I do not think this was closed properly. It was not deleted but the whole debate has been rife with SPA's (I am loath to yell for SPI) and it was followed by a non-admin closure (also by a SPA). At the very least it was a controversial closure which should not be done via non-admin.
Peter Rehse (
talk)
10:29, 7 February 2017 (UTC)reply
The above is an archive of the
deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
Category:Roman Catholic Church – No consensus, closure maintained by default. Opinions are divided between endorsing because the closure reflected the discussion's consensus, and overturn because that consensus is deemed mistaken. I can't resolve this, ahem, ex cathedra. However, a renomination (or, as suggested, an RfC covering both article and category space) remains possible given the concerns that have been voiced. – Sandstein 21:26, 17 February 2017 (UTC)reply
The following is an archived debate of the
deletion review of the page above. Please do not modify it.
This closure 1/ overlooked the fact that the nominator's rationale misrepresented policy, 2/ ignored failure of the CFD to consider previous discussions, 3/ Failed to take previous discussions into account when closing.
The nominator's central rationale was the categories should have been speedily renamed per
WP:C2D. Yet C2D is very clear that it "applies only if the related page's current name (and by extension, the proposed name for the category) is unambiguous, and uncontroversial". (emphasis added by me). Note that this wording appears to be unchanged from the version
when the nomination was made. The proposed new title was clearly ambiguous (see
Catholic Church (disambiguation)), and the closer should have been very cautious when closing a discussion based on a nomination which so clearly misrepresented policy.
The nominator did not even mention the fact that the same proposal had been made at two previous CFDs where it was rejected overwhelmingly (
2010, rejected 8:1; and
2011, rejected 7:1). The 2010 CFD was clearly linked from the category's talk page
[1], and the previous CFDs are also evident in the category page's history.
[2][3] and in
what links here. It would not have been hard for the nominator to be make themselves aware of those discussions before launching a new one, and per
WP:BEFORE#B4 they should have done so. The nominator did not address the arguments made in those CFDs, or indicate what had changed since then, and I see no evidence of any attempt to notify previous participants (which is now easily done, thanks to {{ping}}).
The closer made no closing statement beyond the bare "rename all", so did not account for how they weighed the previous discussions in making their closure, or how the CFD being closed had addressed the arguments made in the previous discussions.
Consensus can change, but asking an already-settled question without considering previous discussions is a form of
WP:FORUMSHOPping. When that question is asked again with a rationale which misrepresents policy, the closer should be wary of overturning a consensus reached in previous discussions with somewhat higher participation ... and do so only with a very clear rationale to justify whey they assess the flawed ab initio discussion as evidence that community consensus has indeed changed.
This decision relates to what may be the world's largest non-state organisational grouping, with many thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of en.wp categories. Much greater caution should have been applied in closing a discussion with such far-reaching impact on the encyclopedia.
I discussed this with the closing admin
[4].
BU Rob13 was as ever open and civil, but we failed to reach agreement. Rob also felt that even if he took a different view, it would be wrong to revert any of his admin actions now that he had voluntarily relinquished his adminship. (I think that may be an overcautious view, but it is both reasonable and honourable).
It is notable that that currently-open discussion on sub-sub-cats is derived from a misrepresentation of
WP:C2D (by ignoring the ambiguity issue), and also flawed by not mentioning the previous CFDs. I am unpersuaded that such a deficient CFD can be reliable indication of a change in consensus. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
08:38, 7 February 2017 (UTC)reply
Comment from closing admin. Responding to a few things:
WP:C2D is a speedy rename criteria, and so its exceptions are intended to move ambiguous cases to a full discussion, as happened here. Applying the spirit of C2D at a full discussion (though not the criteria itself) is policy-based, in my opinion, and it has a lot of precedent. We also have to consider consensus on whether there's that much ambiguity here, not just personal thoughts on the matter. Potential for confusion was weighed by many supporting editors who came up with a reasonable view that there isn't much potential for confusion. Whether or not I agree with that view (I actually do not), it's not something I can discount as a neutral closer. The spirit behind
WP:COMMONNAME was also invoked, and those arguments were similarly reasonable, although note that COMMONNAME itself does not apply to categories. I didn't include a closing statement because this close seemed very uncontroversial at the time, but I believe my interactions with
BrownHairedGirl on my talk page satisfied the need for transparency, so that is not a rationale to overturn the close. I did see and take into account the past discussions, but they are so old that I don't feel particularly attached to them. I rarely put much weight on discussions that are many years old (unless they were true project-wide discussions with an incredible turnout). FORUMSHOP doesn't apply to reassessing an issue years after it was first discussed at the same venue it was originally discussed; that's just normal testing of
WP:CCC. Other than that, I'll defer to the comments I made on my user talk page. I do not intend to participate further here unless pinged with a question. ~
Rob13Talk10:07, 7 February 2017 (UTC)reply
I agree that applying the spirit of C2D has many many precedents at CFD, but the purpose of the ambiguity exception is to trigger a full CFD to assess the claim of ambiguity. The nominator did not do that at all, and the first three !votes didn't do that at all. The 4th support consists of a blanket rejection in principle of ambiguity concerns, which contradicts policy that they should be considered. The first support which actually addresses the issue is the fifth support, which simply says in the absence of any reason to disambiguate here; that accepts the of principle that ambiguity should be considered, but ignores the evidence of ambiguity identified earlier by Oculi had not been mentioned. And that's it; there is no attempt by any of the support !voters to assess the ambiguity in this case. So there is actually nothing to discount; it's not there. Rob is also wrong to say that FORUMSHOP doesn't apply to the same venue; the policy is quite clear that it does apply. That just leaves the question of disregarding older discussions after a passage of time. I don't think there is any precise formula to weigh their relevance, but just as AFD lists previous discussions very prominently in a pull-out box, a CFD nomination should at least flag them up-front. In this case, half of the !votes to support were posted before there was any mention of previous discussion. Finally, Riob rightly cites
WP:CCC, but it says Editors may propose a change to current consensus, especially to raise previously unconsidered arguments or circumstances. This discussion raised no new arguments, and made no attempt to reassess those which found consensus support on two previous occasions. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
Well. I suppose
Catholic Church#Name and
Roman Catholic (term), both extensively updated since the time of previous references, could give substantial indication of the consensus on Wikipedia (which I perceive is reflected in the current state). If somebody wishes to argue differently, I suppose gaining consensus for editing these two articles in other directions than their current state would make the task seem more serious.
Chicbyaccident (
talk)
Overturn and relist. One of the purposes of Del Rev is to examine if a close is against policy, because closers are obliged to take account of the views supported by policy, not all views whatsoever.It may have followed consensus, but there's a good argument the consensus was against policy.. This needs to be discussed further. We need some mechanism for calling attend to the very few CfDs that pose broader questions, which are lost among the great number that do not., because otherwise people will not notice them--CfD is mainly attended by a few specialists. DGG (
talk )
19:03, 8 February 2017 (UTC)reply
Relist, I can't fault the closer for the way they went given the discussion, but as wide ranging a change at this needs more input, especially given the decisive and much larger discussions in the past on the topic.
Lankiveil(
speak to me)09:33, 10 February 2017 (UTC).reply
Endorse closure reflected the consensus at CfD and while I'm sympathetic to DGG's views that CfD does not attract that many participants, I do not think relisitng would attract that many more uninvolved views.
TonyBallioni (
talk)
17:27, 12 February 2017 (UTC)reply
Endorse. Strong arguments in the discussion were WP:C2D, the parent article is at
Catholic Church, and the category contains "catholic church" things other than "Roman catholic church" things. Another very strong point is that CfD does not attract diverse participants. This is half the reason why categories should defer titling decisions to parent articles. Consequently, I suggest that BHG open an RfC at
Talk:Catholic Church, probably to pose the question of whether to rename the article and dependent categories to
Roman Catholic Church. Personally, I feel inclined to support a move of
Catholic Church (disambiguation) to the base name, asserting that there is no PrimaryTopic. --
SmokeyJoe (
talk)
02:23, 14 February 2017 (UTC)reply
IAR talk about it some more. Looking at the XfD, it seems clear to me that the close correctly reflects the discussion. So, I guess that means endorse. But, after reading
User:BrownHairedGirl's arguments, I can't help thinking that it's still the wrong result. I support
SmokeyJoe's suggestion of starting an RfC to discuss it further. --
RoySmith(talk)00:02, 16 February 2017 (UTC)reply
@
RoySmith: I think that the question of whether the close correctly reflects the discussion depends on two questions: 1/ whether each discussion should be treated as a tabula rasa, without regard to previous discussions, 2/ whether a discussion based on a misrepresentation of policy amounts to a valid consensus. Regardless of the substantive merits of this particular case, it still strikes me as a very bad precedent to treat a discussion on that basis as a valid consensus. My main concern is that there should somehow be a broad consensus on the substantive issue, and if an RFC is the way to do that, then that's fine by me, and
WP:IAR may be a good principle to get us there. But I would still be sad to see a CFD done in this way being upheld, because it seems to me to be storing up trouble for the future. --
BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (
contribs)
11:19, 16 February 2017 (UTC)reply
The above is an archive of the
deletion review of the page listed in the heading. Please do not modify it.
Stay deleted. No argument here to do otherwise. There's no claim here of anything improper about the AfD process; and the other "credible sources" mentioned above are described only very vaguely ("photographic work on various published books") or are in fact neither sources nor evidence of notability (the thousands of "followers"). -
Hoary (
talk)
07:26, 7 February 2017 (UTC)reply
Stay deleted. Your estimation of significance, I am sorry to say, in no way matches the level required by Wikipedia. Please see
WP:BIO for details. Their number of followers on social media does not count; being an admin of a Flickr group of other peoples' work does not even register; Wikipedia policy states "People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject." Alternatively, notability can be determined by either of: a) "The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for one several times." or b) "The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field." or c) "The person has an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography or similar publication." -
Lopifalko (
talk)
09:03, 7 February 2017 (UTC)reply
Endorse deletion the "sources" were each rebutted at the AFD, many did not even mention the article subject at all. Social media
WP:BIGNUMBERs are easily gamed and don't really count toward notability for our purposes unless they're SO extraordinary that they're covered in reliable sources.
Andrew Lenahan - Starblind01:41, 9 February 2017 (UTC)reply