Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 March 12

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March 12

Category:18th-century church buildings in Sweden

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's
talk page or in a deletion review
). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: keep. MER-C 12:22, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Merge. Only entry at this level in the category tree. This is also the only entry in Category:18th-century church buildings by country which I don't believe is needed at this point. That part of the tree exists with content only for the 19th century. Given the large number of existing church building categories, is this by century by country really needed? Most, if not all of the building articles are already in the country tree. Depending on the outcome here, a discussion of the 19th century category may be needed. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:16, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and populate. I woudl be surprised if there were not a lot of notable buildings from this and the preceding century. Perhaps since this is the English WP, many that appear in the Swedish WP do not appear here, but should. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:01, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Peterkingiron Laurel Lodged (talk) 19:16, 22 March 2015 (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.

Category:17th-century church buildings in Sweden

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's
talk page or in a deletion review
). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: keep. MER-C 12:22, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Merge. Only by country category at this point in the tree. Everything else is by denomination. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:10, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Weak keep while on a global level a categorization by denomination is most meaningful, it is not meaningful at all in a country like Sweden in which a single denomination strongly dominates the religious landscape. The same applies to many other countries, by the way. Marcocapelle (talk) 22:30, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and populate as with 18th Century one (above). Peterkingiron (talk) 19:02, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per Peterkingiron Laurel Lodged (talk) 19:17, 22 March 2015 (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.

Category:School board members in Japan

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's
talk page or in a deletion review
). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: delete as non-defining. The objectors below seem to have misunderstood the rationale. See also
WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. – Fayenatic London 22:35, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
Nominator's rationale: School board members are normally appointed on a voluntary basis and the position form a very minor part of the subjects lives - particularly the only two in this category Toshihiko Seko and Kunio Yonenaga. This is not profoundly different from other kinds of membership category, such as union or party membership. SFB 20:12, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • These two categories should be nominated for deletion as well. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:56, 11 April 2015 (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.

Category:Suckless

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's
talk page or in a deletion review
). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: delete. MER-C 12:24, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Category for a company that is itself not notable. Only three items in the category. Just can't see the utility here. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 18:20, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete as company itself doesn't even meet WP:Notability Snuggums (talk / edits) 18:51, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete Pointless cat for self-promo. ― Padenton |☎  18:16, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per SNUGGUMS. If the company/group/site doesn't even have its own article, then why is there a category for it? // coldacid (talk|contrib) 19:29, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete -- Whatever this is about, we cannot have a category where the main article does not exist as NN. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:05, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per SNUGGUMS. Both
    WP:SMALLCAT apply. MarnetteD|Talk 19:28, 21 March 2015 (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.

Category:Scales with unusual key signatures

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's
talk page or in a deletion review
). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: delete (contents merged to Category:Musical scales). Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:40, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Propose deletion, as category depends on
subjective inclusion criteria that are inherently biased toward one musical tradition (Western European classical music). Ibadibam (talk) 17:24, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
You may disagree with "unusual", but you are not arguing with me, but with Dave Hunter and Tommy Tedesco. How about "nonstandard" instead of unusual? Hyacinth (talk) 20:14, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Never heard of them until seeing your changes to the category info. As the nominator implies and I was getting at, these key-signatures are only non-standard if the standard is Western-classical music as written from ca. 1650 onwards. However, as this represents an inherent bias towards a single music tradition (albeit influential) it is something WP works to avoid. The other music traditions have their own scales, it is only when there is an attempt to write them down in Western-classical style that these key signatures appear. Also, a key signature is just a printed shorthand to make reading a score easier, it's not some special talisman that is an essential part of the piece of music. Remove the key signature and mark all the relevant notes with accidentals, the music is still the same. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. If my memory serves me, there are 1700-odd different scales and, I can't think when, where or how one would decide which is unusual, nonstandard or otherwise. Why can't all the scales live together, or would that cause disharmony in WP? --Richhoncho (talk) 22:26, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If we delete this category there will still be twelve subcategories of Category:Musical scales. Hyacinth (talk) 06:27, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
None of the other sub-categories are about the key-signature of the scale (or what the scale looks like in printed music shorthand), so this is a strawman argument. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The category's criteria for inclusion is entirely objective, and is now stated on the category page. Hyacinth (talk) 06:31, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment 'unusual' is dependent on cultural context, there are probably people that think a major scale sounds pretty unusual. However, the category seems to be clearly scales found outside the western diatonic patters "father Charles goes down and ends battle" and all that. What would people think of renaming the category to "non
common practice scales" or something similar? Storeye (talk) 08:54, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
It would be the right thing to do if the category were worth keeping. But even after renaming or redefining the inclusion criteria, the terms "common practice" or "standard" are still dependent on cultural context and thus inherently biased. It also seems like the category still wouldn't be defining, something of a
miscellaneous category. Why would we categorize things based on what they are not? A category of "nonstandard" scales is as useful as a category of non-English football clubs or chocolate-free cakes. Ibadibam (talk) 22:11, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
The term 'common practice' in music is a recognised term that is not dependent on cultural context, see Common practice period. But you're right that it does define things based on what they're not rather than what they are Storeye (talk) 06:00, 22 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Question: Aren't the standard key signatures in themselves a part of Western European (not necessarily just classical) music tradition? There is absolutely nothing subjective about deciding what is not usual: there are exactly 15 usual ones, and all others are unusual/nonstandard.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:59, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
However, just because we're used to the key-signature for B-major looking like:
{ \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \clef bass \key b \major \hideNotes f4 }
doesn't mean that expressing it like:
{ \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \clef bass \set Staff.keySignature = #`(((-2 . 3) . ,SHARP) ((-1 . 0) . ,SHARP) ((-2 . 4) . ,SHARP) ((-1 . 1) . ,SHARP) ((-2 . 5) . ,SHARP)) \hideNotes f4 }
is wrong or unusual. And, while key signatures like
{ \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \clef treble \set Staff.keySignature = #`(((0 . 6) . ,FLAT) ((0 . 5) . ,FLAT) ((0 . 3) . ,SHARP)) \hideNotes f'4 }
weren't seen in Western European music from about 1700 to 1925(?), they were used to indicate scordatura tunings in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Does "unusual" mean wrong? If so, let's rename the category. Hyacinth (talk) 10:27, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
In answer to your question: No. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:06, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Either keep The definition seems to be that the notes do not fit the standard Western 12-note scale. That is a legitimate category, but the present name is unsatisfactory, since it appears to involve POV as to what is usual. In fact there is a robust (non-POV) definiiton in the headnote. If not kept, merge back to Category: Musical scales, rather than delete. Peterkingiron (talk) 19:11, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete: The title is misleading; scales and key signatures aren't actually as inextricably linked as the category title suggests. Many pieces historically in C minor were written with two flats: B♭ and E♭. It's OR and contrary to practice to suggest that one can reverse-engineer a key signature from the scale's notes. If you did that with G harmonic minor, you'd get a signature with one sharp and two flats. And what would you do with scales which don't have 7 notes? Seems like what you mean is unusual scales. But I don't see a need for a separate category for those. Just categorize them under Category:Scales. —Wahoofive (talk) 16:21, 23 March 2015 (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.

Category:Pakistan studies journals

The following is an archived discussion concerning one or more categories. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on an appropriate discussion page (such as the category's
talk page or in a deletion review
). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: merge. – Fayenatic London 22:38, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: This cat was split off from Asian studies journals and only contains 1 article, with not much potential for growth. The parent cat only has 50 entries, which is not overly large. Hence I propose that this cat be upmerged to Asian studies journals. Randykitty (talk) 14:54, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with no objection to recreating later if more articles appear. RevelationDirect (talk) 03:29, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Merge having a one entry category of this type is not useful. If more get articles (whether by coming into existence of existing or past ones having articles created) this can be revisited, but at present there is no reason for this category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:53, 10 April 2015 (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.

Natural "death by cause" 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.
The result of the discussion was: closed as a trainwreck - No prejudice against more clear, more focused re-nominations. Note: I commented in the discussion below. But I think this is pretty clear that most agree that, while this may have been an interesting brainstorming session of a discussion, this is a mess (see also the talk page for one disentangling attempt), and no consensus will be found here except to agree that it's a mess : ) - Obviously any uninvolved closer is welcome to substitute their own close for this. - jc37 15:21, 30 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
full list
Nominator's rationale: Natural deaths are nothing out of the ordinary, therefore should be deleted as routine catagories. If needed, cause of death should be migrated to Wikidata. Also nominating all subcats of these. --Mdann52 (talk) 10:32, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Of course deleting it before it is migrated to Wikidata is the silliest possible outcome. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:32, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The last time I checked, WikiData was specifically not using category tags as a source of information; they prefer (quite rightly, IMO) cited information - e.g. from infoboxes and lists. DexDor (talk) 21:38, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

* Support per nom. Marcocapelle (talk) 22:36, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Mdann52: You're saying "also nominating all subcats of these", I assume you mean that you are going to nominate the subcats, right? Because at this point of time you haven't nominated them yet. Marcocapelle (talk) 22:36, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree with Marcocapelle that we need some clarification here. Some of these categories either are currently or could potentially be limited as container categories for the subcategories. I think we need to know what exact categories are being nominated in this nomination before users can make a fully informed decision. For some of these one might say "keep" to if the subcategories are not being immediately nominated, but one's opinion might change if all the subcategories are also being nominated. Good Ol’factory (talk) 22:55, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Procedural oppose. The subcats have not been nominated for deletion so this CFD would, for example, leave Category:Suicides by starvation without a starvation parent category. In a case like this you really need to either nominate a complete tree for deletion or start at the bottom of the tree and work upwards (or explain in the nomination why no change to the subcats is needed). However, I do agree that bio articles should not be categorized by cause of death; it is an important fact about a person, but it is not defining in an encyclopedic sense (e.g. an article about a Foolandian politician should be categorized under Fooland, people and politics, but not under medicine). DexDor (talk) 06:54, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support in principle, but the details should be checked - e.g. Category:Methanol poisoning incidents and Category:Black Assizes should be removed from the nomination. It would also be a good idea to check for articles (example) in these categories that are not biographical articles and may need to be upmerged (I'm wondering if there's an automated way to detect such articles). DexDor (talk) 19:39, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Procedural oppose – a plausible case has been made that some causes of death are not defining and are of interest only briefly. However looking within
    Oculi (talk) 12:00, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
    ]
The defenestration CFD proposed an incorrect merge; there's no contradiction between the category surviving that CFD, but being deleted by this one. DexDor (talk) 19:39, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the articles in
se ones) of which a few may need to be upmerged. Articles like Death of Otto Zehm are already in a more suitable category. DexDor (talk) 09:04, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
I would support the deletion of categories which are not parent categories to which the nom applies: ie those relating to "Natural deaths [which] are nothing out of the ordinary". Marcocapelle (below) is developing a list, which seems a splendid idea. Kudos to the nominator too for a prodigious effort.
Oculi (talk) 19:36, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
  • I think it's fair enough to tag (a selection of) subcategories as well, include these in the list of nominated categories and discuss them right here. Marcocapelle (talk) 14:17, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've tagged all those I think should be deleted, as per the comments above. I've removed the one recently discussed. @DexDor: I've nominated them all now. Mdann52 (talk) 17:16, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per nom except all suicide categories (including hunger strike categories), all executed categories, jockeys killed while racing, filmed deaths from falls, all AIDS-related categories, live burial and falling out of airplane. Marcocapelle (talk) 18:14, 13 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, for some of the exceptions I mentioned (filmed falls, jockeys killed while racing), I'd be okay with listifying instead of keeping the category, per jc37. Marcocapelle (talk) 08:00, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Support - especially all the general grouping by disease or sickness or execution or suicide, and general grouping by hazardous recreational events/activities. That said, Keep the pandemic ones (including Category:Black Assizes), the hunger strike ones, and the nazi burials, since those are specific shared events. Keep the poison incidents one. Keep or Listify the jockeys in races one (it's more than just riding horses) and the falling out of airplanes one. Weak keep/listify filmed falls. - jc37 04:50, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I'm trying to imagine the closing admin going through these and saying well, this many people generally supported this but every single one of them had different exceptions.RevelationDirect (talk) 10:46, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment the nominator's rationale refers to natural deaths, but many of the nominated categories do not seem so natural (Parachuting deaths? Deaths by horse-riding accident? People executed by starvation?). Also, many categories are definitely NOT ordinary, and appear as definiting characteristics of the individuals, sometimes one of their claims of notability (eg Suicides by... categories‎, Deaths by defenestration, People who died on the 1981 Irish hunger, Deaths from Ebola, Deaths from plague, Deaths from yellow fever, Deaths by live burial, Jockeys killed while racing, Filmed deaths from falls, are some examples of categories that IMO should absolutely be kept). I am also uncertain about AIDS, which seems a defining characteristic for most of the individuals who were affected by it (including a bunch specific coverage focusing on "he/she & AIDS"). Some very rare degenerative diseases would require further investigation as well. On the other hand, some categories are quite ordinary and non-defining, and could go away without any regret. Probably a wider and more accurate RfC discussion would be a better way to handle with the death-related categories and to achieve more consistent results. Cavarrone 11:47, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you think that, for example,
just one of the biographical facts included in the article text. DexDor (talk) 12:35, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
Because it kills 30,000 non-notable people in the third world. It killed about 50 notable people in recorded human history. 11,000,000 people died in 2014, yet we have Category:2014 deaths --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:14, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Category:2014 deaths etc are, I believe, more for administrative purposes (e.g. for BLP tagging) than for navigation - hence we don't split them into subcats when they get beyond a few hundred members. DexDor (talk) 21:30, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Procedural proposal On my home page User:Marcocapelle I made a list of all categories, leaving out the country subcats, in three groups and otherwise in alphabetical order.
  1. Can we move this list to a any more neutral place? (Where?)
  2. Can everyone who agrees on the general principle of deleting most of these categories puts his username behind a category if he/she wants the category not to be deleted? By default the objection will also apply to the country subcats of that category.
  3. Assuming there will still be a large amount of categories left to which nobody objects to delete, I would suggest the closing admin only deletes categories to which nobody objects (including the respective country categories), without prejudice against discussing (in a later nomination) any particular category that is kept for the time being. Marcocapelle (talk) 17:29, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've added my keep !votes against 2. A more neutral place to put the list would be the talk page of this page or a
subpage of this page. DexDor (talk) 18:56, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
It's on the talk page now. Good suggestion! Marcocapelle (talk) 19:15, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fine with granular tabulation of exceptions but it only applies if the overall proposal passes. (I don't want to discount Lugnuts and other editors who may disagree with this whole endeavor.) My 3 exceptions are addedRevelationDirect (talk) 21:53, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely agree. By taking the exceptions apart, we can discuss at this place whether or not the principle is right. Marcocapelle (talk) 23:16, 14 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just out of curiosity, why do you think AIDS should be kept, but not syphilis, rabies ... ? DexDor (talk) 09:49, 15 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
A strong majority appears to agree with deleting many of these categories. I see one blanket "Keep! We need them all" vote, but maybe there are others. But that does NOT equate to agreement that we should delete all nominated categories that no-one specifically objected to. As an imperfect analogy, think of the military commander who says, "We will execute all the war criminals on this list next week." Several people recognize names on the list and protest that their friends are entirely innocent. "No problem," says the commander, "we'll only execute the people for whom no-one has spoken up." Just as civilized societies follow due process and not summary execution, this blanket CfD request should be replaced with targeted discussion in each area. What types of categories do we see here? What purpose does each type serve? Are there other ways to correlate those articles that are at least as useful as categorization? What's needed (e.g. wikidata expansion) to get to a point where a CfD request could be supported for a particular category type? Etc. Rupert Clayton (talk) 22:25, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
*@DexDor: Mdann52 bot is approved for tagging/detagging categories related to the CfD, so if it is needed, I consider it in scope to retag or detag any cats that are not involved in a future CfD (which would, at the minimum, mean going through and changing the dates on the tempates). 11:05, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • keep all including all the subcats that are being wildly tagged without even a semblance of discussion here. Causes of death are most certainly defining to the individual. Hmains (talk) 00:06, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep all: These categories are of major importance, especially from a medical perspective, as well as being defining to the individual. They serve useful purposes to those of us working with the medical and health aspects of biographical articles. "Natural deaths" are of no less importance than extraordinary or unnatural deaths. It would be a great loss if these categories were removed. —
    sign 00:14, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Essay I agree that death is defining to a person. Here's how deaths have been defined in my family:
  • Died Old vs. Died Young
  • Lingering or Painful vs. Sudden
  • Natural vs. Suicide/Car Accident
  • Who found the body
  • Life Insurance vs. No Life Insurance
I look at our categories with obscure medical diagnoses or method of suicide, and they really ring hollow to me. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:38, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Note to closer Please ping me when this is closed - My bot is approved to detag these, so when we are ready, If this is a no consensus/keep, I'll run it to remove the tags. Mdann52 (talk) 11:05, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment This discussion will be moot in 1-2 years when this sort of information is curated in Wikidata then migrated to the Wikipedia of every language by an automated process. See d:Property:P1196, manner of death, and d:Property:P509, cause of death on Wikidata. See also Johann Sebastian Bach (Q1339) as the test case biography which is most developed. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:42, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Nationality, date of birth, date of death, and cause of death are standard biographical details. An obituary which omits cause of cause would generally be considered incomplete. The amount by which cause of death defines the person will vary - sometimes it will be the most defining characteristic - such as Titanic victims and AIDS victims, other times it may be minor, so it becomes an editorial decision if an individual article requires a cause of death category, but, yes, of course we should keep the potential to categorise those articles which would require such a cat. SilkTork ✔Tea time 19:29, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Categorization is not identical to including standard biographical details, per
    WP:NONDEF. Marcocapelle (talk) 21:54, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Keep all / procedural oppose I could be persuaded that a fair number of these categories are not justified and do not add to the encyclopedia. However, the fact that the nominator is pushing for the deletion of more than 1,000 categories based on a three-sentence justification highlights a significant imbalance within Wikipedia's procedures. All of these categories cover the more or less "natural" cause of death of multiple individuals, but their merit varies widely.
As an example, I created Category:Deaths from the 1889–1890 flu pandemic two years ago. It currently has 15 members and was modeled on the earlier Category:Deaths from the 1918 flu pandemic with 129 members. Research into historical flu pandemics is an important aspect of epidemiology. About 1 million people died during the 1889–1890 flu pandemic. There were extensive studies of transmission and treatment at the time (even though little was known about what caused flu), and the pandemic has been the subject of recent research. It is germane to the biography of notable individuals that they died in this pandemic, and conversely, the deaths of notable people and the historical effect of them are relevant to study of the epidemic. These categories provide a useful connection. Consequently, I would make a strong case to keep these particular categories. So that's my seven-sentence argument for keeping two of these categories. Others may disagree. A CFD discussion with a note on my talk page would be a reasonable way to kick off that conversation. Either way, we need more than the nominator's three-sentence dismissal.
To pick another category at random, I would be less concerned if Category:Cancer deaths in Newfoundland and Labrador were to be deleted, as it has two members who are not connected by anything beyond being notable citizens of the same Canadian province who suffered one of the most common causes of death. Overall, I think we should respect the work invested in accumulating the knowledge that these 1000+ categories represent. That means that any proposal to delete, upmerge or listify these categories should take them in sensible chunks of similar categories. Lots of this stuff might be better handled through wikidata but it would seem that we can leave the category deletion until after that is substantially complete. Rupert Clayton (talk) 22:05, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep all I agree with Rupert Clayton. Any cause of death, natural or otherwise, is not necessarily, but can be, definitive in/of a person's life. It seems like there is more of a problem with making users aware of what kinds of categories are useful and appropriate, and under what conditions they should be assigned. Combining unrelated factors into a single category causes data integrity problems. We could end up having categories like pianists-who-died-of-heart-attacks-in-Indonesia-in-1935 and end up with the same number of categories as there are deaths! Such confounded or combined categories can/should be proposed for deletion. (On the other hand, if there is a reason for the dual category, like if there were a cancer cluster in a particular location, that is a unique situation, and a logical category.) Peacedance (talk) 03:37, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Peacedance nicely illustrates both the problem with excessive and irrelevant categorization, and the problem with deleting the current categories. There's a very good chance that Wikidata can provide a better solution, but it's not there yet. To take the example above, the individual would have an "occupation" property of "pianist", a "date of death" property of "21 February 1935", a "cause of death" property of "heart attack", and a "location of death" property of "Jakarta" (among many others). This data stored in Wikidata can then be used to populate an infobox, and provide appropriate navigation and grouping (as categories do now). Presuming that a good UI will be designed to help users navigate, they could find other pianists who died in Jakarta, other people who died of heart attacks in Indonesia in the third week of February 1935, etc. There's also a question of how to select and prioritize this data within the Wikipedia article. But we can see there's a good chance that there will be no need for manual categorization in the way we currently perform it. However, all the above requires Wikidata's software and content to advance to that point. And until that work is much closer to completion, any CfD request in this area needs to operate carefully and conservatively. Rupert Clayton (talk) 23:08, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Well said. Remember the data in the categories is harmonized, and the cause_of_death field is not. category:myocardial_infarction can have as the cause_of_death any one of the dozen or so euphemisms or historical names for a heart attack. Even in current death certificates issued by states the names are not harmonized from state to state. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 23:35, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fortunate then that Wikidata has support for aliases for everything. As long as all the alternate names for "myocardial infarction" are included in that item, a single category can be populated to list deaths by heart attack, heart stoppage, myocardial infarction... // coldacid (talk|contrib) 00:20, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just getting into Wikidata, and I agree that aliases might provide some help here, at least where two terms are synonyms. But disease categorization is more messy than that. Like biological taxonomy, different viewpoints exist on whether closely related conditions should be grouped or split, and there are competing ways to group diseases (symptoms, affected organs, causative agent, etc.) Of course, systems such as ICD-10 already classify diseases quite precisely. Wikidata links provides ICD-9 and ICD-10 classifications as a property of a disease, but some causes of death won't map precisely. Is "death of a human by bull attack" the same as "W55.22 Struck by cow"? Is "defenestration" the same as "W13.4 Fall from, out of or through window"? Even for diseases, ICD-10 is still an imperfect solution for cause of death. We need to agree common name aliases so that "I21 ST elevation (STEMI) and non-ST elevation (NSTEMI) myocardial infarction" becomes "heart attack" in English. We also need to provide an easy way to select the correct entry. And we have to deal with a whole bunch of historical medical conditions where assignment would be speculative ("a broken heart", "apoplexy", and "a surfeit of lamphreys" come to mind). Rupert Clayton (talk) 22:57, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@
SNOMED rather than a statistical classification. [Disclaimer: I'm a nosologist in RL.] Beeswaxcandle (talk) 23:18, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
@Beeswaxcandle: Ah, I don't think I was trying to suggest that ICD-10 lacked precision in describing the medical cause of a person's death. My point was rather that Wikidata and Wikipedia's criteria for categorizing cause of death might differ in some way from those of ICD-10 — that we might not have one-to-one mappings between the terms people expect to use in an encyclopedia for general readership and those of ICD-10. For example, ICD-10 cares that falling from a window caused the person's death; Wikipedia has Category:Deaths by defenestration because someone cared about grouping people who were intentionally pushed out of windows. In reality, the value of using (or linking to) an existing controlled vocabulary likely outweighs the few edge cases where we need to know whether the deceased fell or was pushed, and there's nothing to prevent adding an additional property that adds that granularity. Rupert Clayton (talk) 23:32, 21 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep all and procedural oppose: no sufficiently valid reason has been presented as far as I am concerned for the removal of these categories. The information these categories provide, and can potentially provide, far outweighs any minor procedural misgivings, IMO. Quis separabit? 12:55, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment How do we determine objectively whether a potential category is defining or not? It seems 50% subjective. How would you define it so that I could write a bot that would read a biography or an obituary and it would pick out all the relevant categories that define a person? If you can do that, then it becomes objective. If you can't it is arbitrary. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:30, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    I think in some cases these categories are defining and then, once they're created, it's hard to control widespread categorization since it becomes a judgment call. The AIDS category tree has Category:HIV/AIDS activists which I think is useful because, often, someone who died of a disease is notable not for cause of death per se, but because they became outspoken on the issue. RevelationDirect (talk) 19:55, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I thought an encyclopaedia's mission is to impart reliable information. The circumstances of the death of any subject deemed sufficiently notable to have an article on Wikipedia in the first place are not unimportant, but vary in importance by degrees. Quis separabit? 00:10, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
To understand where I'm coming from, we have plenty of articles on chess and basketball which are certainly notable and we categorize professionals in those fields as such as notable. But we don't categorize every biography by whether or not they did those things as a hobby because the overlap is not notable. I see this as analogous to these death by cause categories; other editors obviously don't.RevelationDirect (talk) 12:12, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There is, however, a significant difference between categorizing chess players by their hobbies, and categorizing notable individuals by their cause of death. —
sign 18:43, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
I actually see them both as
WP:TRIVIALCAT (a trivial intersection) unless the person is notable because of chess or their death. Others obviously see a difference.RevelationDirect (talk) 02:29, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
  • Keep All Hey! Let's delete all "routine catagories [sic] because they are "nothing out of the ordinary"! That would include year of birth, year of death, place of residence and career! After all, aren't all of these remarkably ordinary? Everybody is born, everybody lives somewhere, does something and then dies; Nothing vaguely interesting there, so let's junk it all. Remarkably we categorize on all of these remarkably ordinary characteristics because they are defining, despite their utterly boring ordinariness. I also enjoy the "source bias" of using material in newspaper obituaries. It's how people are described on a consistent basis in reliable and verifiable sources that makes something encyclpedic, and newspaper articles, encyclopedias and books have a nasty and consistent habit of prominently listing a cause of death. Given that the reliable and verifiable sources that are the bedrock standard for Wikipedia are consistently and prominently focusing on a cause of death, that's what we should be doing here. Alansohn (talk) 15:09, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Re "It's how people are described" - no it's not;
WP:OTHERSTUFF. DexDor (talk) 21:30, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
My larger concern with over-reliance on obituaries is all the negative content they leave out or minimize out of respect for the dead. Even the unpaid ones in newspapers have a source bias and tend to be
pollyannish.RevelationDirect (talk) 02:23, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
WP:CATDEF, "A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having." Be it books, articles or encyclopedias, you're going to commonly and consistently find her cause of death, and you will find that detail for virtually any person who has died. These reliable sources provide the material that we use to build our articles, and they deem cause of death to be a strong defining characteristic. Alansohn (talk) 04:15, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]

In all instances, all this information is useful as a list, however, and should be maintained in that format instead (i.e. in the list the emphasis is on the topic as a whole, not each element of the list being directly related to the other elements).

  • Support procedural close and renominate in groups, for the sake of easier reaching consensus. Marcocapelle (talk) 09:59, 22 March 2015 (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
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). No further edits should be made to this section.

Category:Stations of Malaysian Railway

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
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The result of the discussion was: merge. – Fayenatic London 18:08, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Duplicate categories. "Malaysian Railway" is an incorrect name for Keretapi Tanah Melayu (KTM). Joshua Talk to me What I've done? 08:30, 12 March 2015 (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
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Category:Grammy Award-winning artists

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
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The result of the discussion was: rename. – Fayenatic London 22:45, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: With actors and comedians receiving awards for non-music work (i.e. comedy albums), this would be a more encompassing description as "artist" is more often affiliated with music than it is things like comedy. Snuggums (talk / edits) 20:24, 21 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note Link to previous discussion from SEP 2012 in which the reverse rename was proposed and implemented. --StarcheerspeaksnewslostwarsTalk to me 02:55, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting..... however, my point still stands that "winning artists" is too narrow of a description. Snuggums (talk / edits) 03:16, 22 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Which is why I didn't !vote on it myself, but the earlier discussion should be presented here. I would like to see what the community says. However, "act" is an option as well, as comedians are acts just as much as musicians and groups.
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice.
  • Support per nom. (sorry for
    WP:JUSTAVOTE, can't really think of anything to add that hasn't already been said) ― Padenton|✉   16:41, 6 May 2015 (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
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Category:Streisand effect

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
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The result of the discussion was: delete. If we just relied on sources for categorization involving such situations, there would be no need for the guideline
WP:SUBJECTIVECAT. (And in any case, you won't find many sources arguing that a given situation is not an example of the "Streisand effect", so relying on sources for this appellation can be problematic.) Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:37, 24 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
Nominator's rationale: Per
WP:SUBJECTIVECAT. The Streisand effect is when trying to hide or suppress embarrassing secrets draws more public attention than just releasing the information would have. For a article to belong in this category, it's not enough to say that hiding information caused media attention. Rather, it needs to have caused more attention than just releasing the information would have in in a hypothetical alternative scenario. That comparison seems inherently speculative and subjective.RevelationDirect (talk) 02:09, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
]
Note: Notified the main category creator and this discussion has been included in Wikipedia:WikiProject Marketing & Advertising. – RevelationDirect (talk) 02:09, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No objection to keeping these sources in the articles stating this opinion. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:42, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep, but it should be noted that only articles for events and situations where reliable sources state that the Streisand effect has been in place for the the topic of those articles.
However, if the result ends up being "delete" I would further suggest the creation of a list page for cases of Streisand effect, and that reliably sourced articles be linked there before removed from the category. // coldacid (talk|contrib) 02:50, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep per coldacid's excellent suggestion that the scope of the category needs to be stated. Mjroots (talk) 10:30, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The characteristic is defining and needs to be based on reliable and verifiable sources documenting the usage, which are amply available. Alansohn (talk) 14:59, 19 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The Streisand effect is well-documented, and several incidents fall under this category. I fail to see the logic of deleting it.
    YO 😜 16:53, 20 March 2015 (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
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Category:American female prostitutes

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
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). No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the discussion was: merge. – Fayenatic London 22:59, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Upmerge. I fail to be convinced that being a female here is defining. If you look at Category:American prostitutes, it is clear that most editors don't use this category. Depending on how this discussion goes, it may necessitate a follow up discussion on Category:Female prostitutes. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:40, 12 March 2015 (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
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Category:British female escorts

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
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The result of the discussion was: merge to Category:Escorts. – Fayenatic London 23:02, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nominator's rationale: Merge. Not sure that this thinly populated tree needs this end stage category. Article is already in the female tree from other categories. I also wonder if we need the parent by nationality category on the children at all. Vegaswikian (talk) 01:15, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Upmerge, agree with rationale by Vegaswikian, above. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 03:52, 12 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Upmerge per nom. Montanabw(talk) 08:02, 15 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose There are a few professions in this world in which biological sex and gender presentation matter. The sector featured in this category is one of them where gender is defining. In medical research, health and social issues affecting one gender in this sector often do not affect the other. It is meaningful to differentiate. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:56, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per Bluerasberry. It is one of those professions defined by biological differences unlike actor vs. actress or steward vs. stewardess. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:32, 18 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Upmerge I don't see the reason to differentiate between male/female for most occupations, unless it is somehow historic, eg, female heads of state.
    YO 😜 16:46, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Upmerge Violates
    WP:NARROWCAT, seeing as how there is only a single page in either of them. ― Padenton |☎  18:08, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply
    ]
  • Triple upmerge to great-grandfather Category:Escorts, which is barely populated. There are seven biographies in this whole structure (at 6 categories - there are nearly as many as the total contents). Dissecting by nationality is not useful in this instance and the national sex workers categories would be a much better location for national level exploration which includes this topic. SFB 18:30, 20 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Triple upmerge to Category:Escorts per reasoning by @Sillyfolkboy, although frankly, IMO these categories are distasteful entirely. Quis separabit? 01:41, 26 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Upmerge or triple upmerge per the above arguments. The Drover's Wife (talk) 12:52, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The lesson we should have learned from the great media mischaracterization of Wikipedia categorization of the Spring of 2013 is that assuming that a profession is historically or presently primarily dominated by one sex and that only cases of people of the other sex involved in the profession should be categorized by profession plus sex is now seen as sexist and a case of Wikipedia endorsing and reinforcing historical sexist structures. In some professions (Acting, many sports, dancing, and I would argue this one), it makes sense to split every person into a sex specific category. In others, like being a writer, there are enough ways to subdivide that people can be placed in male and female categories and then in not-gender specific ones, in others, such as politicians and journalists, we have decided to have only one sex split out, but to make sure that the rules of non-dispersal are followed. The proposal here would move us backward.John Pack Lambert (talk) 07:02, 16 May 2015 (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
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