010 to Category:Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from September 2010
• Category:Monthly clean up category (Articles with specifically-marked weasel-worded phrases) counter to Category:Monthly cleanup category (Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases) counter

Incidentally, I noticed in the interlanguage links the same error in the Simple English Wikipedia.
—Wavelength (talk) 15:58, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I think these changes would qualify for speedy renaming (instructions). I can add the nomination (and tag the categories) tomorrow, if you'd like. By the way, I'm almost certain that a bot (one of Rich Farmbrough's, I think...) works with these categories and should be notified once the categories are renamed. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 05:24, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I would like that—please do—I appreciate your assistance in this matter.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:35, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I added the nominations to the speedy renaming page and tagged all categories. I also notified Rich Farmbrough about the effect on his bot's operation. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 06:44, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:MOS (of which WP:HYPHEN is a part) specifically states it is "for Wikipedia articles". These are not articles, they are hidden maintenance categories. I agree the current names are incorrect, but I feel consensus for this rename needs to be achieved with the people that actually maintain these categories. I would suggest they be listed on CFD and their maintainers notified of the discussion. --Pascal⁶⁶⁶ 06:37, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I could not find a WikiProject dedicated specifically to articles with weasel-worded phrases (if one exists, it would be good to notify them), and I think most of the maintaining is done by Rich Farmbrough (he and Femto Bot created most of the monthly categories for the past few months), whom I've notified. Do you think a full CFD is necessary if no one (including Rich) objects to the speedy renaming within 48 hours? Thanks, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 06:51, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Figures you'd list them while I was typing the above. :) I won't object. --Pascal⁶⁶⁶ 07:00, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Yep. :) That's what I get (an edit conflict, that is) for editing in three windows simultaneously (CFD/S, Rich's talk page, and here). As for the broken notification links ... no problem: I'll fix them manually in ~12 hours and just update the CFD/S timestamp so that the categories remain listed for a minimum of 48 hours. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 07:07, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

✓ Done -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 14:41, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Black Falcon, I found Wikipedia:Category names, which says "Standard article naming conventions also apply". Also, I found Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories (with Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/Current subprojects and orphaned Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/Issues and orphaned Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories/Proposals). Is any of those useful here?

—Wavelength (talk) 13:12, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Those links did lead me to Wikipedia:Maintenance, but that appears to be a page for information or a noticeboard rather than a single, coherent project. In any case, I fixed the notification links on all categories, so anyone who works with these categories during the next two days will see the notice. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 14:41, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much. However, I checked the last one on the list, and the notice does not take into account the change from "clean up" to "cleanup", which I mentioned in my opening message.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:41, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

You're very welcome. : )

Yes, you're right about that. I made the correction. By the way, I noticed that the subcategories of Category:Counter categories use "clean up" instead of "cleanup". They, too, are in need of renaming, aren't they? -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 21:30, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

In your first list, all categories except the first one need to be renamed, although it seems appropriate to revise Category:London-related articles requiring clean-up to Category:London-related articles requiring cleanup for consistency with the others. According to http://www.onelook.com/?w=cleanup&ls=a and http://www.onelook.com/?w=clean-up&ls=a, the solid compound word "cleanup" appears to be more common than the hyphenated compound word "clean-up".

In your second list, I have already renamed each category with "ly" in an adverb, with the exception of the categories which I listed in my opening message, and with the possible exception of Category:Only-platform free software, which might not need to be renamed, according to WP:HYPHEN. You can see the categories being renamed in my contributions of 25 to 29 September 2010.

In your second list, the expressions "Lally-Tollendal", "Italy-related", "Kimberly-Clark", "Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles", "László Moholy-Nagy", "Neuilly-sur-Seine", "fly-halves" (from "fly-half"), "supply-side economics", "Farrelly-Spain", and "Sly-eye" all contain "ly" but not as an adverbial suffix.

—Wavelength (talk) 04:45, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

In my opening message, I linked to a WT:MOS discussion which is now archived at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive 117#Category names with hyphens misused after "ly". That discussion lists the categories which I found by searching in the Category namespace of the Index (WP:QI). I renamed some categories in their own titles and on their member article pages, because there were not too many for me to rename them by myself. The categories which I listed above in my opening message have too many member pages for me to rename all of them by myself.

—Wavelength (talk) 15:24, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

The categories which use "clean up" instead of "cleanup" appear to be populated via transclusions of {{Monthly clean up category}} and its subpages, which also are in need of renaming (except Template:Monthly clean up category/toadd, which could be deleted, I think). -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 00:30, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

There is a potential for one or more editors to check many namespaces (WP:NS) for these and other errors (WP:FIX, WP:TYPO).

—Wavelength (talk) 17:07, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I have started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Templates, linking back to this discussion.

—Wavelength (talk) 02:08, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I recently found that a category had been speedily moved. But there was a link to this category, and it wasn't updated to point to the new category. Shouldn't that be a requirement of the bot or human doing the move? Powers ^T 18:08, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Links to category pages are rather rare, so I'm not sure how large of a problem this is. Could the bot do this? Sure. Ask Cyde if he is willing to do the coding. One interesting point is that changing them, especially in discussions, could be wrong since those comments would be incorrect if the link was changed even if added as a redirect. Maybe this should only be done if the main article namespace if at all. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:59, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Another option is to request a bot to generate a list of red-link (i.e. deleted and not created) categories which have incoming links from non-talk namespaces. Editors could then manually work through the list, changing incoming links which should be updated, removing links which no longer apply, and leaving those which should continue to link to the deleted category (e.g. archived discussions). -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 21:36, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Yea... I have been seeing a lot more categories included in the 'See also' sections. At times I'm temped to delete them since I'm not sure of the value they add in most cases. Your suggestion would identify some of these, but then we would need to know where consensus lies on keeping these in 'see also' sections or removing them. For the record, there is a list of red linked categories. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:17, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

I believe that's a list of populated non-existent categories, not those that appears as redlinks in article content. Powers ^T 13:37, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Can these be listed in the speedy queue to have the bot empty the red categories? I guess this may also be a two part answer question if the basic answer is no. What about for categories that have already been deleted? Can these be listed at speedy deletion? Vegaswikian (talk) 23:05, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

If your question is about listing at the CfD working page, then I think that it should depend on why the category is "red". If:

• ...the category was deleted at CfD, and there is no consensus to recreate it (e.g., at WP:DRV), then yes.
• ...the category was speedily deleted under criterion C1 (empty), then no.
• ...the category was never created, then no.

If your question is about listing at the speedy renaming page, then I think it would be fine. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 00:07, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

From the limited digging I have done, many of the repopulated ones are populated by templates. So updating the template fixes the problem. Some of the well populated red categories are for wikiproject pages. It would be nice if the projects created the page. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:35, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

With the job queue constantly at several hundred thousand (now 1,000,000+) for the past two weeks (at least), it may take some time for the template-populated categories to depopulate and disappear from Special:WantedCategories. The category that is currently #1 on the list, 'Military history articles needing attention to technical criteria', was deleted more than five weeks ago. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 01:06, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, it should not have been deleted until it was empty. Vegaswikian (talk) 03:49, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I propose that we agree that it is desirable for there to be automatic (bot) notification of the category creator when the category is listed at CfD. If we do agree, then we can ask someone capable to make it so.

This follows-up a brief conversation at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_October_14#Category:Wikipedians_with_science_and_art_degrees.

I think we agree, in principle, that notifying category creators is desirable.
Quite understandably, notifying every category creator for every listing is a burden on nominators. It is in part a burden because it is disheartening when often the category creator is gone or not interested. CfD and other category maintenance work is already a heavy load for a few volunteers, and anything that makes it easier should be a good thing. I therefore think that automatic notification is preferable in place of an expectation that nominators perform the task.

I recall that other CfD notification proposals/practices have been more trouble than they are worth because the recipients objected to being spammed. I think that that problem would be an issue if notifying all of the membership, or all of the category editors, but the category creator is a particularly special person who you would expect to have either an interest participating in the CfD debate, or who could learn something about category creation expectations just by following the debate. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:24, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, please! I've received messages from a few editors whose first words usually go along the lines of As the creator, I was not notified of the discussion. See, for example, these two relatively recent posts. I know I wouldn't be pleased if I wasn't notified of a discussion regarding one of the categories I created, or any page, for that matter. If a notification bot were set up, there should be an opt-out option, just like there is with DASHBot (talk · contribs), who notifies users of orphaned non-free files. — ξ^xplicit 06:45, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Disagree. I've always believed such a system should be opt-in, rather than opt-out. Also known as, if I'm interested in something I've created, I watchlist it. I'll see when the notification about a CFD is added there, and can join the discussion if I want to. There is also the matter of categories that were created via bot because of a CFD rename. I don't know if the person making the notification takes the time to find out that this is the case, and notifies the creator of the original category, but I can't believe it happens too often, because of the sheer number of notifications my bot has gotten. If we make this mandatory and automated, my bot will continue to get notifications, and if I opt out of them, the true creator still won't be notified. --Kbdank71 14:28, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Kbdank. Watchlisting is a fair point, but watchlisting doesn't work for everyone. It doesn't work so well if the watchlist is large and actively checking the watchlist is infrequent. Some find that attending to their watchlist conflict with their preferred editing style.

I would think that notification is not required where the category was created by a bot. Bot-runners shouldn't need notification, and the creator of the previous version should have had a notification on the first rename. Having notified him once of community interest in the category, if he doesn't then take an active interest, then let him go. An importnat purpose of notification is that a category creator may be entirely unaware of CfD. I also think of this not simply as a courtesy, but a message saying "there is something wrong with your creation, come here and learn something"

So, what exactly do you disagree with. Would you oppose automatic notification of a non-bot creators of a category listed at CfD, where you and your bots can opt out? Would you prefer to be asked to remember to notify the category creator? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:10, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I just don't think it's necessary in the vast majority of cases. Granted, I'm always in the minority in these "should we notify" discussions, although those usually centered on making it mandatory by the person doing the nominating (aka a manual process). If it's automated, I guess I have less of a problem with it. --Kbdank71 13:22, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Optional process, not mandatory, and I would be fine with it too.

Not everyone uses the various formatting templates/tools to list at CfD (and they are not required), so the creator may not be necessarily notified.

Also, just being the creator of a category doesn't mean much. If you hang around, helping out at CfD long enough, you'll find you've created more than a few : ) jc37 21:36, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi jc37. I'm not sure what you mean by "optional". What I mean to propose is that for every new listing at CfD, a bot will advise the category creator, unless the category creator is a bot, or unless the category creator has opted out. There would probably have to be other exclusions, such as if the user had already been notified. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:58, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, my understanding (which may be mistaken) is that the bot would activate based upon some template being used on the cfd page?

If so, then the process should be considered optional, and not mandatory.

That aside, the act of notifying editors should always be considered an optional (albeit perhaps thoughful) choice.

If you think I'm misunderstanding something, please clarify. - jc37 20:08, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Cross posting here, from Wikipedia talk:Overcategorization/User categories.

Of all the pages that discuss User Categories, it seems that Wikipedia:Overcategorization/User categories is the most useful.

Other pages include:

• Wikipedia:Guidelines for user categories (tagged historic)
• Wikipedia:Categorization#User_namespace (passing comment)
• Wikipedia:User categories (Initially looks useful, but not really)
• Wikipedia:User categorisation (Inactive WikiProject)

I think some tidying is in order. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:01, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

There is a minor issue with deleted categories. I don't believe that any of the bots deal with articles (or categories) where a category is included in the text using a pipe to display another name. This is a difficult problem to spot afterward. Should checking the 'what links here' be added to the steps when deleting a category? Is there a way to automate this? Vegaswikian (talk) 22:21, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I think it should be one of the steps. I don't think that a bot could reliably handle the removal and/or replacement of deleted categories. However, it should be possible to automatically generate (e.g., in the form of a database report page) and update a list of deleted categories with incoming links from content namespaces (article, book, category, file, portal and template), which editors could then use to manually fix incoming links. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 00:11, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Yea, in digging though some of this I realized that a bot could not fix this. It could remove the category link, but what do you replace it with? Sometimes it may be better to not link the term at all. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:32, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

In cases of categories being renamed, a bot probably could replace the category links; however, I don't think that a bot could differentiate between situations when a link should be replaced and when it should be removed altogether. I have requested a new database report for this issue at Wikipedia talk:Database reports. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 17:31, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Good idea. Debresser (talk) 06:39, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps if there are a lot of 'what links here' hits for cats, maybe they shouldn't even be speedy-eligible, so each specific situation is discussed/considered/mitigated in advance? I just found Category:Intercollegiate athletics in the United States was speedied months ago even tho' many hundreds of articles [still] link to it (via dozens of templates). 76.121.3.85 (talk) 04:26, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

As a practical matter for this case, thanks for the tip. I just did an AWB run to fix the 56 templates that had been left with redlinks. No point in worrying about any in articles until the job queue runs through the templates- until it does, any actual links will be near on impossible to distinguish. Courcelles 04:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

There are currently 11 projects that have quality assessment categories that start with WikiProject rather than just the subject. I have placed a suggestion on the talk page of each project soliciting comments from the projects about renaming these categories to match the other 1660 projects, so far with positive comments and go ahead. One user suggested submitting something here but before I add a CFD/renaming tag on 60+ categories I wanted to ask what the best procedure for doing this is? Should I add it to every individual quality category or just the parent WikiProject X articles by quality category? --Kumioko (talk) 19:41, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Speedy renaming is probably the most appropriate, and quickest, process for this situation. Technically, the tag ({{cfr-speedy}}) should be on every nominated category, though I'm tempted to suggest invoking WP:IAR. :)

I'd be happy to help with the tagging if you find it to be too time-consuming. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 05:34, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I was just hoping to save a few hairs before I pull them all out tagging all these things. Im certainly not too proud to accept help so Ill let you know in a couple days when Im ready, thanks for the offer. I want to give the affected projects a little more time to respond though just to save us potential drama later. So far most didnt know why it was like that to begin with and are more than happy to change. --Kumioko (talk) 05:43, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, and I think it was a good step to contact the projects first. Cheers, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 05:53, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I saw a bunch of these go by my watchlist. These are all going to be controversial. Please don't put China/PRC renames on Speedy Rename and undo those that have been done recently. Many of these have redone the work of a malicious sockpuppet after previous lengthy, but old, discussions at CfD. SchmuckyTheCat (talk)

I believe you are referring to the following changes:

• Category:Categories by autonomous regions of China to Category:Categories by autonomous region of the People's Republic of China
• Category:Buildings and structures in China by autonomous regions to Category:Buildings and structures in the People's Republic of China by autonomous region
• Category:Transportation in China by autonomous regions to Category:Transport in the People's Republic of China by autonomous region
• Category:Transport in China by city to Category:Transport in the People's Republic of China by city
• Category:Transportation in China by province to Category:Transport in the People's Republic of China by province

All of these were subcategories of Category:Transport in the People's Republic of China and/or Category:Autonomous regions of the People's Republic of China. I am aware of the real-life controversy pertaining to the use of "China", but all of these categories appear to be for the PRC specifically.

Which ones are problematic? Changing back to "China" can be done quite easily, but reverting the changes fully would not be appropriate as some of the previous category names contained other problems. Thanks, -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 21:59, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

• For these nominations, I closed them to change "Transportation" to "Transport" but left the China/PRC designation unchanged.
  • Category:Proposed public transportation in China to Category:Proposed public transport in the People's Republic of China (C2.C, Category:Transport in the People's Republic of China) -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 20:34, 2 December 2010 (UTC) / renamed to Category:Proposed public transport in China
  • Category:Transportation companies of China to Category:Transport companies of the People's Republic of China — C2C, per all subcategories of Category:Transport in China.--Mike Selinker (talk) 21:34, 2 December 2010 (UTC) / renamed to Category:Transport companies of China

In my opinion, though, if a category is a subcategory of Category:People's Republic of China, then "China" should become "People's Republic of China". But I'm interested in other opinions.--Mike Selinker (talk) 21:08, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Given the size of the current list, one wonders if these get enough editors reviewing them. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:36, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I think it could be helpful to collapse similar nominations (i.e., the same change in many categories with the same format) under one header; see here for an example. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 00:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I think collapsing similar nominations there is helpful, but there has been an earlier suggestion that this practice be banned at the speedy rename section. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 00:08, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

That's interesting... Personally, I think that collapsed nominations are easier to evaluate since the boundaries of the box separate the nomination group from the rest of the page. I also oppose the idea of daily logs, for two reasons. First, activity as CFDS varies too much for daily logs to be useful—e.g., the page went from 2 active discussions on 5 December to around 200 on 8 December. Second, the main advantage of CFDS is that it allows quick, easy and bureaucracy-free nominations to be made and tracked at a single location.

Ideas which I think might help include: modifying the page layout (e.g., introducing subsections by criterion), which was suggested in the July discussion, and collapsed nominations. -- Black Falcon ^(talk) 00:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Under "Preliminary steps" the instructions say to "Read and understand Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories)". Then, right before "Edit the category" they again point people to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories). Granted, this is important advice, but I don't think it should be repeated there. --Stepheng3 (talk) 01:16, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I started a CfD for Category:Hydroelectric power stations in Canada and added to it, realizing I'd missed it, Category:Power stations in Canada. I'm in crappy, unstable motel WIFI and it's incredibly laborious at times, especially facing dozens of categories. So between net speed frustrations and general impatience/low back pain from sitting so much, I'm hoping someone may consent to help get the rest of the tagging done - all relevant subcats of Category:Power stations in Canada (not all are affected, as you'll see).....target name I'd proposed was "powerhouses" but I've recanted that to a more formal "generating station"; I suppose the tagging should conform to the existing proposed "powerhouses" name, but maybe it doesn't have to. I jsut can't do it all by myself, due to time/net/health constraints.Skookum1 (talk) 05:32, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I know this cat's been around since 2007, but I just don't see the point of it. It's true that Richmond is ALL islands, and perhaps unusual in that regard, when you stop to think about it, at least in Canada.....but there's already Category:Islands of the Fraser River and there is no equivalent parallel to be had for classifying islands by municipality. It also sets a bad precedent, as (despite my opposition to using RD categories for landforms etc) someone is going to come along and create, e.g. Category:Islands of the Regional District of Nanaimo (those are already all in Category:Gulf Islands) RDs are technically municipalities, by law, but we don't think of them that way at all....the essential point is this is a lone-wolf category....and I really can't think of another "X landform of Y municipality" category - not any one that should survive anyway (there may be Category:Waterbodies of Burnaby or some such; but it's a different matter when the entire municipality is islands; it's not the same with scattered lakes through a mainland municipality; the Richmond category itself is an islands category. I think it's 19 or 28 major islands, including one (Annacis) which is shared with Delta) and another (Lulu) which is partly in New Wesminster.....and it may be that the in/of naming issue/guideline is in a special case here, because Richmond is made out of these islands - they are Richmond.....Skookum1 (talk) 04:38, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I can totally see where you are coming from on this, but I think you might answer your own question. Isn't it precisely because Richmond is all islands that is category is especially worthwhile? I realize that Richmond is not an considered archipelago, but it is effectively (albeit not officially) the name for a group of islands. Yes, Category:Islands of the Fraser River, but Islands of Richmond could easily be a subcategory. I'm not determined here, but I'm not sure that eliminating it would be beneficial. Even if you delete this category, all of these articles should surely be included in Category:Richmond, British Columbia - doesn't it make sense for them to have their own category, rather than crowd that municipal category? - TheMightyQuill (talk) 10:03, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, I'm not sure this is how "categories for discussion" is supposed to work. Feel free to move my comments to a more appropriate place for discussion - just let me know. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 10:11, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

It was in speedy cfd, and there didn't appear to be a place there to make comments, so I made them here; maybe it should be re-listed as a separate, ordinary CfD?Skookum1 (talk) 22:20, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I've moved this out to a full discussion here, Skookum, and copied your comments above. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 23:57, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I have closed the November 28 discussion on stub categories and the November 30 discussion on political party categories as keep. However, there are 136 categories that need to have their cfd tags removed, and that's beyond me. Is there someone who has a bot who can do this? The categories are also all listed at Category:Categories_for_discussion_from_November_2010; all of the categories in there are from these two nominations, as I've cleared out all the others from November. Anyone willing to help with this? And would it be possible to set up a place on /Working (or a subpage) for a bot to go through large nominations like this and just remove the tags and place the linkback on the talk page?--Mike Selinker (talk) 07:05, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a bot, but I will use AWB to try and help out here. :) ^Avic_ennasis @ 02:10, 21 Tevet 5771 / 28 December 2010 (UTC)

 Done via User:AvicAWB. :) Feel free to ask at my talk page if you need something like this again. ^Avic_ennasis @ 02:40, 21 Tevet 5771 / 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant. Thanks so much.--Mike Selinker (talk) 03:54, 29 December 2010 (UTC)