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deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:Delete. A category created by a
bot for a genus of plants. The genus only contains one species, so the category will only ever have one entry (unless, of course, the taxonomy changes, which appears unlikely). The one page in this cat can go under
Category:Palms. Cheers,
IceCreamAntisocial (
talk)
17:46, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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Category:English nobility
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
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Nominator's rationale: This is a recent category which its orignal creator emptied and blanked, probably because he had found a better category. I came across it and added two articles, which I have since recategorised as
Category:Medieval English knights. I am uncertain whether it serves any useful purpose at all. It is possible that we need a category for English medieval magnates from the period before there were baronies by writ (or a Parliament in the modern sense). If so, perhaps it needs to be renamed. NOTE: The category is currently unpopulated.
Peterkingiron (
talk)
17:00, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Delete - This kind of thing comes up all the time. The nobility & royalty fans eagerly make new categories without checking for the old ones. Similar categories were among my very first CFDs. (aaahhhh). --
Lquilter (
talk)
14:12, 9 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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Category:Cloverfield
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Delete - I agree it's OCAT for the film but a couple of the articles need one or more additional categories added as this is the sole one. Nothing here though that can't find a home in another category.
Otto4711 (
talk)
18:02, 7 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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Category:CCTV
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deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:Rename. This category is intended for
China Central Television and related articles, but unfortunately "CCTV" is better recognised in many other countries as an abbreviation for "closed-circuit television".
CCTV is a disambiguation page with other possible meanings, which include 4 other television stations/producers. Because of the ambiguity, this seems like an appropriate situation to "avoid abbreviations" as recommended by
category naming conventions. Notified creator with {{
subst:cfd-notify}}Good Ol’factory(talk)11:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
As the creator, you can wrap this up very quickly by slapping a {{db|reason}} tag with a brief explanation on the category page.
Cgingold (
talk)
23:21, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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Category:Sportspeople who have served prison sentences
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deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:Delete. Sportspeople who have served prison sentences are generally not treated any differently in the sporting world that those who have not, and in this sense this category is a trivial intersection. We already have
List of professional sportspeople convicted of crimes, which at this point is more comprehensive (and has broader inclusionary criteria) and is in what is a preferable format for intersections like this. Notified creator with {{
subst:cfd-notify}}Good Ol’factory(talk)11:29, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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Category:Personal Autobiographies
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
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Delete - I created the category in an attempt to make subcategories for Biographies and Autobiographies, which are considered too large and without enough subcategories. However, it is a tough job looking through all those autobiographies and I'll be the first to say this choice of category may not be a good one. The rationale is that under autobiographies there are all sorts of autobiographies included, some which are not a personal rendition of a life but are more political, promotional, comical etc. –
Mattisse (
Talk)
11:47, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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Category:Fictional atheists
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Keep. The article was nominated after the 24 Feb CFD and there was no consensus to delete. I think it should be kept and reserved for those for whom atheism is defining.
Good Ol’factory(talk)00:00, 11 April 2008 (UTC)reply
My views on this haven't changed in the last several weeks, so here's what I had to say in the last CFD:
Delete. I am concerned with the keep votes that see the need to add phrases like 'should be kept and reserved for those for whom atheism is defining'. I believe that this is in fact a requirement for inclusion and the fact that it needs to be stated and enforced implies that this category will be a catchall without constant maintenance. So delete until someone can propose a new name or other solution that will not be a catchall. I also don't understand why being a Fictional atheists is more defining then being a Fictional characters by religion.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
23:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment : If every category was deleted that didn't require "maintenance" to keep out articles for which it is not defining, we would be deleting a lot more than we do. Not every existing category is self-enforcing, that's just a fact of life, but it doesn't mean deletion is necessarily the answer.
Good Ol’factory(talk)04:25, 12 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Delete. All the other religion categories have already been deleted, so there is no reason why this category should stay either.
Jagged 85 (
talk)
20:19, 12 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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Category:Orthodox martyrs
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Rename as nominated. I created the category and have no objection, referring to
Christian denominations. I don't understand why the sub-cat
Category:Coptic martyrs was depopulated and redirected, and will look into that. After this renaming, there may be a need for a category for Oriental Orthodox martyrs, but it will be acceptable for that to be separate from Eastern Orthodox martyrs. -
Fayenatic(talk)19:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Coptic Christians are Oriental Orthodox, not Eastern Orthodox, and so wouldn't really belong in this category. The reason I assumed this category was limited to Eastern Orthodox is because its parent is
Category:Eastern Orthodox Christians and the definition speaks of Eastern Orthodox Church martyrs; but you're right that it was strange the category was emptied and redirected to
Category:Egyptian saints; it's hard to believe that every Coptic martyr is also an Egyptian saint.
Good Ol’factory(talk)21:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
The point is the
Coptic Orthodox church did not separate from the Catholic & Eastern Orthodox churches until 451, so many well-known Egyptian saints who predate the split, whilst perhaps "ethnically" Coptic (a very complicated concept at this date) are shared between the three traditions, & should not be categorised as Coptic. This includes Cyrus and John (who may have come from Alexandria, the capital of Greek-speaking Egypt. If not from Alexandria, John came from modern Iraq, so how was he Coptic?),
Catherine of Alexandria,
Anthony the Great and many others. There is a case for a Coptic saints category for post-separation people like
Pope John II (III) of Alexandria; for earlier ones, unless it can be confirmed they are only venerated by the Coptic chuurch (which may often be the case), they are probably best left in "Egyptian saints".
Johnbod (
talk)
13:54, 7 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Good analysis, I agree with what you set out — as for post-451, it's a bit silly though to assume that all Coptic Christians are solely of Egyptian nationality. There are thousands of Copts who hold other nationalities and I don't think it would be too difficult to track down a martyr who was a nationality other than "Egyptian". The alternative is to just assume that Coptic = Egyptian by virtue of ethnic background, regardless of nationality, which would probably work 99.99% of the time in the modern era. This seems to be the approach of having
Category:Coptic Christians as a subcategory of
Category:Egyptian Christians. I suppose the issue's not particularly relevant to this nom, though, and you're probably right that the issue may not arise for articles that currently exist.
Good Ol’factory(talk)21:29, 7 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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Category:Prisoners of the Taliban
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
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Delete - Unneccessary extra level of categorization, better (and already) dealt with by list articles. This category was somewhat puzzling to me. At first I thought it simply needed renaming (to something like
Category:Former prisoners of the Taliban). But as I looked further I discovered the two already-existing list articles. I also found that all of the people in this category (except for
Ken Hechtman) are also included in the parent cat,
Category:Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States. When all is said and done, I don't think the category adds anything of real value. Notified creator with {{
subst:cfd-notify}}Cgingold (
talk)
07:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Keep, possible rename - If it were "Prisoners in Afghanistan" then there certainly wouldn't be any complaint, the trouble is differentiating between the regimes in Afghanistan. I assume this is for any notable criminals/prisoners held by the Taliban during their ~5 year reign? I don't see a problem with the category just because at the moment it's populated only with Guantanamo prisoners - they're unrelated categories. It's like saying we should delete "Category:Dairy farms" because right now it's only got farms already listed at "Category:American farms"
Sherurcij(
Speaker for the Dead) 23:13, 7 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Keep -- I don't know if nominator would reconsider if they knew that these captives, at least those I added, are people who were in the Taliban's prison, until the Taliban's collapse, and passed directly, or almost directly, from Taliban custody, to US custody. There were several who spent a few days of relative freedom, in refugee camps, and even appeared on the BBC, saying how grateful they were for their release, only to be rounded up by Afghan warlords, and turned in to the USA for a bounty. The USA was paying a bounty for every foreigner turned over to them. Several of these guys made the point to their Tribunals that the allegations they faced all took placed during the time they were in the Taliban's prison. Several were imprisoned by the Taliban because they believed they were American spies. Cheers!
Geo Swan (
talk)
23:48, 7 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Yes, I understood all of that, Geo. I read through quite a bit of stuff and thought it through carefully before I decided to bring it to CFD. I know you've put a lot of work into articles, etc. dealing with this subject -- including the two list articles that I referenced. I just don't happen to think that it makes good sense in terms of Wiki categories to create a niche category for Guantanamo detainees who happen also to have been held by the Taliban. It's not because I don't think that information is important -- I just think that it's better served by those two list articles, which do a very good job of presenting the info.
Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but it certainly looks to me like you created this category expressly for the specific purpose of further categorizing a sub-group of Guantanamo detainees -- which is precisely why you made it a sub-cat of
Category:Extrajudicial prisoners of the United States. That being the case, the name you gave it is rather misleading, since it obviously would apply to a much broader group of individuals. In other words, the "correct" name, so to speak, would have been something like
Category:Guantanamo detainees who were formerly prisoners of the Taliban. When it's laid out like that, I think it's plain to see that it really is not a very suitable category.
Cgingold (
talk)
04:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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Category:Dharmic religions
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deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
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Category:Gilmore Girls characters
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Delete - While I am technically the category's creator, I do not consider this to be G7 Speedy fodder because it is 1) so old, and 2) a number of other people have edited the category. But that aside, when I build out these character categories, except in rare cases, I tend to have a minimum of three articles needed before I build out a "Foo Show characters" category. Given that this one is down to just one article, I do not see the need for the category to remain. Whoever closes this, be sure to move the character list up into the GG parent category. -
TexasAndroid (
talk)
13:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)reply
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Unremarkable aircraft features
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Nominator's rationale:Delete all.
WikiProject Aircraft uses categories to group certain aircraft that share an uncommon distinguishing feature, such as
Category:Rocket-powered aircraft, or
Category:Delta-wing aircraft. In late 2006, a slew of categories based on unremarkable features got added. These have remained all but unused - their large sizes are mostly attributable to only two or three highly-energetic individuals working their ways through the alphabet.
The problem with these categories is that each of them is hopelessly broad - if ever populated fully, each will contain thousands of articles about aircraft that have no relationship whatsoever to one another except for an unremarkable design element. When considering these categories, it's worth remembering that Wikipedia's aircraft coverage spans the whole history of aviation, so while biplanes and "
pusher" aircraft are very uncommon today, there are several hundreds (perhaps thousands) of distinct biplane types dating from the first half of the 20th century, and hundreds of pusher designs from the same era.
To get a feel for the eventual size of these categories, take a look at their present sizes and then consider that most of them have so far been filled only between the letters A-F. --
Rlandmann (
talk)
02:19, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
DELETE high wing and low wing - if we are talking about the difference between most cessnas and most beechcrafts, this point is significant, but in general it is meaningless. KEEP the others. I see a need for the other six categories - after all, if somebody wants to find articles about biplanes, that would be a starting point (etc.) Thanks.
Raymondwinn (
talk)
03:23, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
I guess the point I'm making is that (for example)
Category:Propeller aircraft which would eventually contain several thousand articles, would not be a useful starting point; it would rely on you knowing the name of the aircraft and then paging through an enormous category, 200 entries at a time until you come to what you're looking for (so you'd better hope that what you're looking for was made by
AEG and not by
Zlin...). Of course, if you already know the name, you'd just use the search function, Google, or the
List of aircraft. --
Rlandmann (
talk)
03:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Delete - Delete all, as with these cats, there are sometimes 8 or 10 cats in the list, and that is really too much, especially for broad categories. Possible keep biplanes, as this is a fairly unique category historically, and possible worth it for someone to wade though several hundred entries. I would recommend breaking them up by decade strating with 1900 though the 1930s, and then having "Modern biplnes for 1940-present. -
BillCJ (
talk)
04:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
FWIW I notice that this general question was hammered on last year (
Discussion re deleting high-wing category, without coming to much of a conclusion. Has anything changed since then (other than the fact that I have added perhaps 3000 airplanes to some of these categories)? I will be the first to admit that the categories are getting large. But the question is, are the categories (or will they ever be) of benefit to somebody? Let's address that basic question.
Raymondwinn (
talk)
06:53, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
No, nothing has changed; the basic question is still how on earth could these categories be useful to anybody? The arguments to keep them (then and now) seem to be (1) a bald assertion that they are "useful" without explaining how or why this would be the case, and (2) that they reflect real world categories; which is pretty much irrelevant (
WP:OCAT - the purpose of the category system is to help readers to browse to articles about similar subjects (
WP:CAT). When categories are as hopelessly broad as this without any hope of subcategorisation, they just create clutter at the bottom of the page without fulfilling this function at all. --
Rlandmann (
talk)
19:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Keep non-trivial categorization. Biplanes are still being built, so are triplanes. Jet aircraft is a real world categorization that IS IN REAL WORLD USE. So is prop aircraft. Multi-engine aircraft is a categorization used for pilot certificates - which can be subdivided into the number of engines and type of engines. Just subcategorize things and they'll be smaller through category diffusion. ... such as trijet, twinjet.
70.55.84.42 (
talk)
07:03, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
As I see it, there's nothing wrong with the "triplanes" category, which is why it's not listed here. Triplanes are a rare and unusual configuration, and therefore a useful category to have; there have probably only ever several dozen distinct designs. By comparison, we now have a category containing over 200 biplanes that start with the letter "A" alone... Subcategorisation doesn't seem to be an option here: "Single engine propeller aircraft", "Multi-engine propeller aircraft", "Single-engine jet aircraft" and "Multi-engine jet aircraft" would still yield categories with literally thousands of articles each - again, no help to anyone trying to browse to anything. --
Rlandmann (
talk)
19:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
And you can subcategorize multi by the number of engines... single-engine jets can be subcategorized also - supersonic, subsonic, transonic, fighter, bomber, VLJ, air taxi, etc. Categories like wide-body, narrow-body, light, super-light, very-light, ultra-light, sub-light, super-midsized, sub-midsized, midsized, long-range, short-range, LSA, etc... are all used in industry, and are useful, so why not categorize in such a manner?
70.55.84.42 (
talk)
04:36, 7 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Because most of those terms only have a specific meaning within a specific regulatory context; and many have no formal definition at all.
WikiProject Aircraft's existing country-role-era categories deliberately avoid such vagaries. The categories proposed for deletion here can be summarised as those pertaining to (1) unremarkable wing configurations, (2) unremarkable methods of propulsion, (3) a dichotomy of engine times (one, or many, with "many" being any more than one!) and (4) a reasonably unremarkable choice of powerplant location. To create intersection categories out of these, we would have to categorise every one of the 5,000 aircraft types we currently cover (and somewhere around 10,000 that we will eventually cover) along the lines of
Category:High-wing single-engine tractor propeller aircraft. While some of these categories would end up being of useful, manageable size (for example,
Category:Biplane multi-engine pusher propeller aircraft), most of them reflect very common configurations that will still contain several hundreds or a few thousand articles (
Category:Low-wing single-engine tractor propeller aircraft that describes practically every fighter plane between about 1935 and 1950 plus an enormous number of
general aviation types between around 1940 and the present day,
Category:Low-wing multi-engine jet aircraft that describes the vast majority of fighters between 1950 and today, plus all the airliners and business jets that fit this category). If you're seriously proposing such a schema (and volunteering to do the work, I hope), then you really should provide some numbers to show that the resulting intersection categories themselves won't be unmanageably large. --
Rlandmann (
talk)
03:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Keep - All of these are useful categorizations of aircraft. High wing vs low wing and jet vs propeller may make some large categories but there are no rules against large categories. However, high vs low wing have implications in flight (fuel delivery systems, affects of ground effect, etc) that make these two categories of aircraft different enough, and warranting a separate category.
Chrislk02Chris Kreider10:21, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Granted there's no rule against it, but why actually do it? How do you see people using either of these categories to browse to similar articles? --
Rlandmann (
talk)
19:44, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
These categories are not trivial. THese are not things made up to abstractly define and group aircraft into categories. These are real world differences used to define different in performance, and even licensing requirements for aviation (jet vs prop aircraft, single vs multi engine aircraft, ect). I would understand this being a problem if these categories were more abstract, however i cannot think of a better example of how wikipedias categorization system helps sort thousands of aircraft articles based on real work categorization on characteristics. I fail to see what your problem with these categories is other than them being too large (which we already established there is no rule against)?.
Chrislk02Chris Kreider19:43, 8 April 2008 (UTC)reply
My problem is the one pointed out by BillCJ - if these categories are not in themselves useful, then they form clutter at the bottom of the page. Just because a classification exists in the real world does not mean that it is a useful way to categorise Wikipedia articles ("Not every verifiable fact... requires an associated category"
WP:OCAT). Categories exist to help readers browse to related information (
WP:CAT), not simply to echo what happens in the real world. My point is that these overly broad categories do not help readers browse to related information; and that they therefore simply create
category clutter, adding three or four unusable categories to each and every aircraft article. There is no policy against overlarge categories per se, but there is a policy against overcategorisation, which is what these represent. And again, while large categories are not actually forbidden, the idea that categories can indeed be "too big" is implicit in
WP:CAThere where subcategorisation is suggested. The problem in these cases, as I've indicated elsewhere, is that intersecting these categories doesn't help very much. The vast majority of what's currently in
Category:Biplane aircraft is going to end up in
Category:Single-engine tractor propeller biplane aircraft anyway.
Category:Single-engine tractor propeller high-wing aircraft and
Category:Single-engine tractor propeller low-wing aircraft would also still be huge. The only way to bring these categories down to a size where they were actually usable would be to continue intersecting them further and further (perhaps with the existing role categories) - but do we really want to create five-way intersections categories for
Category:Single-engine tractor propeller low-wing fighter aircraft? --
Rlandmann (
talk)
20:24, 8 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Again, your major argument is that these categories are too big. IF you were writing a paper on jet aircraft, would a category on jet aircraft be usseful? If you wanted more information on different models of bi-plane aircraft, would you rather peruse a category of bi-plane aircraft or concoct a complex google search that would be hit and miss? The fact is, these categories are useful (albeit large, but again we have concluded there is no rule against large categories). The fact that they are categorized into this in the real world, makes them even more important because it is familiar categories to pilots (high wing, low wing, prop, jet, etc). If you start over catting, the categories will become to complex, and even more difficult to navigate/understand.
Chrislk02Chris Kreider15:19, 9 April 2008 (UTC)reply
No - the argument is that these categories overcategorise the articles that they have been added to - ie, that they create category clutter (per
WP:OCAT). There are and have been individuals zealously adding up to four of these to each and every aircraft article. Size is only relevant insofar as it is a demonstration that these categories are useless and therefore do not fulfill the purpose of having a category (ie, to "help readers find information, even if they don't know that it exists or what it's called" (
WP:CAT). Your example is a spurious one - how many pages of biplanes and how many hundred (or thousand) entries do you want to page through before hoping to somehow stumble across what you're looking for? Doesn't putting "Biplane" into the search box at the left-hand side of every page here produce a result just as good, and putting "british biplane" or "fighter biplane" or "de havilland biplane" into that search box produce a far better result? And I agree with you - these categories do not lend themselves to subcategorising - and yet that is the advice that other people here are giving and is the advice contained in
WP:CAT for bringing categories that are "too big" (sic) down to a usable size. Insisting on the letter of the law that there is no policy against large categories ignores the spirit of the law that clearly acknowledges that such categories are problematic. --
Rlandmann (
talk)
20:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)reply
You state, that these categries are useless because they cannot help readers find information. I, as an aviation enthusiast, do find these categories useful. Researching different types of aircraft, based on real world characteristics. Just because you do not find them useful, does not mean they are. Sure, they are large. Sure, if i wanted to reasearch jet aircraft and wanted a list of all jet aircraft on wikipeida (no matter how large or small), because of that category, it is possible to get that information.
Chrislk02Chris Kreider13:16, 10 April 2008 (UTC)reply
I'm an aviation enthusiast too and I don't find them useful. Indeed, since you created most of these categories and I've nominated them for deletion, these positions shouldn't surprise anyone. So now you're saying that we should have three or four of these categories cluttering up each and every article about an aircraft just in case someone ever wants a complete list of how many thousand single-engine aircraft we cover? That's not one of the raisons-d'etre for having a category system - at least not according to
WP:CAT. --
Rlandmann (
talk)
19:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Delete - These categories do not help find aircraft they are currently 5328 aircraft articles and taking engines only 1328 have single-engined cat 750 multi-engined cat and 3250 still to fit into one or other of them. Thats a lot of work for no real value. I dont think anybody would scroll through a cat with two or three thousand entries after a couple of pages you would find another way like using the search!.
MilborneOne (
talk)
12:52, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
These will be needed for category intersection and are a valid clarification today. Is size now a reason to delete? As my example above shows, searches can produce quick results from the data. I believe this is due to the fact that since the categories are close together, they are given a higher value in the quality of the hit.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
19:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
There's no reason to assume that CI will ever be implemented; and you can produce comparable (or better) results in Google like
this. Of course, if you were using Google to search for a Wikipedia article, it's likely that you would also have another fact or two about the aircraft that would help you narrow it down further anyway. The categories are still not needed. Size is not a reason for deletion; but category clutter is (
WP:OCAT). However, kudos to you for demonstrating the closest thing to usefulness that anyone's been able to show for these categories! --
Rlandmann (
talk)
20:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Keep - Every one of these categories could be used by a novice reader who is looking for answers. Certainly, we can refine some of them by adding subcats but I don't think any should be deleted.
Binksternet (
talk)
10:22, 7 April 2008 (UTC)reply
They are useful by the fact that they are ACTUAL REAL LIFE categorizations of aircraft. Not something made up. Apparently aircraft designers, the FAA and other major croups think it is important to distinguish aircraft by many of these characteristics. I guess how can you aregue they are not useful?
Chrislk02Chris Kreider15:14, 9 April 2008 (UTC)reply
That's doesn't follow; just because it reflects a real world categorisation doesn't mean that it makes a good basis for categorising Wikipedia articles ("Not every verifiable fact... requires an associated category"
WP:OCAT). If my driver's licence says that my eyes are brown, does that mean that
Category:Brown-eyed people is a useful way to categorise Wikipedia articles about people? My question to KleenupKrew is about how they fulfill the basic reason for Wikipedia categories to exist - to help readers browse to articles about related topics. That they "could be useful" is one of the classic
arguments to avoid in deletion discussions (
3.5). --
Rlandmann (
talk)
08:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)reply
First off, your argument about the brown eyes is absurd. These categories are not "Aircrafct with wings," or "4 man aircraft," or even "Blue Aircraft" Also, if your eye color affected your driving licensing requirements, and was so significant a feature of the human as to change its characteristics, then it might make a good category. Jet vs prop is not like eyes. You claim that the features are un0remarkable, however they are remarkable enough to require different licnesing requirements by the FAA, and even different types of training when flying each (hi, vs low wing and the effects of ground affect and gravity drained fuel vs fuel pumps).
Chrislk02Chris Kreider13:13, 10 April 2008 (UTC)reply
And yet "Brown eyes" is a distinct real-world categorisation, is it not? In Western cultures, people are frequently described by their eye colour, and its significant enough to be included on various pieces of officialdom. So we can ask ourselves why doesn't it make a useful Wikipedia category? Simple - because it's too broad -
Category:Brown-eyed people would not help anybody find anything. It's not a characteristic that helps the reader find an article about a particular person because that person will be a needle in a haystack in such a category. Note that this is not quite the same as noting just how very bigCategory:Brown-eyed people would be; it's that such a category would be effectively useless - it is a "Non-defining characteristic" (
WP:OCAT). Also note that "unremarkable" is not the same as "unimportant". I'm not for a moment suggesting that these categories are unimportant for licencing or operating aircraft. I'm saying that they are categories that are unhelpful for finding an encyclopedia article about an aircraft out of thousands of other encyclopedia articles about aircraft. Put it this way - imagine you're looking for an article about an aircraft and you know that it had a delta wing. That's a remarkable feature - a defining characteristic. You've got a reasonable chance that
Category:Delta-wing aircraft might help you find what you're looking for. It's also reasonable to assume that a reader of one of those articles might ask "I wonder what other aircraft have delta wings?" and again, the category is useful. Now try the same thought experiment with any of the categories under discussion here. Do you really think that if all you knew about the aircraft was that it had a high wing that this would help you find the article within
Category:High wing aircraft - or would it be like looking for that needle in a haystack? Or do you think that a reader is likely to ask "I wonder what other aircraft had high wings?" --
Rlandmann (
talk)
19:36, 10 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Keep some: There is a definite need to keep some of these, because that's the fundamental way planes are categorized in the industry and a reference work should facilitate looking up "jets", for example, if that's what the reader is interested in. OTOH, I certainly agree with the nom that "high wing", "low wing", "biplane", etal. are unnecessary. Let's keep:
Delete all but Pusher aircraft (these ones are rather uncommon). There will be thousands of articles in high-wing, low-wing, or moreover, single engine, propeller and jet categories, what makes no sense. In case these categories are to be kept, they should be divided into sub-categories.
Pibwl←«23:16, 10 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Keep these are common ways to classify aircraft. Being common is not a reason to delete a category. I suggest that if we need changes in this area, that the discussion be moved to
WP:AIRCRAFT.
Vegaswikian (
talk)
00:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Keep. This is a misunderstanding of the purpose of Wikipedia categories. Very broad categories - e.g.
Category:American people are here not because American people are all alike (they are not), but because it distinguishes them from e.g.
Category:French people. There is a remarkable distinction between jet aircraft and propeller aircraft - hence the need for categories. (Still, high wing/low wing distinction is somewhat debatable.)
GregorB (
talk)
14:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)reply
These categories are fundamentally different from
Category:American people in that while "American people" could potentially hold tens of thousands of notable Americans, in fact the category only holds around 200 articles at present; because it's just a container category for a whole family of subcategories - subcategories that tell us why that American person is/was notable. What subcategories are you suggesting for
Category:single-engine aircraft? --
Rlandmann (
talk)
19:15, 12 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment It seems that a couple of these categories are subcategories of the subcategory
Category:Aircraft by propulsion, which in turn is a subcategory of
Category:Aircraft. So, if they're not categorized by jet or propeller, are you going to next delete categorizing by propulsion entirely, since every aircraft has to have propulsion of some sort, and it seems that there are only two viable options for most aircraft today, a turbine of some sort...oh, wait, that might be the answer for
Category:Jet aircraft; have a subcategory for turbofans, turbojets. Some of those propeller aircraft could find themselves in the subcategory turboprop. How about
Category:Rotary-engine aircraft?
I'll give you that single-engine and multi-engine aircraft categories in their current condition might be stretching the usefulness of a category, since you would simply duplicate information contained elsewhere. In fact, single-engine and multi-engine could be subcats of both jet and propeller aircraft if done smartly.
I think that its all fine and dandy to request a Cfd, but in all the asking of how keeping these cats is useful is a lack of explaining how you would do it otherwise. Unless it will simply be easier to implement that contingency if these cats are out of the way. You want a consensus from the project in this discussion, it might have been better to ask the project if this is what the project wanted in the first place. --
Born2flie (
talk)
21:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Some discussion took place in December (see
here), and although not many project members participated, those that did were in favour of deleting these categories (the only dissenting voice was from someone busily populating them, whose activities were why the question came up in the first place). I had intended to take it to CfD at that point, but things got delayed because of the massive article restructuring that took place within WikiProject Aircraft around the same time.
It's worth noting that in the discussion above, the comments from active WikiProject Aircraft participants are generally either in favour of total deletion, or deletion of all but maybe one or two of these cats.
How would I do it? WikiProject aircraft already has a category schema that classifies aircraft by Role, Era, and Country of origin, and this has been consistently applied right across Wikipedia's entire aircraft content - some 5,000 articles. In my opinion, that's sufficient, and that the categories named in this CfD are mere clutter. "Configuration" based categories are useful when they group aircraft that share some uncommon distinguishing feature, and I haven't suggested that these should be deleted, and indeed would argue strenuously for their retention if it were suggested. Tberefore, I don't see any problem with
Category:Aircraft by propulsion as a container category for those categories that describe an uncommon and distinguishing method of propulsion, such as
Category:Rocket-powered aircraft,
Category:Mixed-power aircraft, and
Category:Solar-powered aircraft. I just realised that we seem to be missing
Category:Steam-powered aircraft, but that would be a logical addition, since there haven't been more than a handful of those.
I agree with you that if these categories survive CfD, then the engine categories are those that most obviously lend themselves to intersection. This would at least condense two of these pieces of category clutter down to one! :) --
Rlandmann (
talk)
22:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
Userbox categories
The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.
"Original" compared to what? Essentially each of the first four categories have the potential to include every userbox in existence. The next two are so vague they could be defined to hold any template created by Wikipedians. Rather useless for navigation (the point of categories, after all). And we have (at least) six of them : ) - AFAICT most userboxes are listed (userspace and template space) on sub-pages of
Wikipedia:Userboxes. (See also:
Category:Themed Wikipedian userboxes.)
Depopulate the other 6 categories of all individual userboxes. (The individual userboxes can be re-integrated into the topical subcats at editorial discretion.)
Merge what's left of the 6 (presumably topical subcats and perhaps a few project-space pages) to
Category:Userboxes (currently a redirect to
Category:Userbox templates). ("Wikipedian" and "User" may be presumed due to "Userboxes", it matches the name of
Wikipedia:Userboxes, and this way we also avoid the confusion of Wikipedia/Wikipedian in the name.) This category should only be a
Wikipedia parent category.
Redirect and/or Salt the now deprecated 7 names, to prevent further confusion.
Yikes - I think you've come to the wrong place, Jc. Don't these belong at
TFD and/or
MFD? PS - There's no need for editable sections when you set up a group discussion.
Cgingold (
talk)
21:02, 29 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Nope, they're all categories. And I didn't want to go back and fix the link in each CfD tag, hence the multiple headers : ) -
jc3707:59, 30 March 2008 (UTC)reply
What he said; support the nomination as is. It's quite a mess, as evidenced by the fact that the nomination is a mess too. —
ScouterSig02:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)reply
Comment - I support the merging of all the redundant categories above, but as for the rest of the proposed changes, it looks quite complicated for a single nomination. A lot of it looks like you could just do it
boldly, so I say go for it.
VegaDark (
talk)
03:30, 3 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Merge -- per nom might work. Existing userboxes need to be easier to find and be found. Despite the template namespace controversy, they're an important part of wiki culture. --
Strangelv (
talk)
00:37, 4 April 2008 (UTC)reply
If someone wants to put the word out, feel free. Otherwise, I have no problem closing this, as it appears to be just holding categories for templates. --
Kbdank7113:54, 4 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so that consensus may be reached. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,
Zzyzx11(Talk)02:03, 6 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Agree completely These categories serve no real purpose (or rather, their purposes overlap too much.) Consensus has already been reached, so I'll close this in 24 hours, unless something funny happens. -
Justin (koavf)❤
T☮
C☺
M☯
04:51, 10 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Approve my position See below - This post addresses all the categories listed in this CfD (as of this post). Here is how the resulting hierarchy should be
As for the other listed categories, here is what should be done:
Category:Original Wikipedian userboxes - The term "original" is ambiguous. The term "Wikipedian" is redundant of "user". This category should be depopulated then deleted.
Category:Userbox navigation templates The term is "navigational", not "navigation." Also, only one template needs to be created to navigate through all the Userbox template options. This category would not be populated by enough items and any such item can be placed in
Category:Navigational templates. This category should be depopulated and deleted.
Category:Wikipedia templates by namespace - Templates can be used as appropriate and are not always namespace restricted. This category serves no purpose. It should be depopulated and deleted.
Comment (Kind of hard to thread to the above, so commenting here instead)
First, thanks for catching navigational. Though I note that at
Category:Navigational templates there doesn't seem to be a standard convention. Perhaps all those subcats should be nominated in order to determine convention?
Second, "Category:User namespace templates" is part of another tree, so it's preferable to "User templates". (Let's not disrupt things more than we have to.) Though you are welcome to nominate
Category:Wikipedia templates by namespace and its subcats for discussion.
Third, due to quite a bit of previous (and somewhat ongoing) controversy, it's better if we don't call the category "Userbox templates", and just call it "userboxes". (Again, let's attempt to prevent disruption and further controversy.)
Other than that, you pretty much summed up my nomination. Thanks for your obviously well thought out comments : ) -
jc3717:22, 13 April 2008 (UTC)reply
Agree with nominator - Thanks, Jc37. In summary, I agree with what ever you want to do. I think this should be closed as Merge and make other changes as proposed in the nomination with an agreement that Jc37 may make the necessary changes based on this CfD (since Jc37 seems to have a handle on the situation, is an admin, and the other CfD participants seem to agree with this as well).
GregManninLB (
talk)
01:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)reply
The above is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the category's talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this section.