Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/Not deleted/July 2006

July 7th

Cat:Africa geography stubs → Cat:African geography stubs

Sample count for what's wrong with the status quo in innumerable existing geographical stub types (and with Caerwine's proposal to make these the conventional form). No-one would for a moment think of calling a perm-cat Cat:Africa geography, so why does suffixing " stubs" suspend all normal English usage? Rename this, with the remainder to follow. Alai 08:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• oppose. That will make it less like the equivalent main category, whereas the aim is to make it more like if possible. if you want to change this and all other geography stub categories, it should be to Cat:Geography of Africa stubs. And if you're thinking of going through all the African categories making "Adjectival geography stubs" the standard then I very strongly oppose "Congolese geography stubs", "Nigerian geography stubs" and "Nigerien geography stubs"! Grutness...wha? 11:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • My aim is that they be more like reasonable category names, not names that are arbitrarily more like the permanents, while ignoring all normal usages and euphony, which on the face of it seems to be yours and CW's. I wouldn't insist on "proper adjectives no matter what" (as I said the last time we discussed this, when your opinion appeared to be in the other direction), I'd be content with "most familiar attributive use". "Africa geography", "Poland geography", "India ethnicity", "Japan stadium" are not, and nor are they reasonable usage at all. Alai 18:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • My opinion is that consistency is of primary importance, followed by ease of use or "guessability". If some are done on particular way any new ones should also be done the same way - that is, once one group of geography stubs was done one way, it made sense to keep things consistent. Since the buildings and structures are a subcategory of them - and the stadia a further subcategory of the buildings and structures - it made sense to continue to use the same pattern. I don't like the current names particularly much - as you say, they aren't grammatical, to start with - but until recently it took a hell of a lot of effort to change over the categories. Now that a change in template-category link will instantly (or fairly instantly) change the categorisation of stubs without null-edits, it is far easier to change category names over to something more sensible, so any arguments relating to difficulty of changing hundreds of categories (which was always my chief concern, since we're already very overworked at WP:WSS) has gone. If we are to change the categories, though, we;'ll need to change all of them, not just one or two, and it makes far more sense to make them congruous with the names of the permanent categories - something we should probably have done from the get-go. It certainly doesn't make sense to change them to an often confusingly arbitrary adjectival form: Burkinabe geography stubs? Ivorian geography stubs? Not to mention subnational regions where adjectival forms are either unguessable - Orcadian, Michigander - or don't exist. Grutness...wha? 02:40, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Obviously we'd need to change them all, I thought that was fairly clearly implied by "sample count". To make that more explicit: rename them all to terms consistent with reasonable language use, at a reasonable rate, as enumerated and approved of. (Africa just happens to be first on the listing.) What on earth is "confusingly arbitrary" about the use of adjectives? There's a honking great list of them on WP, existing categories use them, and by CW's proposal, all people categories would do so (as they largely do at present). I find it hard to see there's a insuperable problem using them in one set of categories, but not in another. New category names should still be proposed, and created at names there's explicit consensus for (in contrast to Caerwine's methodology), at which point problematic adjectives, such as "Burkinabe" and "American" can be objected to, and alternative adjectives, or attributive use of nouns, or whatever else can be suggested, and doubtless duly squabbled over. If "congruous" means "the name of the permanent with 'stubs' slapped on the end", or "'Stubs of' at the beginning", or with the component words rearranged without regard to natural usage, I can't say I'm enthused, though the first would the least unattractive of the three. I do agree about the overwork issue, if not to say lengthening backlogs, but the issue has been raised (not to say, rammed down one's throat as one tries to clear some of said backlog), and I'd rather it be addressed in a way that actually improves existing category names, as opposed to one that makes existing poor choices of name mandatory, and on top of that disimproves some others. The whole "guessability" thing is for my money next to irrelevant; they never have to be guessed, they almost never have to be even used, about the only times being when creating a subcategory, or when linking to them when in the middle of discussions like this one. Nor do I see why "consistently use the normal attributive" is so mysteriously hard to guess as seems to be the general opinion, or why "use nouns in some cases, and adjectives in others" is so easy, unless one happens to have fully internalised both the naming conventions for the permanents, and the suggested or traditional transformational rules. Alai 01:50, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • Guessability is very important. It may not be so for us as stub sorters. but it definitely is for stub editors - who, let's face it, are the main reason for sorting the stubs in the first place. Grutness...wha? 02:11, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
          • Why? The allegedly highly important scenario you're allegedly catering for seems entirely opaque from here. Are you suggesting that someone gets it into their head to edit stubs related to "Fooish bars", types "Category:Foo bar stubs", "Category:Fooish bar stubs", or "Category:Fooish barric stubs" directly into the WP search box, or the URL text widget of their browser, without any prior knowledge of that category name, or more to the point, following a link? And furthermore, that those people are less likely to guess "African geography" than "Africa geography"? If you tell me "well, that's what I always do" I'll have to take it on trust, but beyond that... Alai 03:15, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I certainly would be in favor of a Cat:Geography of Africa stubs type solution here, tho our practice to date has be to avoid using prepositions in stub categores, which is why I didn't propose simply appending "stubs" to the perm-cat name to get the stub-cat name. Caerwine Caerwhine 17:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment We should only use category names that people have a chance to guess. Either the current system or a Cat:Geography of XYZ stubs. Valentinian ^(talk) 06:41, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Rename to Cat:Geography of Africa stubs. Nationality x is most appropriate for people categories like Cat:French people stubs. It is preferable for consistency in my opinion to follow the parent cat. Kurieeto 02:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

9th July

{{

Blog-stub}} / Category:Blogging stubs

Currently only 4 pages, most stubs IMO should go into {{internet-stub}} possibly. --bdude Talk 03:42, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• This is so small partly because it was created unproposed for "vlogs", was rescoped, but evidently never populated. I'll suspend judgement on this pending motivated effort and/or knowledgeable opinion on whether it is, in fact, populable. Alai 05:16, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• StubSense suggests this is highly populable. As there's not been any further input, I'll go with a keep, and close this as NC. Alai 22:21, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

July 21st

State-stub / Cat:State stubs

Somewhere in June, User:CoolKatt number 99999 created a template and category for every US state that didn't have one already. As a result, there are a number of them that are severly undersized. Below is a table of the states that should be deleted. Some of the states do have a WikiProject and I have notified them that the stub is undersized and they need to populate them within 6 days or they will be deleted.

For a more detailed analysis, with article counts, see User:Amalas/State-stubs. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 17:07, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What woudl replace the categories being deleted? Us-State stubs? -Ravedave 17:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the articles within these categories would fall under state-geo-stub or state-politician-stub. The others would end up with something generic like {{US-stub}}. But there aren't really that many, hence the deletion. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 17:32, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't it be better to leave the state stubs to catch items that don't fall under geo or politicians (e.g. history), rather than let them float up to US? I'm not sure why low counts are an indicator for deletion. It could also be an indicator that the stubs are working.--J Clear 20:42, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if I'm going to be able to explain this very well, but from what I can tell, stub-sorting is a way to keep categories manageable in size. If a stub category gets too large, we split it. If it gets too small (usually meaning the stubs grow to article length), then we don't really need the category anymore. If there are only 5 or 12 stubs in a category, it doesn't make much sense for it to have its own when it can easily be move up to the parent category. I hope that made some sense. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 20:55, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Makes some sense, especially the too big part. However you're actually targeting a set of stubs that have children, apprently. Also you're going to possibly impact say someone from one of those states who might be able to contribute to local articles. Course it makes me wonder why those states don't have their own project. For instance, I've been using the Maryland stub hoping to attract someone with some additional local history to a few articles I created. The MD geo stub would be a bit of a stretch for a bridge or a dam, I think.--J Clear 00:06, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vermont Stubs population increased to 54 (and still increasing). Its my feeling that this stub is useful for the Wiki project work Mickmaguire 17:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update! I've updated the table to reflect this. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 17:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose on the Kentucky stub/category; Abstain on others (I've got no time to review them). There has been an earnest effort to use the stub/category and I just added information to the Kentucky project page to ensure that project members know about them and use them. —
  Talk | Work 19:58, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• unless the populations change a lot from the analisys done delete. some could reach threshold before the end of the debate (like vermont has now) but some of them have next to no stubs (one actually has no stubs and another only has two both of which are in the wrong stubcat). BL Lacertae - kiss the lizard 00:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Personally I support keeping these, but given the challenge, I've gone into a crash course of populating these with appropriate stubs. I've brought {{Alabama-stub}} up to 67 stubs, and will get to work on the others, but there's no way I could hope to do all of these myself. Caerwine Caerwhine 17:08, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Non-geo/poli stub counts witin each state will ebb and flow with article creation and expansion. These topics will always be notable and the population threshold isn't such a hard and fast rule that we can't keep these around as a catch-all when needed.
  Rx StrangeLove 05:58, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Keep templates, regardless. There's always the possibility that these are undersized because they were created out-of-process, and thus people haven't been using them systematically; also will have at least some utility as parents for the various state-based splits, of which there are increasing numbers. Review categories in a month or so, consider upmerging any that stay egregiously small over time. Alai 07:24, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Note I'm going through the XX-school-stub templates, and for those that have less than 60 stubs, turning them into dual catted stubs which include the state stub category one of the templates the category feeds into. That should increase the numbers of some of these fairly quickly. Caerwine Caerwhine 15:18, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. I just started the Maryland wikiproject, and there are plenty of substubs for Maryland (politicians, roads, etc.) and {{Maryland-stub}} will serve as a catch all for other stubs related to Maryland. Although it may not be heavily populated, it is certainly useful. I'm sure the same applies for other states as well.-Jeff ^(talk) 16:33, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wouldn't so sure, if I were you: MA is relatively healthy given its four bona fide subcats, and the wikiproject (which might want to link to and from the stub category, btw: telephathic we're not); personally I'd keep that one. Some of the others are much weedier. Ebbing and flowing would be one thing, but every indication is that many of these were created with no indication of likely population, and never "flowed" in the first place. Alai 22:49, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep all. These state-defined stubs allow potential editors to quickly view and expand any articles for their state that need expanding and that may not fit in a particular category. By removing or "genericizing" the stub, this process becomes much more difficult. --TMF ^{T - C} 18:13, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The same rules should apply for all cases - including the U.S. material: keep the templates for a while to allow them to be populated. Delete any category which does not live up to the 60+ criteria (or 30+ if it is the *primary* template used by a Wikiproject.) In a month's time or so, review the situation again. Valentinian ^(talk) 18:20, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• keep the Penn stub. We can use it. --South Philly 02:17, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• PA has a wikiproject, and its population has crept over 30, so keep that one, too. OTOH, I strongly object to South Philly's modification of the table in Amalas' signed nomination, changing "delete" to "keep" (three times, indeed). Alai 04:23, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• • I edited the box because we never received any notice that the stub was put up for deletion. The box should have been edited to show we were never notified. What you should be objecting to is lack of notice given to users, and lack of transparancy. --South Philly 04:28, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's a massive non sequitur; what does the one have to do with the other? I already replied to you in detail on the "notice" issue, and got only these helpful comments, so am disinclined to repeat myself, or to expand further. Alai 04:35, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • It would have been impossible for you to be notified since I made this nomination on 21 July and the PA WikiProject did not exist until 22 July. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 13:33, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Non-sequitur? Hardly. Someone has been updating the box, you're the only one who seems to have a problem with me trying to update the box. I stand by what i said. WP:Dick. --South Philly 05:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Arguing ad hominem isn't the brightest of moves - you'd be far better to read through
  WP:CIVIL, SP - and civility on Wikipedia includes not editing other people's signed words (and that includes tables). As to the stubs, delete any categories that don't come close to threshold and make regional US categories which the relevant templates can be redirected to. Grutness...wha? 05:39, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
  • First, please show me where I was arguing ad hominem. I have not once attacked a person presenting an argument or assertion. I have been arguing about people's actions as they relate to the argument itself (deletion of the Penn Stub).
  • Second, someone has been editing the table, and information on there about the penn thread has been left off. I know by reading the edit histries that other users besides the original posters have edited the box - why is there double standard.
  • Third, civility is fine, but from the get go I was accused of vandalism or "forgery." How about some appreciation that not evryone is following the workings of this cabal and that having a useful template deleted without being given a voice is also, "bad form." --South Philly 03:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • As far as the first point is concerned, did you or did you not point to
      WP:DICK? Have you or have you not since accused people on this page of being a cabal? Re: the second point, the changes on the table to keep were done when those particular stub types reached the required threshold for them to exist according to the normal stub-sorting criteria. You are right that they should have nbeen either nentioned at the time or listed separately afterwards. Your changes were not for any reason of stub-sorting criteria. As to the third point, it appears that comments of vandalism only occurred a=fter you had changed the table and had it reverted three times. In those circumstances surely it would have made sense for you to assume that there was a reason for the reversion, rather than repeatedly trying to alter the table. Perhaps commenting under the table (as you have since done) would have been a more sensible course of action. Grutness...wha? 05:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
      ]
      • Incidentally, I pointed out said problems with these edits while they were occurring (to be given "WP:DICK", "harassment" and "what are you smoking" comments for my trouble (see our respective talk pages)), lest anyone feel my admin-rollbacks were a tad opaque as regards rationale. Not changing signed comments is nothing particular to this "cabal", it's clearly stated on
        WP:VANDAL, and mucking around with others' nominations on any process page is very poor form, more so still when it a) completely changes the sense of some aspect of it (if the nominator's signed comment now says "keep", we in effect have (the appearance of) a withdrawal), and b) is done completely "silently" ("minor edit", no edit summary, no signed comment below stating the change made). Alai 05:51, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
        ]

Just for the record,

WP:WSS considers it bad style to edit each other's proposals (unless it is fixing an obvious misspelling.) SP, you are very welcome to disagree to a proposal - as you clearly do - but please respect the opinions of the original contributor. WP:WSS will evaluate every case on its own, so if the three templates in question now live up to the standard requirements, the most likely result (by far) is that they'll live. However Amalas has the right to have his her opinion respected like the opinion of everybody else, and your edits means that you've effectively censoring his her opinion. As for the incivility business, such action normally results in weakening one's own position, not strenghthening it. Valentinian ^(talk) 07:35, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply

]

• • Until the following post, there was no indication given that the table was actualy proprietary. --South Philly 03:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• I have updated the table with current counts. I only changed the votes to "Keep" for the cats that are clearly above the threshold. I believe the table is a part of my nomination (it falls before my signature), so I would appreciate it if no one but myself changes it. Thanks. P.S. I prefer the pronouns "she/her". =) ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 13:22, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry Amalas (I volunteer as idiot of the day :) Valentinian ^(talk) 09:28, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• • Would you please follow-through and update the Penn box to reflect that it is part of a wikiproject and that more than 50 articles use it. --South Philly 03:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• • • Sorry for not updating the PA box sooner. I didn't know it had a WikiProject because it wasn't listed in this section [1] like the other states were. I assumed that was a template, so that when a new Project was started, it would update the template and it would be listed there. I did finally find WPPA through Cat:WikiProject U.S. states. I've updated the table to reflect this. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 13:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep All per Alai. I stumbled upon this SFD because I was looking for an appropriate Washington state stub. I suspect there are enough articles out there to populate all of these states. There certainly are for the smallest Canadian provinces. The stub-creation procedure isn't exactly front-and-center for new editors (and some more experienced ones). Just because they were created out-of-process does not mean they are not useful. Some time and patience will be required. It is a big task to find and tag all the articles that properly require these templates. I know exactly what Caerwine is talking about. Agent 86 01:42, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Per me? Note that I'm more in the "don't delete just yet" camp on the smallest ones. Alai 05:51, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes, per you! I know that your final point was not to delete yet but to review over time, but I thought your initial reasoning supported a "keep all". It was just easier to say keep per you and elaborate than repeat what was already there for the reading. Some of these will certainly take a lot of time, because it's a big job. Agent 86 22:08, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep All. It seems unreasonable for there not to be a state level cat, especially for the smaller states. Votes on CfD have shown that categories with very small populations are acceptable if they have a clear useful purpose. I think all of these would meet their standards. Vegaswikian 06:47, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • While I don't necessarily disagree with you in these particular instances, note that stub stubs have
    different size criteria than "permanent" categories (where in theory anything with two articles and a pulse could be argued in favour of, and I've seen people vote "keep" on singletons). Alai 07:20, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
    ]
• Keep All. They're highly intuitive. Alphachimp ^talk 07:09, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete all which don't reach threshhold - Nomadic1 08:47, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep all These are mid-level stubs, with geo and pol types coming out of them. We don't delete {{stub}} when it gets depriciated because there are stub categories above it that have more than 60. Of course, if a state's pol and geo stub categories have been deleted and the number of state stubs are still less then 60, then the stub type should be deleted.--Rayc 14:14, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep all ... Obviously. heqs 03:15, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep all per Agent 86, Vegaswikian, and other similar arguments. First, anything we delete we will likely need sooner or later (and may have needed in the past). Second, the fact that there aren't many stubs in the stub-cat at the moment isn't a good enough reason to remove it, IMHO -- after all, our goal is to fix articles that are stubs, right? So technically you could argue that the lack of articles in a stub-cat means that its working :) Maybe something could go out to everyone who has the New Page Patrol template on their user page, reminding them that these are good stubs to keep in mind, that might help catch some of them. Bookgrrl 13:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep all per Agent 86. There is easily enough information available to fill each of these categories, and I don't think these should be deleted because something was created out of turn.
• Keep all I took a look at the Oregon stubs and found that having a catchall stub for articles that don't fit into any of the other Oregon stubs will come in handy. And whoever is keeping track, I added {{
  Katr67 22:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]
• Comment. I've added {{
  WikiProject Maryland's template list and added a news item about this discussion. Also I've managed to populate Category:Maryland stubs to over 40 articles. I think if the wikiprojects are notified about this they would probably be able to populate their categorys, then we could see what can be deleted.-Jeff ^(talk) 01:43, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

• Update I've kept all the templates and categories and added {{
  WP:STUBS (with the exception of Georgia, which I listed to avoid confusion with the country of Georgia). I also added a note that reads you can use {{State-stub}} for any state so that people know there are other state stubs templates available. ~ Amalas rawr ^{=^_^=} 20:45, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

Cat:Festival stubs

There's a note on Template:Festival-stub (and therefore on all the pages in this category) saying that this stub category was proposed for deletion. I can't find it on the Stub Types for Deletion page nor on its Talk page, although I did find a mention on the Talk page, here, of the fest-stub category being deleted. Does anyone know what the deal is? Is it possible that fest-stub was merged with festival-stub and then deleted, but that festival-stub "inherited" the "Stub type for deletion" flag? (I'm posting this comment also on the Category:Festival_stubs and Template:Festival-stub discussions.)Bookgrrl 00:48, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've checked, BTW - the nomination was only made yesterday and wasn't completed; it's never come through this page. I'd support the deletion of the fest-stub redirect, but festival-stub itself is still pretty useful. I've been bold and removed the sfd template, though if anyone feels that festival-stub should be deleted, please speak up and I'll put it back! Grutness...wha? 05:32, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Bookgrrl 11:34, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Good move, Grutness, especially given the number of stub articles with that template.
  Your nomination to split the stub certainly demonstrates why this ought not be deleted. Agent 86 21:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply
  ]

{{Brunei-stub}} / Cat:Brunei stubs

I don't recall this one ever having been proposed... it has one stub (a geo). However, since adding the sfd templates I've noticed it was created by Valentinian "per WSS" a couple of weeks ago. The template's fine, but unless there are more stubs on Brunei than are evident here, perhaps "The Alai solution" (i.e., redirecting to the parent Cat:Asia stubs) is an option? Grutness...wha? 11:30, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I proposed it on 5 July

YMSTICPC.) I'll get to it. Valentinian ^(talk) 12:17, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply

]

aah. That's why I didn't remember it if it was in a big batch of others (perhaps I should help with the sorting, given that it's 5 degrees Celsius here at the moment...). Grutness...wha? 12:28, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This'll have to do as a start: here's 50 stubs. I've removed a few from the original "list" since it looks like they've grown. I'll look for more material. Valentinian ^(talk) 14:33, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Up to 56 now. Keep. Valentinian ^(talk) 14:41, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Update: 60+ now, so a definite keeper (just for the record). Valentinian ^(talk) 18:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, I withdraw the nomination - good work! Grutness...wha? 01:46, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

July 26th

Cat:Canadian political party stubs -> Cat:Canada political party stubs

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember {{Canada-party-stub}} being proposed. It has 60 articles in it and looks like the work of a WP. I've cleaned up the category, but it should be Renamed to the standard format. The template has a nice icon, but I'm not the biggest fan of "advertisements". It is probably inspired by {{Australia-politician-stub}}. Thoughts anyone? Valentinian ^(talk) 15:32, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. While we certainly have a lot of 'em like this, said "standard" isn't in the naming guidelines, and wouldn't be an acceptable form in formal English, or come to that in the name of a "real" category. Instead, standardise all per-country stub cats to "[country-attributive] [subcat noun] stubs", which would be both more consistent (and hence more "guessable"), and more in line with linguistically reasonable constructions. Alai 15:44, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I simply noticed that both parent and the four other children of {{Party-stub}} used the proposed format, and I believe you just voted for a new category for Burkina Faso using is format. Does that mean that this one should be Cat:Burkinabè political party stubs? Valentinian ^(talk) 16:35, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alternatively, we could do a general rename of this and the other four (+ the proposal) to the same format as used in the main categories: Cat:Political parties in Canada => Cat:Political parties in Canada stubs ? Valentinian ^(talk) 16:56, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You'll note I said "country-attributive", not "a full-fledged adjective, come hell or high water", in part to forestall the complaints (which were never really clarified) that have come up about "guessability" of the name, and also to accommodate cases where an adjective is problematic in scope, and/or an attributive noun is in relatively common use. None of those apply to "Canada"/"Canadian", at least this side of Canada Dry. The residual plural in the "copy and paste the perm cat" scheme also reads very awkwardly, so no thanks to that one, too. "Following the perm cat" to a style of name that a perm-cat would never actually have, I find far from convincing. But consistency one way or the other would be good: the current ramshackle arrangement seems to be getting progressively worse, not better. Alai 20:01, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't really have any strong preferences for whatever system is chosen, my main point is that we should have some sort of consistency, one way or the other. Valentinian ^(talk) 20:21, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. I'm not particularly fond of the suggested new name, but I would certainly support a move to Cat:Political parties in Canada stubs, in parallel to Category:Political parties in Canada, per Valentinian. Agent 86 22:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is clear that we need to do something abut this situation over the categories overall. We have been largely using "Noun thing stubs" as a split by nation, but it's not grammatical. Using "Adjective thing stubs" has some problems with some countries - clearly not with Canada, but definitely with some (I learnt "Kittitian-Nevisian" two days ago, for instance). "Thing of/in Noun stubs" has a definite appeal, especially since many permcats are one as "Things in/of Noun". Overall, I'd be happiest with the latter format either in plural or singular form (stubs is the only plural really needed) - e.g., in this case "Political party/parties in Canada stubs". But whatever we do, we should be consistent, as Valentinian says. Grutness...wha? 06:02, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Once again, I'm not suggesting "<Adjective> <thing> stubs", I'm suggesting "<Attribute> <thing> stubs", i.e. either an adjective, or a noun that's reasonable to use attributively, in such a context. Which to use might be arguable, but we have to make that same decision (or, to decide to follow someone else's decision) in any event, for, for example, the "<Attribute> people stubs" hierarchy. The distinction is significant as clearly "United Kingdom" and "United States" aren't adjectives, and contrary to

List of adjectival forms of place names

, I don't really think "New Zealand" is either, given that it can't be used predicatively. (Or at least, not by me it can't.) All three can certainly be used attributively, though. Personally I feel these are the most euphonic and normal-usage-complaint of the possibilities, and the most predictable in most likely scenarios -- i.e. when one is carrying out a WAG at the name, rather than navigating from a related cat (in which one is unlikely just to be guessing). If an adjective is too whacky, unusual, unused, problematic in scope or usage, or just plain overwhelmingly unpopular by the WSS/P masses, and an noun used attributively is a reasonable alternative, I see no problem with doing so -- just as long as we're consistent about then using it in every such instance for that country. i.e. let's not have "Kittitian-Nevisian <doohickey> stubs", and "Saint Kitts and Nevis <yoke> stubs", mixed and matched.

Of the latter two possibilities you allude to, I'd favour the singular, obviously, though I can't say I'm wild about either. Sooner or later we'll have to put this in naming guideline form, though before that happens, we'll have to have more than about four taking an active interest, and fewer than the 5-7 options we favour between us. :) Alai 02:45, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, "New Zealand" is not used as a predicate, true, but only because nothing is in terms of New Zealand. You would always say "This X is a New Zealand X". And "United States" is an attributive adjective, irrespective of whether it is a predicative one or not - not all adjective are both attributive and predicative (the article adjective gives "former" as an example of one that isn't) - and that's how we use it as a stub category name. I agree about the naming though that it needs more people arguing (and preferably about fewer options!) Grutness...wha? 05:08, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome to the United Nations :) Thanks for the explanation, Alai, I missed the finer points the first time. Valentinian ^(talk) 08:08, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK Grutness, strike "adjective", and replace it by whatever term you wish to denote "an adjective which is usable in the typical manner of an adjective, i.e. both attributively and predicatively": the point remains the same. (Personally I think that to describe any old noun that can be used attributively as also being an adjective is incorrect, misleading and detrimental to the utility of the word, and my Concise Oxford Dictionary and the article adjective here would appear to agree with me here, but that's by the by.) Alai 13:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]