Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 October 12

Nominator's rationale: This entire hierarchy of subcategories is overcategorisation. All of the categories listed above contain no more than two articles, and possibly won't ever expand beyond that amount. The parent category of Category:Next Generation Adelaide International is all that is necessary to categorise this information. -- Longhair\^talk 23:13, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Vancouver television series

Category:Vancouver television series - Template:Lc1

Nominator's rationale: Split and/or delete - shooting locations and series settings should not be categorized together. There does not seem to be a widespread categorization scheme for TV series either set in or filmed in a particular city, and given the prevalence of location shooting series could wind up in multiple such categories. If kept, it should be split into categories for series that take place in Vancouver and series filmed in Vancouver. Otto4711 (talk) 22:38, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Members of organizations

Category:Members of organizations - Template:Lc1

Nominator's rationale: Delete - vague overarching category with no reasonable limitation of scope. Could capture everything from members of the Nazi party to members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Otto4711 (talk) 20:29, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clear Keep and possible rename. - I think you might want to reconsider this one, Otto. There isn't a single article placed directly in this category -- rather, it's a grouping category which is clearly needed to group together all of those sub-categories that deal with members of organizations. We might, however, want to rename it to either Category:People by membership in organization or Category:People by organizational membership. Cgingold (talk) 23:29, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Kabbalah Centre followers

Category:Kabbalah Centre followers - Template:Lc1

Nominator's rationale: Delete - trivial category capturing association with faddish organization. I believe everyone in the category is already listed at the main article but if not anyone missing can be sourced and added. In the alternative, if it's deemed a defining characteristic then merge to Category:Kabbalists. Otto4711 (talk) 20:25, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:People by race or ethnicity et. al.

Category:People by race or ethnicity - Template:Lc1

Category:People by religion - Template:Lc1

Nominator's rationale: This entire hierarchy of categories (this and all its children) is fundamentally unencyclopedic and fatally flawed. At best, in the cases where there is little or no dispute regarding who would/should belong in which categories, the classification is worthless and pointless. I would hope that the bygone days of corralling people into various groups to discriminate or edify the membership in an orgy of prejudice and stereotyping are, in fact, really gone.

The typical case, however, is to POV war over category membership in order to make a political point— adding or removing someone from one of those categories create full scale total war between factions— and that harm isn't even vaguely balanced by any reasonable putative benefit to the encyclopedia.

Finally, the categories themselves are hopelessly worthless. Do they include self-identification? Or exclude it? What about timelines? Someone who is born in X but who lived all their lives in Y? What is an "Ethnic German"— does that include an Austrian from Rhine descent?

Off with their heads! — Coren ^(talk) 20:00, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Edit: I've added Category:People by religion explicitly even though it is a child category of the main one, in case the discussion diverges towards that topic specifically. As far as I'm concerned, that and Category:People by nationality are equally divisive, uninformative and problematic as all the rest. — Coren ^(talk) 20:32, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Make sure all categories further down in the hierarchy get tagged also. A lot of people are not going to know about this CfD otherwise. If that task is too overwhelming I'm sure there are some admins running bots who could help you with it. Also, I suggest notifying affected WikiProjects as well as the Village Pump. Maybe even the English Wikipedia mailing list. __meco (talk) 20:08, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't do mailing list (though you are welcome to raise a flag there); I am in the process of making noise on the topic on relevant noticeboards as we speak. — Coren ^(talk) 20:12, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Query – are you sure? Category:People by nationality is one of the subcats (although perhaps it should not be). Category:People by religion is another. This is all because you think Israeli footballers shouldn't be categorised as Jewish (see ANI)? Occuli (talk) 20:22, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That too. I was in the process of finding the right parent category and adding it. :-) — Coren ^(talk) 20:24, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Being pretty sure that Category:People by nationality and Category:People by religion are not subcats of Category:People by race or ethnicity I have removed them (from Category:People by race or ethnicity). Occuli (talk) 20:56, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all – nationality is surely defining for anyone, ethnicity for many, and religion for some. The Jewish ones are a special case, best considered one by one (eg we have deleted Category:Jewish mathematicians but kept Category:Jewish scientists). Occuli (talk) 21:08, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that, in the rare case where ethnicity or religion really is a defining characteristic of someone, then that would be easily sourced and ripe for inclusion in the article prose; that's hardly a good argument for a category, however. But why should "Jewish" be a special case as opposed to "Buddhist" or "African-American"? — Coren ^(talk) 21:59, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete all: Vague and pointless categories. Is Tiger Woods African, Asian, Native American, Caucasian, or what? --Carnildo (talk) 21:24, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete the race and ethnicity ones. "Race" is a little-used classification these days and it's bloody hard to verify and pin down ethnicity. Religion, I'm not so sure. At least this is in theory verifiable. Moreschi (talk) 21:30, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
An interesting question then becomes "when and according to whom"? I would expect only self-identification has any sort of reliability, but what about people who change their beliefs (and the corresponding self-identification) several times in their lives? Which category would they fall under? — Coren ^(talk) 21:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This certainly doesn't apply in Africa - ethnicity is generally defining. Eg the genocide in Rwanda was Hutu/Tutsi. What about Kikuyu in Kenya, Ndebele in Zimbabwe, Hausa and Category:Igbo people in Nigeria. Flemish in Belgium, various in ex-Yugoslavia, 3 distinct language groups in Switzerland etc etc. Occuli (talk) 22:01, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete them, these arguments convince me. Protonk (talk) 21:54, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
keep since there is no accepted agrument to delete all subcats, this category is needed as the grouping parent of them all. A very reasonable category for WP. Hmains (talk) 21:59, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, I suggest deleting every subcat, the parent category is an obvious side-effect. Do you mean that you don't agree with deleting the subcategories, or did you just think I meant deleting the parent categories by themselves? — Coren ^(talk) 22:01, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all - Rarely can race or ethnicity be correctly determined, not to mention it adds no value to any articles. Category:People by Religion should be deleted aswell because it is not relevant unless you are the Pope or Dalai Lama. Hubschrauber729 (talk) 22:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete some This process wil obviously take longer, but very obvious categories should be kept. ie the Hutu/Tutsi. If they either are one or they're not and there's no inbetween there's no reason to delete a good category. Others on the other hand just cause editwars and too much drama. This has to be a case-by-case basis. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 22:13, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree in principle, do you have a set of objective criteria to follow or are you suggesting nominating the categories individually and discussing each? — Coren ^(talk) 22:29, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
keep there is nothing controversial about these categories. heck, even censuses ask about race and ethnicity. The controversy may be only about people asigned into them. But the latter is matter of article content dispute. `'Míkka >t 22:25, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural keep. The subcategories are not tagged or listed here. As a result, essentially this is a discussion whether or not to delete two parent categories, each of which houses hundreds of categories. Deletion of the parent holder categories will not accomplish the nomination's objectives and will hurt the project by leaving hundreds of categories without the appropriate parent category. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 22:44, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all Per well reasoned nom. Garion96 (talk) 22:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Delete all following nom. There are such things as genetic strains among many species, ours too, but among people these are for the most part way skeinish, entwined, not at all yet thoroughly described or understood in meaningful scientific ways and hence, open to endlessly misleading labels. Carrying sourced commentary about an individual's ethnicity and/or ancestral origins in an article is ok, even helpful, but trying to plug that into stark categories is fraught with ways to botch and let down readers. Gwen Gale (talk) 23:17, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Cross-platform software

Category:Cross-platform software - Template:Lc1

Nominator's rationale: It is more common for a software package to be available for more than one platform than for only a single platform. Thus, the majority of articles about software packages fall into this category, and it is not a useful classification. Delete SparsityProblem (talk) 17:07, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep: Many popular desktop software is not cross-platform (Windows Media Player, Windows Live Messenger, Internet Explorer, Nero Burning Rom, utorrent, emule, ImgBurn, daemon tools, transmission BT client, etc...), and I think this is a very usefull category. I am very surprised this got proposed for deletion... SF007 (talk) 18:48, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Make this only for "Windows AND Linux AND Mac software" if needed, but I think deleting is a very very bad idea... SF007 (talk) 18:50, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What would you propose to rename the category to in that case? "Software available for Windows, various dialects of Unix and GNU/Linux, and Mac OS" is a very long name. SparsityProblem (talk) 22:41, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Keep: Useful category as SF007 explained. rootology (C)(T) 20:12, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete - or substantially reorganize. The category as given covers at least three potential subcategories, which if populated would eliminate more than half of the examples given by SF007. Tedickey (talk) 21:37, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Hard rock groups

Propose renaming Category:Hard rock groups to Category:Hard rock musical groups

Nominator's rationale: For consistency with other, similar categories- generally, such categories are named "[genre] musical groups". There is a past precedent for this at CfD, I'm happy to dig out some examples if anyone wants them. J Milburn (talk) 15:31, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rename per nom. Lugnuts (talk) 16:00, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Phone thriller/horror movies

Category:Phone thriller/horror movies - Template:Lc1

Nominator's rationale: Weird psuedo-category which, even if cleaned up, is too narrow in its scope and does not represent an established film genre. PC78 (talk) 11:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: This is definitely a very limited category. I would note, however, that if it ends up being kept, it needs quite a bit of filling. Among the titles that are currently missing (which I won't add if the category's going to be deleted in a week): Cellular (film), Eagle Eye, Phone Booth (film), When a Stranger Calls and When a Stranger Calls (2006 film). BookhouseBoy (talk) 16:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Antisemitism in France

fr:Catégorie:Antisémitisme en France look big. Maybe Category:Antisemitism in France would be good. Could include Robert Brasillach, Edouard Drumont, Irène Némirovsky, Georges Oltramare, Jacques Ploncard d'Assac, Antisemitic League of France, Jules Guérin, Au Pilori, Henry Coston. 89.2.243.42 (talk) 10:07, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seems sensible - we don't seem to have national sub-cats, but Category:Anti-Semitism could do with reducing the huge number of articles in the main category. Remember to remove articles from this if they go in a national sub-cat. Johnbod (talk) 12:38, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Category:Cable HD channels

Suggest merging Category:Cable HD channels to Category:HD channels

Suggest merging Category:Satellite HD channels to Category:HD channels

Nominator's rationale: Merge. This breakout and odd subcategory inclusions is not necessary. What exactly is the difference between the channels provided via cable or satellite? Merge these to the parent and then if needed break these out in another way, say Category:HD sports channels. Vegaswikian (talk) 00:43, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]